In which Forbes Mag. becomes indistinguishable from parody

[Dominus Atheos]

http://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswa ... -to-the-1/

Give Back? Yes, It's Time For The 99% To Give Back To The 1%

It’s time to gore another collectivist sacred cow. This time it’s the popular idea that the successful are obliged to “give back to the community.” That oft-heard claim assumes that the wealth of high-earners is taken away from “the community.” And beneath that lies the perverted Marxist notion that wealth is accumulated by “exploiting” people, not by creating value–as if Henry Ford was not necessary for Fords to roll off the (non-existent) assembly lines and Steve Jobs was not necessary for iPhones and iPads to spring into existence.

Let’s begin by stripping away the collectivism. “The community” never gave anyone anything. The “community,” the “society,” the “nation” is just a number of interacting individuals, not a mystical entity floating in a cloud above them. And when some individual person–a parent, a teacher, a customer–”gives” something to someone else, it is not an act of charity, but a trade for value received in return.

It was from love–not charity–that your mother fed you, bought clothes for you, paid for your education, gave you presents on your birthday. It was for value received that your teachers worked day in and day out to instruct you. In commercial transactions, customers buy a product not to provide alms to the business, but because they want the product or service–want it for their own personal benefit and enjoyment. And most of the time they get it, which is why they choose to continue patronizing the same businesses.

All proper human interactions are win-win; that’s why the parties decide to engage in them. It’s not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. It’s the Al Capones and Bernie Madoffs. Voluntary trade, without force or fraud, is the exchange of value for value, to mutual benefit. In trade, both parties gain.

Each particular individual in the community who contributed to a man’s rise to wealth was paid at the time–either materially or, as in the case of parents and friends, spiritually. There is no debt to discharge. There is nothing to give back, because there was nothing taken away.

Well, maybe there is–in the other direction. The shoe is on the other foot. It is “the community” that should give back to the wealth-creators. It turns out that the 99% get far more benefit from the 1% than vice-versa. Ayn Rand developed the idea of “the pyramid of ability,” which John Galt sets forth in Atlas Shrugged:

When you live in a rational society, where men are free to trade, you receive an incalculable bonus: the material value of your work is determined not only by your effort, but by the effort of the best productive minds who exist in the world around you.

When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible: for the work of the industrialist who built it, for the work of the investor who saved the money to risk on the untried and the new, for the work of the engineer who designed the machines of which you are pushing the levers, for the work of the inventor who created the product which you spend your time on making . . .

In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns. But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention, receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job requires of him. And the same is true of all men between, on all levels of ambition and ability. The man at the top of the intellectual pyramid contributes the most to all those below him, but gets nothing except his material payment, receiving no intellectual bonus from others to add to the value of his time. The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus of all of their brains. Such is the nature of the ‘competition’ between the strong and the weak of the intellect. Such is the pattern of ‘exploitation’ for which you have damned the strong.

For their enormous contributions to our standard of living, the high-earners should be thanked and publicly honored. We are in their debt.

Here’s a modest proposal. Anyone who earns a million dollars or more should be exempt from all income taxes. Yes, it’s too little. And the real issue is not financial, but moral. So to augment the tax-exemption, in an annual public ceremony, the year’s top earner should be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Imagine the effect on our culture, particularly on the young, if the kind of fame and adulation bathing Lady Gaga attached to the more notable achievements of say, Warren Buffett. Or if the moral praise showered on Mother Teresa went to someone like Lloyd Blankfein, who, in guiding Goldman Sachs toward billions in profits, has done infinitely more for mankind. (Since profit is the market value of the product minus the market value of factors used, profit represents the value created.)

Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity.” That’s for the sin of successful investing, channeling savings to their most productive uses, instead of wasting them on government boondoggles like Solyndra and bridges to nowhere.

There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to the primordial notion that one’s life belongs to the tribe, to “the community,” and that the superlative wealth-creators must do penance for the sin of creating value.

And Ayn Rand is just the lady who can do it.

Seriously, if the greatest satirists of our time were asked to do a parody of what rich people actually think, this article would be considered too over-the-top and unbelievable.

[Carinthium]

I don't see anything wrong with it. I don't think the community ACTUALLY owes that one percent anything, but that view is as valid as the reverse.

