The Rich get a little less RichFollow

Considering that I'm actually thinking along the lines of just a savings account, I'm pretty sure that the "hundreds if not thousands of people" works out to be somewhere in the general vicinity of about 10-20. Not hundreds. Not thousands. Ten to twenty people. (Maybe ten to twenty households if you want to stretch it a little.)

Considering that even when money isn't tight, I'm not much for spending money anyway (not "too many choices makes it hard to decide what I want", either; it's very much a "do I really want to buy this" process that usually leads to me not doing a damn thing about it), I'd say that:

1) Yes, even with unlimited money I'd still think in terms of what I need to live off of.
2) The rest of that money would likely be of little or no use (in the hypothetical unlimited-money case, I really am one of those people who wouldn't even bother sticking it in the bank because there's no point; in limited-money cases, I don't really care where the money is as long as I'm not using any of it other than interest).
3) As far as giving money to the poor or the government: no in both cases, but for extremely different reasons. (I'm not going to explain these because I'd probably get banned and/or reprimanded by Kao for exposing the site to legal liability for, essentially, advocating secession. Since that seems exceptionally pointless, I'll just leave it at that. Also: the only way communism is sustainable in practice is under a theocracy [if it's sustainable at all].)

Sure.

The major problem with communism in practice is that people are generally imperfect and will therefore attempt to cheat the system (doing the absolute minimum amount of work they can get away with).

Every communist state to date has made the disincentive to cheat one that, in the long run, is counterproductive (specifically, the threat of death and/or forced labor); this has led to states that have either failed, are failing, or are transitioning away from communism.

This means that there is either something inherently wrong with the disincentive, or with communism itself. For the purposes of this, we'll assume that communism per se is not inherently unstable.

Now, most religions are intended to do two things (note: hedging solely because I'm aware we have atheists in the audience - I can see your lips moving as you attempt to invoke the wrath of Richard Dawkins):

1) Reinforce "good" behavior through a theoretical reward in the afterlife; and
2) Provide a disincentive for "bad" behavior through a theoretical punishment in the afterlife.

Furthermore, most of the principles behind communism (to be mildly inaccurate, equality of the vast majority of the people, ensuring nobody goes without, &c.) are also considered to be "good" behaviors by most religions. (Note that this is not a strict case of Marxist communism, which is unfortunately by definition atheistic.) In addition, most things considered "bad" by most religions that are not, in themselves, usually considered criminal acts (not pulling your own weight, being openly disruptive towards authority, &c.) also are problematic for communism.

This leads to a much simpler solution for the disincentive, assuming the majority of your population is religious: by combining religious power with temporal power (that is, by making the communist state a theocracy as well), the disincentive for cheating the system becomes the same as for, well, pretty much any other violation of a religious commandment. In addition, whereas there is normally no incentive to attempt to do more than your share under communism normally, under a theocratic form of communism there is an incentive - again, the same as there would be for doing more than your share religiously.

Admittedly, this is probably oversimplifying things somewhat.

Ok, I see how things make sense before this paragraph: I agree that a strong sense of "judeo-christian" morals would foster the sense of "not cheatign the system", and that this would be beneficial to the pursuit of an effective communist system.

But aren't you mixing up theocracy with the religious fervour of a population? The fact that the rulers are from the clergy would not necessarily imply that the population itself would be more inclined to follow judeo-christian morals, which seems to be the crux of your argument.

Furthermore, I think the ends are as importnat as the means. People should want the system to work because they genuinely believe that this system if the most fair, and the most beneficial to society. The threat of punishment in the afterlife is not necessarily a more worthy vector for positive action that the threat of punishment in real life.

Gbaji is right in saying that you'd probably value your money a lot more if you'd worked a decade or so to accumulate it. He's wrong in thinking this makes the principle behind redistribution of that wealth wrong. All it means is that you're less likely to support wealth redistribution if (shock! horror!) you are wealthy. That itself doesn't argue for or against wealth redistribution.

Edited, Aug 25th 2009 11:43am by zepoodle

I'm only gonna argue against this because this is the internet and I'm a bit bored. Fundamentally, I see your logic and it's fine.

However, I don't agree with the bit you quoted. Mostly for semantic reasons. If people voted for a theocracy, then yes, they are likely to be more religious than other society. It's not certain, but it's likely. But if the theocracy was imposed, then not necessarily. Theocracy doesn't imply that the practice of other religions are forbidden, or even that a lack of faith in that particular religion is forbidden. It simply implies that the rulers have some "divine link". In effect, it will mean that the laws of the country are based on the morality of the religion in question, but it does not mean that the religion itself has to be followed, nor that all the religious prescriptions will translated into law.

Iran is the clearest example. You don't have to be a Muslim to live in Iran. You don't have to pray 5 times a day, you don't have to go to Mosque, etc... You could be an atheist in Iran, and you'd be fine. So no, people living in a theocracy are not necessarily more religious than people not living in a theocracy. It's likely they will be in certain cases, but it's not certain.

There, I feel a bit like Pensive now.

Does my previous post make sense now?

Well, what did you expect from Sweetums?

