|
Eschat0n posted:"I am able to amass more work." That sounds odd - how do you amass a verb? Work is a noun. The sense of work as a verb is secondary to its use as a noun, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary. https://www.etymonline.com/word/work The Online Etymology Dictionary posted:a secondary verb formed relatively late from Proto-Germanic noun *werkan I point this out because if someone is going to be pedantic and wrong about something as simple as a word's usage in ordinary speech, attempts to recreate vast social and economic systems using spherical-cow logic is probably not going to make much sense. The phrasing of the question is simplistic to the point of being silly. If someone was stuck on a desert island, and was constructing tools for themselves... when has this happened? Why is this a good starting point? Have you ever been on a desert island? Have you ever tried to build a tool by yourself? How is this reverse-engineering of the fact that everything we make, build, or use the result of complex social systems supposed to explain anything? It is somewhere between naive and disingenuous to try to look at the situation of someone like Bill Gates, who accumulated 100 billion dollars of wealth through leading a company that employs 100,000+ people, and which was dependent on social factors (usage of preexisting technology, much of it developed with public finances), market conditions (the barriers of entry to large business ventures) and the presence of speculative capital based on inherited wealth, and say that really, the best way to explain Bill Gates' 100 billion dollars is that he is just a yeoman farmer whittling spoons on his farm and bringing them to market. Notice I don't think that it is necessarily morally wrong to make this comparison, it just doesn't make sense. It is like trying to explain human biology by explaining us as a collection of cells...theoretically, yes, that is what we are, but it is harder to explain the heart beating by explaining how a billion autonomous cells are directed, than it is to explain the heart as a heart. So what is wealth really, if it isn't the objective measure of how much labor work an independent farmer has put into raising a bag of potatoes?
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2019 17:44
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:53 |
|
|
I have one answer for what wealth is, and it is what wealth is not: Wealth is not money. Okay, that sounds a little weird, so I will explain why I think it is helpful to think of wealth and money as separate things, which might allow us to kind of put things in perspective. Lets go back to Bill Gates, prototypical rich guy. Explaining a little bit about Bill Gates will explain the difference between money and wealth. Bill Gates lives in a 100 million dollar (around 70 million to build, assessed value 120 million), 66,000 square foot mansion. It is by any normal standards, extremely opulent. You can read about it online, but basically it seems like a fantasy to live there, even by the standards of a "normal" rich person. But here is the thing about that house, and even about the two dozen cars the garage can hold, and the 30 million dollar Leonardo DaVinci manuscript inside it: it represents a very small portion of Bill Gates' wealth. Bill Gates networth varies, between 70-100 billion dollars, but a 100 million house represents around 0.1% of that money. Even throwing in all the cars, the technology, the art, the trampoline, the boats, that manuscript, and estimating his wealth on the low end of that spectrum, it comes to...half of a percent. Take a normal man in Bill Gates demographic: white male in his 60s with a college education. Lets estimate their net worth on the high end of the scale, an even one million dollar. If someone with a million dollar had a house that represented half a percent of their wealth, they would have a house worth... $5,000 dollars. That would be, of course, improbable. So here is the thing, from the perspective of most of us, thinking about next month's rent and where buying a new phone is a splurge, Bill Gates has a lot of money. And he does. But Bill Gates has much less money than he has wealth. Bill Gates has 200 times as much money as LeBron James, but probably has about the same lifestyle. Past about a billion dollars (which is still an incredibly large amount of money), there is not a lot to buy. That is how much money someone has. You can have fancy homes, collect rare art work, have a private jet, vacation constantly, but you still can't spend more than that money. So what is Bill Gates wealth? I can't find good sources on it, but of Bill Gates' 100 billion dollars, probably 90-95 billion dollars of it is stocks, bonds, and financial instruments. All of his "personal" wealth is 5 billion in his house, checking accounts, art, vehicles etc. So what can Bill Gates do with that 95 billion dollars of stocks and bonds? He can sell them, but only slowly. You can't just say "I am selling 50 billion dollars worth of stocks" because there is not going to be a liquid buyer. And also, if you try to sell 50 billion dollars worth of stocks, the