[Simon_Jester]

Carinthium, question:

Do you believe in the existence of 'unfair' or 'unjust' or 'improper' methods by which a person can be influenced into making an agreement, trade, or bargain?

[Carinthium]

I do, but we have different ideas of what those are. Two hypotheticals to make the case. Details in common:

-A has a fatal disease, only B has the cure. B demands A become his slave and donate his entire wealth of two billion dollars in exchange. A accepts because he has no choice.

If B IS morally responsible for the disease, this is heinous. But if he in no way contributed to it happening, then this is a morally clean contract. The alternative would be that Freedom of Contract does not exist and that humans are not free people.

[Rogue 9]

For all the author's waxing rhapsodic about how Warren Buffett, specifically, shouldn't pay taxes, Mr. Buffett himself disagrees.

[DarkArk]

The alternative would be that Freedom of Contract does not exist and that humans are not free people.

So do you find the 13th amendment to be reprehensible because it denies people the right to make contracts regarding slavery (as you just made an example regarding just that)?

I'm curious how far you would take this idea. Would you be fine with the rich and powerful destroying democracy, say by requiring their employees to vote a certain way or else risk losing their jobs?

[Carinthium]

The 13th amendment is bad, but by that point freedom in the United States was so appalling that it is merely one atrocity amongst many.

Assuming they try that I wouldn't see a problem. Extremely impractical to pull off even with total freedom of contract, but if they somehow succeed yes they would have a right to do it.

[Highlord Laan]

I don't see anything wrong with it. I don't think the community ACTUALLY owes that one percent anything, but that view is as valid as the reverse.

No, it's not. You are wrong, your opinion is wrong, and no, I'm not going to respect it or "agree to disagree." Everything the article speaks against exists to make sure those beloved top so-called earners are at least somewhat hobbled in how much they're able to exploit people. The rallying cry of some ideal of total economic freedom is nothing but a cover for people that think wage-slavery and predatory contracts are just fine, so long as the plebes they're abusing can't hit back.

[Carinthium]

Would you care to elaborate on why that is? I'd be curious to hear your argument.

[slebetman]

The alternative would be that Freedom of Contract does not exist and that humans are not free people.

The alternative is actually correct:

1. Freedom of Contract does not exist. Like any other forms of freedom, there are limits. One could argue where the limits are and different groups of people can tolerate different limits but there are limits. One clear example is contracting hitmen to kill people. So far almost nobody tolerates this (though we can get pretty close when it comes to assassinations of "enemy" of the state).

When it comes to voluntary slavery different societies have different tolerances. I believe it is legal in some parts of the US but illegal elsewhere. It is illegal in Germany. So the hypothetical contract may or may not be valid depending on where it's made.

2. Humans are not free people. We are indeed not free, not everyone. There are limits to free will. At least person A is not free - he didn't have the freedom to chose to not have the disease. He is free in the sense that he can chose what to have for dinner but is not free to decide that he doesn't want feel pain due to his disease.

[Carinthium]

I'm talking on an ethical scale with regard to both. The idea that humans have the right to make their own choices in this world is a core moral intuition. Any theory which gets rid of that is ridiculous.

If you think the law of the land directly affects the ethics of this situation, I'm so exasperated I can't really be bothered discussing things with you.

A may be in a deterministic universe, but his choices come from his own nature rather than from external forces. He is free to follow his own desires, even if they are deterministically chosen, without external override.

[DarkArk]

The 13th amendment is bad, but by that point freedom in the United States was so appalling that it is merely one atrocity amongst many.

So in your mind, preventing someone from being abused, raped, and murdered against their will is the true evil.

Extremely impractical to pull off even with total freedom of contract

Given this, I'm rather curious what kind of society you think should exist. Do governments even exist in your world?

The idea that humans have the right to make their own choices in this world is a core moral intuition.

According to whom? Which great philosophers have argued for this? Most people usually include a constraint that it shouldn't violate a person's right to freedom and dignity, which are ideas much older than our current notions of capitalism.

[Carinthium]

The abolition of slavery was a good idea- what wasn't was the numerous breaches of the Constitution, the shutdown of freedom of contact, freedom of speech, etc, taking the native American's land, etc.

Governments could exist, but within limits. There are still some tricky ethical questions about them I'm figuring out.

Could you clarify what you mean when you claim a person's actions can violate their own freedom? I've never actually heard that posistion before.

