Dan M wrote: > >> -----Original Message----- >> From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On >> Behalf Of Trent Shipley >> Sent: Friday, August 07, 2009 3:23 PM >> To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion >> Subject: Re: Br!n: Libertarian Morality--Up with good King John, down >> withRobin Hood. >> >> While writing this I tried to imagine how a certain kind of libertarian >> thought about the world. It is a shallow exercise in participant >> observation. To appreciate what I wrote you must at least partially >> empathize with our libertarian subject. > > I have a question for you Trent....don't libertarians assume that, in a free > market, those that create wealth get to keep at least a tenth of a percent > of the wealth they create? I've got a trillion dollar counterfactual that > I've discussed here before for that argument. > > Dan M.
I don't know. Personally, I don't assume any per se structure to the income and wealth curves produced under highly libertarian markets. Brin's says that libertarian marketism, let alone fundamentalist marketism, tend to produce aristocracies or oligarchies. I agree with the implication that over time libertarianism is prone to produce pronounced income and wealth curves, and furthermore individuals will be structurally stuck near their originating socio-economic status. That said, one expects there should be some limit to how pronounced the wealth ratio can get, but 1:1000 seems arbitary and low. You also use the term "creators of wealth", this sounds like a gloss for the Marxian term "labor" with labor as the critical input for creating capital. Dan, you know that all Marxian ideas are inadmissible because they are socialist. Labor deserves only what the market apportions to it. Under libertarianism there will be no lumpen proletariat, and the un-lumpen proletariat will be free. You wanted to make a point, however. For the sake of argument I will stipulate that within three standard deviations of the mean individual wealth holding the wealth ratio will not exceed 1:1000. _______________________________________________ http://mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