value of those stocks is going to be a lot less than 50 billion once it hits the market. Gates can only sell...maybe 5-10% of his portfolio at one time. And when he does, what can he do with that money? Presumably, he could buy more real estate, but there is no way he could personally use it. And as he buys more, the prices are going to inflate pretty quickly, if he decides to go and buy his neighbors property. The same thing with collecting art: the value of art is going to rise to meet the available money in the market for it. The only real thing he can do is buy...more stocks or bonds. That represent an abstract ownership of the economy, but that has nothing to do any type of real possible consumption. So that is what my answer is about "Wealth". "Wealth" is not money. "Wealth" is an abstract ownership of the economy, that seems to have an increasingly tenuous connection to possible economic production or consumption. "Wealth" was created out of money by complicated and long-rooted financial and social systems, and can not be explained through the Smithian "return on the opportunity cost of foregone consumption". One reason why I think the wealth tax might be good is it might be a slow way to let the air out of this top-heavy and fantastical amount of wealth that can only be used to gather more wealth. glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 18:24 on Feb 2, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Feb 2, 2019 18:20
|
|
|
Eschat0n posted:
This isn't meant to be a rude question, but I am really curious: Are you a native English speaker? A lot of your phrasing seems to be very stilted and artificial. Apart from the phrasing, your argument, such as it is, also seems to be floating in some type of contextless void. I don't really buy that you are a space alien who has landed on the earth and is going to show us, through perfect naive innocence, the rational truth of Libertarianism. Which, while you are being a bit coy about it, seems to be the end point of your Socratic ignorance. I am not buying it, no one else here is buying it, so instead of trying to pretend you are reconstructing all of human history a priori, why don't you tell us a little bit about your own background, your own political and social beliefs, and how they developed? I am not afraid to talk about these things. I was raised by a single mother on food stamps, later on in my life my grandmother became a multimillionaire, and I can explain how both of these things, as well as academic study and experience in the world let me understand the complicated issue of how economics and society work.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 3, 2019 18:07
|
|
|
Eschat0n posted:. Well, your attitude of being curiously naive did seem a bit too much for me. When someone asks questions that show they are trying to "reinvent the wheel" about topics that are covered in a community college Economics 101 or Sociology 101 course, it is kind of natural for me to think that they are not innocently asking questions, but are trying to drive the conversation towards their typical set of beliefs. Normally, one of the rules of SA is to not dox people (try to reveal their identities), but since you linked your blog (https://leadprophet.blogspot.com/) on your user info page, I think it is fair for me to quote at least part of what you have written on there. Maybe it doesn't reflect your current economic and political views, but you seem to have established some viewpoints at some times: quote:America could benefit greatly from a Republican party that stands for the entrepreneur, the individualist, and the sustainable lifestyle. Some party members already have inklings of putting their feet through this door; Romney was really a moderate defeated because of being backed by a rabidly right-wing party that in all probability was the driving cause behind him saying some very unsavory things that voters (like me) just couldn't stomach. I suspect the same was true of McCain, the last time I voted for Obama. Obama is a great president, but it would be great to see a new kind of Republican the next election competing with whoever is tapped to succeed Obama. A Republican prepared to be competitive and radical - only in the sense that they are rethinking what always has made the conservative approach appealing. That Republican could stir up the new majority and do major good for the country and its world. In a future that looks to change our lives so much, so rapidly, we could all benefit from a powerful voice for conservative nation-building philosophy. It might seem unfair for me to quote something you wrote six years ago, but if you already had established views about economics and social policy six years ago, it seems like you already have some ideas you want to explain to us. If you have already decided that standing for the "entrepreneur" and "individualist" are the political goals that a political party should pursue, it is highly disingenuous to pretend that you are still trying to figure out the basics of economics by inventing desert island fables. glowing-fish fucked around with this message at 18:38 on Feb 7, 2019 |
