Comment by elfexec | Hacker News Reader

Comment by elfexec | Hacker News Reader

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> This ignores the fundamental insight of economics that people can cooperate motivated entirely by self interest.

How is that a fundamental insight of economics. It's the insight of the smallest group all the way to cities and civilization. Self interest, by definition, motivates cooperation.

> From this traditional perspective the "common good" is a result of insufficient property rights: if everything is owned by something, then by everyone looking after their private good, everything will be looked after (because all "common good" is somebody's "private good").

What you are describing isn't "insufficient property rights", you are describing "insufficient property".

> It also ignores that redistribution results in less "private good" (GDP) for everyone, because by definition it's taking wealth from people who on average have demonstrated more ability to grow wealth and giving it to people who have demonstrated less ability to grow wealth.

Wealth is always "stolen". Behind every great wealth is a great crime. Wealth is generate by theft of assets ( land, oil, resources ) or theft of labor. Bill Gates didn't generate his wealth. His workers generated the wealth, he and the shareholders just siphoned the largest part of it. Look at the fundamental wealth of the US - the land and resources that provides unimaginable amount of wealth. All stolen from the natives.

Wealth = clever robbing the less clever with the protection of the law which they created. And it isn't necessarily a bad thing.

> If they both start with the same endowment

What an ideal world you must live in.

> More practical example: imagine if after Paypal, Elon Musk's entire wealth had been redistributed to all Americans.

Who is even advocating for taking all of anyone's wealth?

> and the world has no Tesla or SpaceX.

Why not? Using your argument, PayPal couldn't exist since Musk didn't have that PayPal money to fund his business.

You have an agenda and you are using obvious extremes and lies to push your agenda. The other side does the same. Instead of being driven by agenda, try to think objectively. Look at the problem from afar.

Extremes in either direction is bad for the individual and society.

>Wealth is always "stolen". Behind every great wealth is a great crime. Wealth is generate by theft of assets ( land, oil, resources ) or theft of labor.

You're making misleading use of language so it's hard to believe you're arguing sincerely. Offering someone compensation for doing something for you is not what most people would consider "theft". You can't just take a word meaning one thing, change its meaning, then assume all the judgements about the old meaning also apply to the new meaning.

> You're making misleading use of language so it's hard to believe you're arguing sincerely.

Misleading? I thought I was being straightforward and honest, hence "stolen".

> Offering someone compensation for doing something for you is not what most people would consider "theft".

It all depends on perspective. Hence "stolen". If you were "compensating" someone "$0.10" for something worth "$1000", a lot of people would consider it "theft".

> You can't just take a word meaning one thing, change its meaning, then assume all the judgements about the old meaning also apply to the new meaning.

But that's not what I did. The reason why I wrote "stolen" is that this is complex issue that isn't black or white. The only people who think so are agenda driven opportunists. Slaves were compensated with housing and food, I'd consider it "theft".

As I said, you have an agenda and your agenda drives you thinking. Not rationality. That's the problem. As I recommended before: "Look at the problem from afar."

> Wealth is always "stolen". Behind every great wealth is a great crime.

> You have an agenda and you are using obvious extremes and lies to push your agenda. The other side does the same. Instead of being driven by agenda, try to think objectively. Look at the problem from afar.

Pick one.

>Wealth is always "stolen". Behind every great wealth is a great crime.

No, my last boss started with absolutely nothing after escaping the genocides in Cambodia with his family and built his company and wealth through work.

>Bill Gates didn't generate his wealth. His workers generated the wealth, he and the shareholders just siphoned the largest part of it.

I struggle back and forth with my views on this. You're not wrong, but it ignores the fact that without the capital provided by the company, there'd be no workers to generate wealth. As sad as it is, a group of independent workers isn't going to generate as much wealth as an organized company.

I though about this a lot as I worked. In a couple hours of work, I would bring in anywhere from $10,000-$20,000 for the company. My wage was far lower. But in the end, it would be impossible for me to do this without the couple million dollars worth of machines and computers I used. I could run my own shop, but I'd need customers, I would be doing a significantly lower volume of jobs and would be probably lucky to bring that much in after a few months. My expenses would be lower, I'd have to do everything by hand, but my ability generate wealth would be almost non-existent for years and years.

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