[ExI] Belief in Market Efficiency

[Stathis Papaioannou]

2009/1/31 samantha <sjatkins at mac.com>:

> Try employing any of those people, or let them do much of anything without
> any working capital.  If you can, then the "capitalist" would be out of a
> job with no revolution needed, right?  If you cannot, then something is
> wrong with the theory.\

The question is, where does the legitimacy of the capitalist's
ownership of potentially productive resources come from? Note that the
moral question is separate from the practical question: to show that
it is useful to allow some people to acquire large fortunes is not
necessarily the same as saying that it is fair.

>> 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?

We have here a moral principle which you either accept or reject, and
further argument is futile.



-- 
Stathis Papaioannou