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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 24, 2019 - 09:27am PT
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So, by "succinct," you've already tilted the game away from success (and I believe that you know it, Ed).
it is my experience that the concept of "ownership" has been elaborated to such a degree that I cannot provide a "succinct" description. However, I might not have thought as deeply about it as others, so while I cannot provide such a description, it doesn't mean that one does not exist.
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
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Jan 24, 2019 - 09:31am PT
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You know, Ed... you do passive aggressive better than most. Doesn't make you any less of an as#@&%e.
Just kidding.
Of course.
I don't think it was passive, it was a challenge certainly, and from your POV that makes me an as#@&%e, kidding or not, of course.
But you do not refute the logic, that is: you believe you were told something was going to happen, it didn't happen, therefore the tellers lied.
You use this argument on many other examples to refute the "authority" of "experts," all in the support of your self interests. You should just own up to that.
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Jan 24, 2019 - 09:38am PT
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Same as it ever was.
There's a solution, kick out the parasites that rob us all.
“We want a system in which the worker shall get what he produces and the capitalist shall produce what he gets.”
— Eugene V. Debs
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 24, 2019 - 10:34am PT
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Gary, oh Gary. In EVERY thread you post the same, sad, old saw. Apparently Debs is the only "thinker" you've been exposed to.
EVERY place what you advocate has been tried, that place economically implodes. Even China doesn't abide by Debs anymore.
Wake up and smell the reality.
Oh, and as I've asked EVERY time you've posted your old saw, I'll ask again: What do the two catch-phrases even mean?
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Jan 24, 2019 - 10:57am PT
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EdT mentions that many poor in other areas of the world have become richer. That is true. China for instance. But that did not help the working classes in the USA, where inequity has now gone back to gilded age levels. Globalism resulted in rich Americans becoming richer, and the working class getting nowhere.
Yet at the same time we felt the need to reward the rich with several massive tax cuts, even though they didn't need it. These unwarranted tax cuts starting with Bush junior allowed the rich to sock away additional trillions of dollars in wealth. And at the same time, the rich used a few crumbs from these trillions to buy and pay for numerous immense special benefits from government, a few examples of which I listed in my previous post, and have mentioned several times over past years.
Over the past three decades, the top 1 percent’s share of national income has more than doubled. In 1978, the richest 1 percent of income earners made less than 9 percent of total income; by 2014, their share was over 21 percent. This effectively operates as an extortion skim on the economy.
Look at the first graph here. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
The USA is By Far the most Inequitable country in the graph.
The top 5 percent has captured 74 percent of the wealth created in this country since 1982 - the situation is only growing more extreme.
more reading
http://cepr.net/blogs/cepr-blog/the-growth-of-finance-in-graphs
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:08am PT
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^^^ I agree in large part, and I agree that much wealth has been accumulated in non-legitimate fashion (manipulation of the tax code, etc.).
But when I offer a genuine solution that would eliminate the government's ability to manipulate the way it does, I'm told things like, "That can't work," and "But what about roads and human services?" etc., etc.
So, I guess we're stuck, and the prize is perpetually to strive to BE "the side" that controls the most powerful entity (which it was never supposed to be) in human history.
Let the revolution begin. Just be careful that you don't find yourself killing your own.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:12am PT
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Globalism resulted in rich Americans becoming richer, and the working class getting nowhere.
That’s because poor Americans make very bad life choices. I spend a lot of time at health
care facilities and they are full of recent immigrants from the Phillipines and China who made
good life choices in getting educations that pay. Lots of Filipino nurses are making $100K
or more here and I’ve met a number who are getting their RNP and/or Masters while they
make their $100K. They’ll be making $150K soon.
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:20am PT
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"That’s because poor Americans make very bad life choices."
only partly true. That doesn't explain why we should allow the rich to get government to give them trillions of dollars in undeserved benefits. Why is trumpy ruining the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau? Why were for-profit schools allowed to scam so many? Why are so many near monopolies allowed by the FTC and FCC? Why do Americans pay higher drug prices? Why don't real estate owners pay taxes on swaps? Why don't hedge fund mgrs pay full income tax? Why was trumpy allowed to deduct fake losses? Why do special interests hate net neutrality?
etc
etc
etc
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Splater
climber
Grey Matter
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:22am PT
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"But when I offer a genuine solution that would eliminate the government's ability to manipulate the way it does, I'm told things like, "That can't work," and "But what about roads and human services?" etc., etc."