Part of gbaji's argument was that it's much easier for a lottery winner to donate his winning to charity, since he didn't work for it and thus has no investment or attachment to it that a person who worked a decade or more for the same amount would. He can safely view it as just cash he doesn't really need.

Just playing some good old devil's advocate.

Edited, Aug 25th 2009 1:41pm by zepoodle

Pensive, you risk living a selfish and self-indulgent life.

Reading what you write, I suspect you will go through life thinking you are ethically superior because of your views. Those same views could kill any motivation to amass any sort of wealth with which you would be able to back up what you say with actual redistribution of wealth.

You may even consume more than you create in terms of services provided by society like roads and other infrastructure, before we make any assumptions about benefits. So far in life you certainly have, so you are playing catch-up. If that happens then others will be able to look you squarely in the eye and describe you as truely selfish. Would you be confused and hurt? Would you say: "But what I did have, I gave away, and if I had more I would have too"?

"If" is the emptiest of words. But you would feel good about yourself right? That is what matters...

Now you're just inflating my ego...

Well. Technically, the issue was about some kind of glorification of the rich getting poorer, as though this was somehow a "good thing" for those who are not rich. I'll point out an interesting trend. Pretty much all the times in the last century in the US, when the rich lost money, the rest of the country was in even worse condition. Trickle down indeed!

Secondly, if you recall, my specific point was that methods used to attempt to reduce the gap between rich and poor typically hurt those trying to become rich (or even just get ahead in life) far far more than it hurts those who are actually rich.

It's not about wanting to take *all* the money away from the rich. I even made a point that the only way to do this would be via some sort of Communist revolution like we saw in China and Russia. I was talking about the half measures typically espoused by those who are (IMO) overly concerned about the gap between rich and poor. Far before you put a dent in the truly "rich", you'll kill upward mobility for the middle class. That's the real concern for me. Maybe I wasn't clear in this thread, but I've made this argument dozens of times in the past, so sometimes I forget that I may not have made it clearly this time around...



Completely different situation. And I've made this point in the past as well, but I'll make it again: The shift from land based economic systems to industrial based ones changes the rules with regard to wealth accumulation. In a land based system (such as in Feudal Europe), wealth is a function of the bounty of the land and not much else. There's literally only so much productivity and you can't increase it at a certain point (you're working the land as much as possible). In such a system, if the rich are getting richer, it's because the poor are getting relatively poorer. It's a nearly zero sum game.

This is the mistake most modern socialists/communists make. They apply pre-industrial concepts to industrial economics. Marx could be excused this because the industrial revolution was still in it's infancy when he was around. But for people who grew up in the latter half of the 20th century to continue to assume that the rich only get rich by taking from the poor shows a marked lack of understanding of how industrialism coupled with capitalism works.



Nice interpretation. Pretty backwards though. In most cases, it does. In only a very very few cases it does not. The problem is that people tend to focus on one specific method to gain "wealth". But you have to look at the whole picture. If you're just looking at people making speculative investments, short selling, etc, you might conclude that they're gaining wealth while contributing nothing. However, every single penny made by an investor via those means is lost by another investor. The net effect on total "wealth" is zero.

Actual "wealth" only grows as a function of an increase in real productivity. Everything else is just illusion. Investment overwhelmingly creates increases in productivity (and efficiency of productivity). It has to, or it wouldn't net an overall increase in wealth at the end. No one would bother investing in a business venture if they didn't think that the venture would result in profits, and across all such investments, net gains only occur if total productive output in relation to cost increases (becomes more efficient). Companies make profits because they bring a better product to market at a lower price. This benefits everyone and absolutely involves employment. Investors gain money when that happens. All other forms of making money with investments is just shuffling money around. The "rich" aren't getting any richer in that case. They're just exchanging money. They only get "richer" when the overall effect of total investment in the market results in an overall increase in total "value" of the goods and services produced.


That's how capitalism works. And it's kinda hard to deny that it does work since you're literally surrounded by examples of how well it works. Compare your standard of living today to someone making the exact same adjusted income as you from 50 or 100 years ago. Why is your life better? Because we're able to make more productive use of our total resources today than we used to. That's largely because of technological advances. And that in turn overwhelmingly occurred as a result of investment.



It would be virtually impossible for you to invest money in the market and never create a single job. Even if all you do is stick the money in a savings account (someone used that example). What do you think the bank does with that money for which they pay you interest? They loan it out. That forms the bulk of business loans (mostly small business loans from local commercial banks). And small businesses account for the majority of all job creation in the US. So yeah. It's a good bet that even if you just have a moderate bank account, earning a couple percent of interest, you've helped create jobs already.

Just because you didn't hire the person directly does not change the reality of how the money is working for you. Why do you think you get interest on the money? Think about it...

I was making a long post about how Gbaji was wrong about Marx and working conditions during the Industrial Revolution, but then I decided to make a sandwich instead.

I am a sucker for helping lost souls



So if both are hypocritical, but one methods achieves a positive result and the other doesn't, which is better?

Anyway, you have your time to offer. $5 to your favourite homeless guy says you spend more time posting crap on teh internets than you do volunteering for charity. Am I right?

I'm picturing Vogon poetry, you?