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What if our fundamentals are exactly backwards?
New to The Motte, looking for constructive, critical discussion.
Here's an example of what I mean by a "fundamental":
Every economic system that has seemed credible to most people since the dawn of civilization has revolved around the legal establishment and safeguarding of property through the concept of ownership.
But what is ownership? I have my own ideas, but I asked ChatGPT and was surprised that it pretty much hit the nail on the head: the definitional characteristic of ownership is the legal right to deprive others.
This has been such a consistently universal view that very few people question it. Even fewer have thought through a cogent alternative. Most people go slack-jawed at the suggestion that an alternative is possible.
Here's something from years back, before I'd zeroed in on the perverse nature of ownership:
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
/images/17459352527399495.webp
An alternative is unlikely unless we solve scarcity emotions using technology and/or massive shock-driven consciousness changes like in Star Trek (hyper-advanced tech and WW3). Basic mammal nature in the presence of scarcity is to priviledge oneself, one's family, and one's friends over others. This usually only fails to hold true in the presence of extremely powerful emotional ideological or political forces like nationalism (where one emotionally feels like the entire nation is one's family) or political authoritarianism (where you are forced to fight for the government because they will hurt you and maybe your loved ones if you don't). And those have their own negative consequences.
Communism could work if we were all near-constantly on an MDMA trip type of immediate feelings of love, but I'm not sure that the average human is even physically capable of being like that without some of the hardware burning out. Some spiritual teachers have claimed that they have gotten there without drugs, but whether or not they are telling the truth, the fact is that clearly even if they did reach it, they have consistently failed to teach that state to anything more than a tiny fraction of the human population. Although I will say that, even by trying, they have probably helped humanity. Modern Western morality is much better than the morality of 2000 years ago, which was basically "tough shit if you're poor or crucified, I guess the gods don't like you lol".
All that said, I do find it funny that most modern proponents of meritocracy do not challenge what is probably the biggest modern source of un-meritocracy in the West, which is inheritance. Even the most wild-eyed free market libertarian who advocates for pure meritocracy typically does not call for all humans to be put on a truly level playing field, which could only be done by forbidding parents to pass on their wealth to their children. And the truth is that, whatever you think about passing on wealth to children, all meritocratic ideologies that accept inheritance are at best just nipping around the edges, and not addressing the biggest un-meritocratic phenomenon in the whole human world.
I do agree, in theory, that inheritance tax should be 100% - a dead man’s belongings is a far more legitimate source of funding for the state than a man’s salary. My dad’s money is not really my money, while my salary, or my stock gains, are. But I worry about the distortion – of course most people would then spend wildly and die with nothing, and nothing would be gained.
OP, you know, we have places for people like you. Communes. Go there and share, show up all the psycho squares. Jokes aside, I really think you should, it’s the nicest, most cooperative, failsafe, beneficial way to determine who’s right. Can’t break anything (except dreams) and it’s a fun adventure.
Money is just a way to affect the world. Taxation is fractional slavery--the government is confiscating some of our power and using it to serve its own ends.
No, your dad's money is not really yours--it's his, and he's choosing to give it to you. He's decided to exercise his power that way rather than some other, shorter-term way. Why should the government have any more right to confiscate money intended for this purpose than money intended for any other purpose?
Because he’s dead, for one. A man’s right to dispose of his money as he pleases considerably diminishes with his passing. I don't consider a corpse an equal citizen.
Then, it’s more of a value thing, but I think a man should pay his own way. Not rely on handouts, be they from the state or his family. I think this is good, results in a more productive & happy society. I’m more of a minarchist than a social democrat, however even I find inherited wealth inequality unfair. Heirs give wealth a bad name. The populace would be less supportive of high taxes if that contingent was reduced to zero.
Well, it wasn't a corpse that wrote the will. The reason we generally honor contracts, wills, and arrangements even after the passing of the one who made them, is because when they were alive they had the right to make those decisions about the future. It's not that that right remains when they pass--it's that at the moment they made the decision/signed the contract, they had the right, and that moment is what matters.
If, for example, I sign a contract to rent out movie rights to a book I wrote, and then became brain-damaged and incapable of signing future contracts, you can't retroactively go back and order my rent contract be voided because I'm now incapable of consenting to the contract. Even if I now lack that right, what matters is whether I had it when I signed the contract.
Wills do not honor the rights of dead people--they honor the rights of living people to make contracts which remain in force when they die.
The alternative would be really weird. Say that rather than giving the money to you, he gives it to an architect with plans to carve his face into a mountain somewhere. When he dies, can that architect simply run off with the money, since the contract is no longer in force? Do contracts generally become null and void when someone dies, or only if they involve money going to people's descendants?
Yes, generally, they should be voided. Dead people should not (and in practical terms, do not, because they're inanimate) have the power to coerce the living. Your mortgage payments are usually voided with your death. Your IP rights should also be voided.
Again, it's not that dead people have power to coerce the living. It's that living people have the power to coerce each other in the future, including in futures where they're dead.
When I take out a loan, I'm getting money in exchange for signing a contract obligating me to pay it back over time. If I die, the contract should remain in force, or it prevents the contract from being made in the first place, and deprives me of my current right to sign such contracts.
IDK what you're talking about here. It's not like the mortgage goes away. The bank gets its money back, often when the home is sold. If mortgage payments were actually voided, banks would never give old people mortgages in the first place.
Semantics. I don't believe you should have such 'current rights', because they are future 'dead people's rights'.
I find it ludicrous that some dead people control giant foundations for decades when they are incapable of enforcing their will or even reacting to things. It's like worshipping a statue. Fake veal or whatever the christians call it.
They get insurance that pays off if the borrower dies.
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