[DarkArk]

The abolition of slavery was a good idea

Your first post makes an argument directly opposite this idea.

person's actions can violate their own freedom

No not their freedom, the freedom of others. One should not be allowed to act contrary to the human rights of others. Trying to hide this behind legalese is not a valid reason.

freedom of contact

Seriously, stop dodging the question. What is your intellectual basis for the existence of "freedom of contract?" It is not a right that is enumerated within the Constitution to my knowledge, so why do you think it exists?

[Carinthium]

Most slaves were not voluntary, so although a total abolition of slavery is still a wrong it is a good thing from a moderated-deontological perspective. If I were around when it happened, I would not feel obliged to prevent it and could help it happen as it would be better than the alternative.

To summarise a posistion I have given before:

-In an ideal world, people would be totally free, except that they could not harm others. However, this world is impossible.

-The ONLY compromise I am willing to grit my teeth and accept (for reasons that take a lot of detail to explain) is a world in which at the very least government is by Laws, not People. This means that the Law is completely predictable- everybody knows where they stand in relation to it for any given action, and the Government always acts as the Law dictates.

-In cases such as the controversial Prime Minister A case, the people are already not free unless Maristan is far more of a utopia than I thought. So Law comes to prominence.

[Channel72]

I'm pretty surprised anyone actually believes this.

The core problem is this philosophy erroneously assigns a direct correlation between "value created" and personal wealth. But that is clearly not always the case, and indeed, not even mostly the case. An obvious example would be a comparison between the value created versus the personal wealth of, say, Alan Turing, Linus Torvalds, and Bill Gates. By literally inventing the concept of computation, Alan Turing created immense value for society. Many subsequent scientists and engineers, such as Dijstrka and Nagle, created a theoretical basis behind much of the software we take for granted today. Linus Torvalds created a free operating system which today powers just about every cell phone and super-computer. And yet, of all these great men, Bill Gates has accumulated orders of magnitude more wealth. His immense wealth is not correlated with the value he created, but rather with his business savvy, his ability to manipulate markets, and pure luck.

In this article's fantasy world, Alan Turing should have been a trillionaire, Torvalds a billionaire, and Bill Gates perhaps a nice 6 figure income. (And this disregarding the fact that all of these men's achievements, great as they were, were only possible due to millennia of progress which came before them, along with a societal infrastructure which made their education possible...)

[Carinthium]

You all seem to have the assumption there is a just distribution of wealth society should try to approximate? But what if there isn't? What if ANY distribution is just so long as every transaction therein is fair?

If somebody made claims against the way things are in the United States because they claimed the Native Americans should get their land back, I would see a strong case. If they make claims against the wealth of billionaires on the idea of a just distribution, they have a problem.

[Simon_Jester]

Question: is "fairness" subject to linear superposition? Or are there nonlinear effects?

In other words, is the sum of a series of "fair" transactions itself necessarily fair? Because I can think of a lot of local optimization problems where appearing to do the right thing at each individual step does not lead to the right outcome.

[Carinthium]

The sum of all fair transactions, I would argue, is necessarily fair. If you have exceptions, I would like to hear them.

[K. A. Pital]

-In an ideal world, people would be totally free, except that they could not harm others. However, this world is impossible.

Why? Even if it is impossible, we can move towards it. Reaching a less than ideal state is also acceptable.

-The ONLY compromise I am willing to grit my teeth and accept (for reasons that take a lot of detail to explain) is a world in which at the very least government is by Laws, not People. This means that the Law is completely predictable- everybody knows where they stand in relation to it for any given action, and the Government always acts as the Law dictates.

This is very much achievable when laws are simple, the government transparent and all schoolkids take a mandatory law class.

The sum of all fair transactions, I would argue, is necessarily fair. If you have exceptions, I would like to hear them.

The tyranny of small decisions indicates that this is untrue.

[Carinthium]

If (and I disagree with this), a series of decisions add up to unfairness, the best way to describe this state of affairs is that every individual decision is very slightly Unfair and they add up. The metaphor would be sums of, say, 0.1 adding up to 1 level of unfairness which is when we start to notice.

A non-ideal state means a deontological wrong has been committed. A world of laws is an exception, for reasons I can go into if you really want to know.

