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

The Avantguardian avantguardian2020 at yahoo.com
Thu Jul 28 22:25:39 UTC 2005



--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> > 3. Place a cap on inheritence of capital by any
> one
> > descendent of one home and $1 million in assests,
> > liquid or otherwise. If someone can't make it with
> a
> > head start like that, they're a feeb and need to
> get
> > weeded out.  
> 
> A problem with that is the inheritance of family
> businesses. The three
> generation rule already weeds out the feebs quite
> well in this, and,
> for instance, many family farms today are worth far
> more than a
> million. A buck ain't worth what it used to be. It
> won't even buy you a
> McDonald's franchise, which even a feeb can make a
> living with.

     That's my point. The three generation rule is
precisely the problem. It points to the inefficency of
the system as it stands. My system corrects for that.
The million dollars was an arbritrary figure of
convenience. Obviously for the system to work, that
figure would have to be adjusted to accomodate
inflation and the CPI.
 
     Moreover a family farm would qualify as a home,
and the heir would get to have a million dollars more
on top of it. Plus if a wealthy man has enough heirs,
then his estate wouldn't have to pay any estate taxes
at all. As far as family businesses, siblings could
each own up to a million dollars worth of it.
 
     My point is that the three generation rule sucks.
Giving a billion dollars to a feeb can do more harm to
the world than good even as he foolishly squanders it
on drugs and such. The ancient romans had a saying
about kings which is just as telling about captains of
industry: "A king is often a great man of virtue, his
son often an imbecile or a murderer, and his grandson
probably both.

     For you to excuse the excesses of wealthy heirs
would be like some citizen of the Roman empire on the
verge of collapse saying, "Oh it's ok if Commodus is
the emperor even though he's a murderous moron, his
father Marcus Aurelius was a fine man, and the worst
that could happen is that the Praetorian Guard will
kill him." Yes... but not until Commodus had destroyed
any hope of saving the Empire.
     

The Avantguardian 
is 
Stuart LaForge
alt email: stuart"AT"ucla.edu

"The surest sign of intelligent life in the universe is that they haven't attempted to contact us." 
-Bill Watterson

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