[ExI] Belief in Market Efficiency

[Kevin H]

On 1/31/09, samantha <sjatkins at mac.com> wrote:
>
> The communist
>> would therefore agree with you that a person should keep the fruits of
>> his labour. An exception might be made on compassionate grounds for
>> transferring some wealth to those who are poor and unable to work, but
>> certainly not for transferring wealth from the workers to the rich and
>> powerful.
>>
>>
> Either I keep what is my own to dispose of it as I wish or I do not. Why is
> it up to someone else what part of my wealthy goes to those some may judge
> to be poor and needy?  So the only sin is for your work to be voluntarily
> judge to be of more value by those who wish to acquire it than the work of
> your neighbor?


I propose to you what I would call a deep wealth theory, and I'll contrast
it with your statement here, which I will describe as a shallow wealth
theory.  The shallow wealth theory, I offer, is the idea that the wealth
springs no further than from the individual him or herself.  The individual
builds a car or whatever else, and therefore the value of that car comes
from that individual alone.

The deep wealth theory differs in that the value of the car doesn't come
from that individual, but it's value is only the peak of an ice berg, so to
speak; that is, the product of thousands of years of development.  The
automobile, obviously, is a piece of technology, and technology, foremost,
is knowledge.  So in order to determine the real value of that car, we'd
have to go far back into the indefinite past.  We have the development of
mathematics to thank, as well as logic, science; additionally, we must thank
the industrial revolution, and the development of engineering.  We must
thank the steam engine, and the science of thermodynamics that emerged as a
result.  And on and on, of course.  The idea is that a product like an
automobile isn't just a "thing" produced by knowing hands, but the
embodiment of a great deal of development, of which we and *our hands* are
just the surface of.

So, when you make a statement like "my wealth", I just get this funny
feeling.  It's not just your choice of words, but everything behind them.
But this idea of deep wealth, just a term that I've not been able to
describe fully before, is what prevents me from taking these principles of
libertarianism serious.  That and it's ideology.

*Kevin*
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