Your claim is not true- simplicity is the wrong direction. Simple laws means there will always be ambiguities in the law, one way or another. As long as there is a single ambiguity in the law, wherever it is(you're the one who says laws should be interpreted by intention, so I assume you apply this to statements to), the world I was describing does not exist.

Why? Because cases will eventually come up and the ambiguity will have to be resolved. Whichever way it was resolved, those people who thought it would be resolved the other way and who acted accordingly affected even slightly by the case have been offended against and can rightly cry injustice. Even those unaffected can fear this would happen to them and thus have a case for complaint.

In addition, it also requires people to, at the minimum, be able to know what is and is not Constitutional so that every citizen in the land knows exactly what the government can and cannot make as law. This is impossible under an intentionalist system and impossible under a common law system of constitutional interpretation (or if common law exists at all)- it is ONLY possible under a literalist interpretation.

[K. A. Pital]

If (and I disagree with this), a series of decisions add up to unfairness, the best way to describe this state of affairs is that every individual decision is very slightly Unfair and they add up. The metaphor would be sums of, say, 0.1 adding up to 1 level of unfairness which is when we start to notice.

The problem is not merely the unfairness. Tyranny of small decisions also implies irreversibility. Every slight wrong takes you closer to a point when correction and pursuit of a different outcome is no longer possible, since changes have become irreversible. Ecological damage of the commons, automobilization, slum and suburban sprawl, standard locks and extreme-sized market bubbles can serve as good examples.

Your claim is not true- simplicity is the wrong direction. Simple laws means there will always be ambiguities in the law, one way or another. As long as there is a single ambiguity in the law, wherever it is(you're the one who says laws should be interpreted by intention, so I assume you apply this to statements to), the world I was describing does not exist.

Unambiguity can be achieved with simplicity; they are not mutually exclusive. When the law is simple and yet unambigious we call it good practice of lawmaking, a gold standard.

[Carinthium]

At the moment I am arguing about moral fairness, NOT empirical results. Therefore I'm going to ignore that part.

There are limits to what can be achieved through lawmaking, no matter how effective, in making law both unambigious let alone simple and unambigious. The very complexity of law exists because of said difficulties. Unless you're some genius draftsman, you simply can't get it done.

[K. A. Pital]

At the moment I am arguing about moral fairness, NOT empirical results. Therefore I'm going to ignore that part.

Why? A severely morally unfair outcome, which also cannot be reversed, seems to be exactly the thing people would not want to happen.

Unless you're some genius draftsman, you simply can't get it done.

Incremental improvements and goal-oriented simplification/clarification programs tend to achieve a good result.

[Simon_Jester]

The sum of all fair transactions, I would argue, is necessarily fair. If you have exceptions, I would like to hear them.

You have not understood.

My point is that you cannot say "the sum of all actions which have quality X must itself have quality X."


For example, when I take one step forward on my own floor I am moving in a roughly straight line. If I continue to take steps, however, my path curves right around the planet and bends into a circle.

Each step is locally straight, but the sum of all steps is not straight at all, because the underlying surface isn't flat.


As another example, suppose I reason "if I always travel uphill, I will reach the highest place there is, because I am always climbing and never descending." A child might think this correct- but if you start doing that in a randomly chosen spot on Earth, odds are you will not wind up standing on top of a tall mountain. Do it in a mud flat and you just end up on a slightly bigger pile of mud, for instance.

Each step has the quality of locally increasing your altitude. But the sum of all steps does not have the quality of optimizing your altitude. Your final state cannot be said to be "high up" relative to other possibilities, other places you might have gone.


These, then, are counterexamples to the claim "if my actions have quality X at each state, then the final state will automatically have quality X."

Clearly, there are qualities X such that you can locally follow X at each step, and still wind up with a non-X result.

So my question to you is, how do you intend to prove that this is not the case for "fairness?" How do you prove that locally fair, or superficially fair, decisions will ultimately lead to a fair final result?

At the moment I am arguing about moral fairness, NOT empirical results. Therefore I'm going to ignore that part.

Therefore your argument becomes meaningless, because it has no contact with reality.

There are limits to what can be achieved through lawmaking, no matter how effective, in making law both unambigious let alone simple and unambigious. The very complexity of law exists because of said difficulties. Unless you're some genius draftsman, you simply can't get it done.

If you make law exceedingly complex, it will never be unambiguous, because it will be too complex for human beings to understand and obey.