Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rayiner | Hacker News Reader

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> While the EU or other institutions may be "right" in their aspirations, the fact of the matter is that the status quo simply isn't working for a large number of people.

Recent events are also a referendum on what "right" means.

Even if unrestricted free trade is wealth-maximizing, such policies are not necessarily the "right ones" in a democracy. A simple analysis of the situation suggests that in fact democratic policies should generally maximize the wealth of the majority of voters, even if those same policies fail to maximize national wealth.

One of the reasons for the frustration with the intellectual elite is their failure to realize that arguments in favor of the economic efficiency of free trade really miss the point.

If you think a nation's wealth is maximized under certain conditions, isn't the majority better off taxing that maximized wealth than pursuing a different policy?

Not necessarily. That wealth may accrue to people and in ways that are not easily taxable.

I feel like this reasoning trivializes the redistribution of wealth. Sure, taxing "maximum wealth" and redistributing it fairly sounds like a great idea. In actuality, it's obnoxiously difficult to take something away from someone who already has it (see: salaries, housing prices being sticky downwards).

It trivializes the initiation of force.

That is hard, but its quite a bit harder to do what you suggest. Blocking trade in favor of "the population" leads to uncompetitive buissness that produce products that people dont want to buy. The evetybody biys that stuff on the black market, you end up with unproductive buissnesses that need state support.

Then when you final cut the throat of the dead animal you will get huge political problems on your hands. See for example coal-mines in england. Tracher had almost fight a civil war to get ride of that leech to society.

No, because concentrated wealth increases corruption and reduces democracy, and hence prevents efficient collection of taxes (cf. US and EU these days, the poor pay taxes, the rich evade them).

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