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And the only way to truly get money out of politics is to eliminate what draws the money. The power to initiate force upon the individual by government aggression. If government did not have the power to impose its will upon others with initiations of force upon the individual, there would be nothing to buy as the government couldn't use aggression upon any individual.
The only reason people lobby, or for that matter vote, in this nation, is so that they can get government goons to impose their will upon another. Remove that power, nothing to gain by influencing it, so no wastes money if they are not going to get to coerce others to serve their interests. Nothing to corrupt or be abused will be available to anyone, whether by bribe or anonymous ballot.
Government as we have it is just a weapon that ordinary people use to impose their will upon their neighbor. Like hiring thugs to do their dirty work for them. In the end, the voters and the lobbyists are all thugs and tyrants to those who are not in power.
Redistribution of wealth is proven to bring prosperity. Notably countries with more wealth distribution see greater upwards economic social mobility.
Why would a society with wealth redistribution have any mobility at all? Once you have made the rich poor and the poor less poor, there is nowhere to go. Nobody has any incentives to work if you're just gonna steal their money.
No matter what way you slice it, it seems as if the most ruthless, most greedy, most narcissistic people end up as the elite that ends up in power. Is there anything that can be done to eliminate, or at the very least, largely mitigate it? One idea I have is elimination of private property and limit on excess of personal property, and as capitalism needs culturalization to exists, so does communism, also horizontal democracy, more democracy in general where the people decides not a political elite distant from the people.
Capitalism is a system that doesn't simply harness but magnifies greed due to its structural requirements - the necessary eternal expansion of markets for the sake of unending capital accumulation held in the hands of those who own the means of production. If we want to ameliorate corrupting influences, it makes more sense to embrace a democratic socio-politico-economic system in which power is more widely distributed. This is socialism.
Many of the things we ascribe to "human nature" stem from material conditions, not from some intrinsic drive. We know that scarcity plays a role in fostering greed in humans. We know that because of our understanding of how many hunter-gatherer societies work, as well as early agricultural societies like the Cucuteni-Trypillian culture. When needs are met, there is little inherent need for status and wealth accumulation. When things are scarce and need to be exchanged or claimed, hierarchies develop. Societies are based on mankind's attempts at harnessing production. Change the mode of production and you begin to change how society operates.
possible solution?
ZERO lobbyists...ZERO private funding of elections
give the two (or more) candidates the EXACT SAME AMOUNT of public funding.....lets see who manages their funds better...lets see who is actually the better candidate
the fact is that until you eliminate all private funding, and all lobbyists (this includes unions) you will never see a fair fight
You are missing the point. A greater wealth distribution than we presently have would create more mobility. You would still have rich people, they would just get a bit less than they do now so that everyone else could get a bit more. An example is a CEO of a 10,000 employee firm who limits employee raises to 2-1/2% while getting a $60,000,000 end of year bonus, in a addition to a multi million dollar salary. That bonus could have been shared with the employees to the tune of $6,000 each. That would create an actual trickle down economy, instead of just widening the wealth gap. No society has ever totally distributed wealth. But some spread the wealth better than others which actually serves rich and poor alike.
Quote:
Originally Posted by phantompilot
Why would a society with wealth redistribution have any mobility at all? Once you have made the rich poor and the poor less poor, there is nowhere to go. Nobody has any incentives to work if you're just gonna steal their money.
You are missing the point. A greater wealth distribution than we presently have would create more mobility. You would still have rich people, they would just get a bit less than they do now so that everyone else could get a bit more. An example is a CEO of a 10,000 employee firm who limits employee raises to 2-1/2% while getting a $60,000,000 bonus, in a addition to a multi million dollar salary. That bonus could have been shared with the employees to the tune of $6,000 each. That would create an actual trickle down economy, instead of just widening the wealth gap. No society has ever totally distributed wealth. But some spread the wealth better than others which actually serves rich and poor alike.
6K isn't going to change anyone's life.
Redistribution never works. You could steal every last dollar from every billionaire in the world (most of whom are not Americans, by the way), redistribute it to everyone, and it wouldn't be enough to buy a one-way ticket to the US so they could mooch off us.
Making rich people poor doesn't change the situation of poor people. It can't. And by the way, why would someone kill themselves at a grueling stressful job without the upside represented by that bonus? You really think you're going to get the same efforts from people even when you take away their incentives? Do you have any experience in business? Or with other people? Have you MET people?
Poor people are poor not because of cash flow, but because they lack human capital. You can give them little handouts stolen from other people, but its not going to change the fact they have a deficit of what other people value.
Redistribution of wealth is proven to bring prosperity. Notably countries with more wealth distribution see greater upwards economic social mobility.
Give us just one example of this in which either individual rights were not trampled, or stagnation did not set in.
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