Topic: Would killing the minimum wage help? - page 7. (Read 10732 times)

Here's the problem with use-based property systems: When does it degrade? you say 'quickly'. How quickly? Overnight? Over the weekend? What if I go on vacation for a month? Or my hunting cabin in the woods that I use every fall? The market already has fairly clear standards for when a property has been abandoned.

The enforcement of any property rights rules, whether Lockean, Ingalls-Tucker, or Georgist, depends on a local consensus on what constitutes a valid ownership claim. And the enforcement of any such set of rules by a local community will be perceived as legitimate self-defense by the adherents of that property rights regime, and as aggression by adherents of rival philosophies.

don't insult our intelligence by saying it is "just as much work" as manual labor

Investing in and running a business is just as much work as digging a ditch with a shovel.

Secondly, One is born into a poor family (through no fault of their own). They have no option to grow/gather food on unimproved land, because there is none left their only option is to sell their labor to those who own land (or other means of production). That is, they are wage slaves. There are many places in the world, where a semi-skilled laborer could work their whole lives and never be able to save enough capital to buy the means of production that they are using, or the land it sits on.

At the end of the day, what all these arguments boil down to is a disagreement about the "stickiness" of property rights. You advocate for a highly-sticky perpetual property system, I am arguing for the least sticky property system whereby use alone gives one property rates that quickly degrade to common ownership(or non-ownership if you prefer) when not being used.

It is even better than that - the reason the ruling class IS the ruling class is because of their accumulation of capital and land. From feudalism to corporate capitalism, the rulers are those that can have wealth without work.

However, in resorting to this simile, one fails to realize the fundamental difference between aristocratic riches and “bourgeois” or capitalistic riches.

The wealth of an aristocrat is not a market phenomenon; it does not originate from supplying the consumers and cannot be withdrawn or even affected by any action on the part of the pub-lic. It stems from conquest or from largess on the part of a con-queror. It may come to an end through revocation on the part of the donor or through violent eviction on the part of another con-queror, or it may be dissipated by extravagance. The feudal lord does not serve consumers and is immune to the displeasure of the populace.
The entrepreneurs and capitalists owe their wealth to the people who patronize their businesses. They lose it inevitably as soon as other men supplant them in serving the consumers better or more cheaply.

It is not the task of this essay to describe the historical con-ditions which brought about the institutions of caste and status, of the subdivision of peoples into hereditary groups with differ-ent ranks, rights, claims, and legally sanctified privileges or dis-abilities. What alone is of importance for us is the fact that the preservation of these feudal institutions was incompatible with the system of capitalism. Their abolition and the establishment of the principle of equality under the law removed the barriers that prevented mankind from enjoying all those benefits which the system of private ownership of the means of production and private enterprise makes possible.

What makes a man more or less prosperous is not the evaluation of his contribution from any “absolute” principle of justice, but evaluation on the part of his fellowmen who exclu-sively apply the yardstick of their own personal wants, desires and ends. It is precisely this that the democratic system of the market means. The consumers are supreme—i.e., sovereign. They want to be satisfied.

Millions of people like to drink Pinkapinka, a beverage pre-pared by the world-embracing Pinkapinka Company. Millions like detective stories, mystery pictures, tabloid newspapers, bull fights, boxing, whiskey, cigarettes, chewing gum. Millions vote for governments eager to arm and to wage war. Thus, the en-trepreneurs who provide in the best and cheapest way all the things required for the satisfaction of these wants succeed in get-ting rich.

If the land is all owned by the ruling class then it is very similar to having landed on their island.

Never ceases to amuse me how the property is theft crowd ignore the fact that they could always just... I don't know... buy the damn land.

I have already established the principle, namely, that the earth, in its natural uncultivated state was, and ever would have continued to be, the common property of the human race; that in that state, every person would have been born to property; and that the system of landed property, by its inseparable connection with cultivation, and with what is called civilized life, has absorbed the property of all those whom it dispossessed, without providing, as ought to have been done, an indemnification for that loss.

The fault, however, is not in the present possessors. No complaint is tended, or ought to be alleged against them, unless they adopt the crime by opposing justice. The fault is in the system, and it has stolen perceptibly upon the world, aided afterwards by the agrarian law of the sword. But the fault can be made to reform itself by successive generations; and without diminishing or deranging the property of any of present possessors, the operation of the fund can yet commence, and in full activity, the first year of its establishment, or soon after, as I shall show.

And then I'll be one of the 'Landed ruling class', right?

I fixed it.

Of course, if you do want to do that, you can fairly easily do so.

Speak for yourself, bub.

Nobody wants to live on unimproved property in the middle of nowhere, of course.

If the land is all owned by the ruling class then it is very similar to having landed on their island.

If the land is all owned by the ruling class then it is very similar to having landed on their island.

Assuming the speaker will somehow induce you into starving, then yes. Or if the reason you would starve would is something out of the ordinary (for example, you landed on his island due to a plane crash), then yes. But if the result of your failure to take the deal would be your starving through no fault of the offeror and not through any emergency, then no.

Otherwise, people could never do anything and others would always be forced to provide for their every survival need. After all, not doing things for them would mean they starve and therefore be a threat of violence. If a person doesn't take any action to obtain food for themselves, if you don't give them free food, they will starve. If they have no place to live and won't do anything to get one, if you don't let them live with you, they will freeze. And so on.

Nature starves people who don't act to secure food, not the people who didn't feed them.

Don't take this deal and starve is definitely a threat of violence.

Don't take this deal and starve is definitely a threat of violence.

The only thing that matters is a lack of threat of violence. That's true consent.

This is only true if there is true consent -- ie; a relative equality of power on both sides of the table. This is not the case currently at labor vs capital owner negotiations.

But surely you wouldn't argue that someone handing over their wallet in exchange for not being shot was consensual, even if the person really truly preferred being a little poorer to being dead. So presumably your opinion would be that they did not have the third option, which is to say "no, i'd rather not give you my money /or/ be shot" and walk away.

However, since we cannot walk away from the table of "making a living" completely -- (those born landless are forced to sell our labor to the owning class to literally survive) there must be mechanisms for making that relationship as equal as possible.

I'm not an economist and never really had any interest in the economy until these recent years, but I'm starting to feel killing the minimum wage would help the economy a great deal. It may bring back a lot of the jobs back to the states and maybe even pay more then what they are offering offshore (no more import shipping cost).