Aswad
Posts: 9374
Joined: 4/4/2007 Status: offline
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Yeah, the trick is to remember to nuance it a bit. Around these parts, there's no room for not participating. That gets invasive and becomes a gilded cage in no time. In the USA, the participation is also invasive in some areas, but far fewer, and the sad part is that the non-invasive areas and the ones where the gain is very high are the least likely to be participated in. There has to be some middle ground here, and emphasis on getting as much out of any invasive or costly measure as possible. For me, the logical thing is to intervene in two areas: those that can only exist due to social cooperation, and those that derive added value from social cooperation. The latter to an extent porportional to the added value. For instance, taxing transport of goods on public roads is fair enough, because the companies doing it are only able to do so because of the shared input that puts a road in place. Property tax, on the other hand, is not acceptable because it implies that ownership itself is collective, which it is not (at least not in any place that seeks to have mental and cultural health). Taxing the wealthiest comes down to the fact that their wealth derives from collective effort. Without "us", they are nothing. Even the money they have is nothing more than our pledge to produce in the future, a form of indenture. Every modern country uses a production based, inflationary economy, meaning one that borrows against future labor. That makes it absolutely absurd to state that the indentured aren't allowed to have a major say in how this system is administered. At least unless we actually legalize the use of slavery and indentured servitude again. Democratic regulation of corporations is the major distinction between the modern system of capitalism and the old feudal system of serfdom. That the working classes in the USA are so dead set on acquiring and maintaining serf status for themselves never ceases to amaze me. IWYW, — Aswad.
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"If God saw what any of us did that night, he didn't seem to mind. From then on I knew: God doesn't make the world this way. We do." -- Rorschack, Watchmen.
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