[extropy-chat] Why I am No Longer a Libertarian Either...

Mike Lorrey mlorrey at yahoo.com
Tue Jul 26 03:16:23 UTC 2005


--- The Avantguardian <avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
> > It's less a question of rich v poor than of the
> > distribution of wealth 
> > through a society.
> > Japan is not a worse place to live than the US, and
> > its wealth is spread 
> > far more evenly across the people.
> 
> Yes, the distribution of wealth in the U.S. has gotten
> out of hand. I think that it started during the 1980's
> when "mergers and aquisitions" came into vogue as way
> for corporations to avoid paying their taxes. I don't
> know how to change it though. You could change the
> laws and come up with a new system, but then the
> greedy and ruthless would just come up with a way to
> rape the new system as well. Just like what happened
> in the U.S.S.R.

It is interesting that you say this, because I wonder how it is that
the stockholders would elect a board of directors who would pay a
chairman or CEO more than they were worth, rather than putting that
money into dividends, R&D, etc.

> 
> > The notion that the rich make the rules and that the
> > rules should exist to screw the last penny out of the poor to line
> > their own pockets is not a system worthy of praise.
> 
> Where is there where the rich don't make the rules? I
> don't believe any laws are explicitly for the purpose
> of screwing the poor. 

Government is clearly a system for screwing the poor. The Kelo
decisions expansion of eminent domain, for instance, is clearly biased
in favor of reducing the costs to rich developers at the expense of
poor and middle class homeowners. Taking a persons home (which is
typically the only if not the largest single investment most people
have in their lives) for its assessed value rather than its market
value is a scam, pure and simple, to tax the poor and middle class. The
difference between assessed and market values is a scam produced so
that governments can take your property for less than it is worth, and
now that Kelo has been decided, those governments can give it to anyone
who promises more taxes or jobs to the government that takes it and
gives it to the promiser. Eminent domain was bad enough before Kelo,
now it's one step away for reinstituting feudalism.

> Take away every politician,
> judge, lawyer, and policeman and I think that the
> unregulated free market would STILL try to take the
> poor's last penny. 

Nope. Government protects the rich and powerful against the market. The
rich are free in a free market to TRY to take the poor's last penny,
but without government, they have no way to enforce such a goal, any
more than the masses can take what the rich already have.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
                                      -William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com

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