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2019 18:35
|
|
|
Eschat0n posted:Is it within my rights on this forum to ask you to stop posting until you actually want to engage with the topic? You seem to have a serious problem with taking people at their word. You literally quoted me saying "my beliefs are in a state of flux." Six years ago, yes, I had a certain set of ideas - but even more importantly, why does it matter that I had established notions six years ago? I'm not dragging those notions into this conversation - that quote of mine is political in nature, not economical. They are related but separate. Sure, you can ask, and I will even give you the benefit of the doubt. If you think that people on this forum reacted suspiciously, it is because a lot of people who make these types of arguments, the "Just asking questions" and "Market economies are all based on individual choice" and the "People in a state of nature are free to use the world around them, society then arises from their voluntary associations", all of what we describe as naive libertarianism, are usually people from middle class or above backgrounds who don't understand what type of advantages their background gives them. I can't really talk about what "wealth" means without talking about the lives of real people, from different backgrounds, and not theoretical coconut harvesters. So, you want to know about wealth? I can explain it pretty easily. 1. Having a lot of something of value. Imagine you have a garage full of...some small, easily tradeable commodity. You found a bunch of USB battery packs that fell off the back of a truck, and now you have a garage full of them, and you can sell them to make money. You have a wealth of them. Or, for that matter, we can just make it easier. You have a bunch of gold and money. That is wealth. But, the thing about that wealth is, it is going to run out. It is a finite supply. And once you are done with it, you are done. Also, notice this is yet another theoretical situation: people don't end up with a garage full of stuff that fell off the back of a truck often. At least, I don't. 2. Having something that can make something of value. This is where your wealth can get meaningful, because when you have a tool, either in the form of a physical object, or a skill, you can now make money by creating other things of value. Mostly because you have an indefinite amount of production. Instead of having a limited amount of batteries in your garage, you have a machine that recharges batteries. People come from around the neighborhood to recharge their USB battery packs. If we ignore the cost of electricity and the fact your machine will wear out, you can make money forever because you own something that creates more things. Notice this is still a pretty theoretical situation: how many people have wealth in the form of a single tool that they can use by themselves, that requires little or no other inputs? Maybe if you have a knife-sharpening wheel in your garage. 3. Having the political, social, cultural, moral, etc. right to claim the share of someone else's work. And this is what wealth really is, the social agreement that people have an abstract title to something other people produce. Since you mentioned the city you live in, I will talk about the largest employer in that city, Fiat Chrysler. At least a quarter of Fiat Chrysler is owned by one family in Italy, the Agnelli family. The Agnelli family's origins go back, apparently, to the early 1820s, when they were small scale nobility, who apparently started a business, intermarried with more major nobility, played politics, made money, dominated Italian business and society for about two centuries, and now own a big stake of the US auto industry. So rather than going from a bottom-up approach, trying to explain how the actions of isolated actors lead to society, a lot of these things can be explained only through their historical/social context: the Agnelli family, starting 200 years ago, had the "social capital": social standing, education, relationships, to seem, in the eyes of their fellow people, deserving of having a share of production. This has a lot to do with the cultural/social/religious structure of Italy 200 years ago, which I couldn't really describe in detail. That social power changed and evolved as Italy went from a semi-feudal agricultural economy to an industrial economy, those same social tools now owned stocks and bonds and put them as directors of companies, and now they are the owners of the largest piece of capital in Rockford, Illinois, and get to enjoy, for legal and social reasons, that wealth. But there is no way to really explain that from the bottom up, you have to go top-down, looking at the entire social and legal framework of a society to understand why the Agnelli's got to that point.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 7, 2019 20:38
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ May 16, 2024 06:53 |
|
|
Typo posted:"But what are humans" A miserable little pile of secrets. Not to be confused with a pile of coconuts, which is wealth.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2019 00:58
|
|