[extropy-chat] Inheritance

[Robert Lindauer]

The Avantguardian wrote:

>--- Samantha Atkins <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Uh huh.  And your proposal re inheritance meets this
>>criteria?  No?   
>>Then why should yours be enforced above people's
>>free choice?
>>    
>>
>
>
>Well excuse me for caring that I see a disparity in
>the system and want to correct it. 
>

The primary question is which -aspect- of the system is responsible for 
the disparity.

A statistresponse says "tax the rich people so they have to give back to 
the society that which they were able to get as a result of it" therebye 
transfering power supposedly from the rich to the government.  This, 
however, only works if the rich don't control the government too.

This leads to bigger governments, more enforcement, more beurocracy, 
more, more, more.  AND, it never actually -works- to get rid of the 
disparity between rich and poor.  England is a prime example where for 
years the socialists ruled England and during which time they taxed and 
spent doing some great things (for instance, the recently bombed 
underground).  On the other hand, the disparity of power between the 
rich and poor in England was never even slightly modified, however, 
because the government fundamentally remains controlled by the House of 
Lords who represent explicitly the old money of the country (despite the 
fact that some of them call themselves "liberals" or "labor").

An anti-statist response looks at the underlying conditions of the 
creation and perpetuation of such disparities and seeks to releive the 
problem by removing the causes.  In this case, the means for supporting 
generational wealth and the ability to support it, e.g. the ability of 
people to leverage past alienations of property against current 
generations.  In particular, without the ability to enforce property or 
monetary rules on the populace by force, any inheritance is meaningless 
except inasmuch as it is mutually supported by the society (e.g. the 
other people living at the time) and the individual with the property in 
question.  Sounds scary to most people, but it's not as bad as you 
think.  This would essentially make it impossible for any single person 
to be very much wealthier than anyone else and thereby encourage 
cooperation in an unheardof way.   And not because necessarily someone 
might not be able to acquire a lot of goods, but rather because they 
could only defend those goods to the extent they could gain a consensus 
from fellow free people to defend them.  Such cooperation between 
enlightened individuals might lead to advances in humanity unthinkable 
to the democratic/statist mind.

Best,

Robbie Lindauer