You propose a highly regressive sales tax and call that a solution?
RIDICULOUS!
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Fritz
Social climber
Choss Creek, ID
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:49am PT
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MB1! Per your post, I apologize for missing that you wished to exempt food from your proposed National Sales Tax. But, you make such a plethora of highly miss-able points in your missives.
Many examples, but Fritz (as usual) offers a classic example when he says that I favor a sales tax, but, of course, the poor have to buy food and then pay tax on it.
I EXPLICITLY said that food is an obvious exemption and one that even States and local governments already recognize in their sales taxes.
Unfortunately, now that all the conservatives on ST know I’m a liberal & hate me for it, a liberal posts a slogan that I deeply disagree with & really should mock.
you have a right to a decent job just as you have a right to life
I’m going back to defining my politics as “Eisenhower Republican.” That should piss off both the conservatives & liberals here.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 24, 2019 - 11:56am PT
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I have an Indian friend who grew up in a home with dirt floors. He didn’t use a telephone until he was 16. He’s now a PhD in neuro-biology and an MD. America’s poor are functionally members of a cargo cult.
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TLP
climber
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Jan 24, 2019 - 12:11pm PT
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MB, there are many reasons that consumption tax does not seem workable as a real-world replacement for income or other intangibles taxes. Even with exclusions of food etc, they remain extremely regressive. Lots of countries have rather high VAT rates, and it still does not come anywhere near covering general purposes like education and infrastructure; even if it were possible to get them to stop having wars which are the most expensive thing of all. Moreover, take a billion-dollar "earner" (who already doesn't pay much or usually ANY tax on most of the money, it being legally classified as something other than income). They're not spending $1b on fancy cars and jewelry every year; no, they're just piling up an ever greater string of digital zeroes. No matter what you do, the rates the less wealthy would have to pay on a strict sales tax basis would be onerously high, indeed, enormously higher than their income taxes are at present.
And to appeal to your philosophical side, you will hate this, but there is a perfectly good case to make that 100% of all dollars, whether paper or virtual, are the exclusive ownership of the US government and its proxy the Federal Reserve, which print the paper ones and are the foundation of the digital dollar exchange universe. No individual or business owns any of them, but is graciously allowed to exchange these non-owned items (pieces of paper and transistor states) with other entities that do not own them either. Some of them get sucked out of the exchange, but you never owned them in the first place. Anyone who wants to avoid taxation is perfectly welcome to go subsistence and barter of things they themselves (not paid workers) actually produced. But I doubt if anyone in the 1%, nor the 0.001% is about to do that.
It is also worthwhile to bear in mind that the "founders" of the U.S. were unequivocally already the privileged class and had every incentive to make sure things were cushy for them within a putatively equitable written system. The 1700s weren't exactly the garden of eden for everyone.
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TLP
climber
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Jan 24, 2019 - 12:35pm PT
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pendejo, my point exactly; maybe more strongly worded, but that's a key part of what they did. Fortunately some key amendments were added before we got to a point where it's nearly impossible to do so anymore. Pretty much all governmental systems are one party: the party of Money. There are a few wiggles from time to time, but they always revert to that. (Exhibit A: Russia. B: China. C: U.S.) There's a theoretical possibility the US could swing back a little ways, we'll see in the coming decade or so.
A bit of reflection on history: as one can easily read in plenty of sources, the Magna Carta was primarily all about whether the King or the other aristocracy got to levy taxes. Not whether or how much, but who was the taxman. And the fight about taxes came about 100 percent because of wars the King wanted to have.
Same in modern U.S. If we weren't squandering such a fortune on the military (and all of the consequences in retirement, health care, veterans, debt interest, etc.), there wouldn't be nearly as much of an argument about taxes. Mind you, I totally support doing all these things for veterans, they should get even a much better deal than they do. But we should just not be creating so many (in fact, hardly any).
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 24, 2019 - 12:54pm PT
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Okay, I can make good on my "Cliff's Notes" regarding ownership. Be kind; I'm writing this off the top of my head, unedited. I'm afraid, and you should be too. But be charitable, if possible. Hehe
Such discussions as this thread really come down to moral principles. All sorts of veiled or explicit presumptions about concepts like should, ought, legitimacy, justice, fairness, and good old right and wrong are paramount to considerations of distribution, need, poverty, wealth, and so on.
DMT, for example, asserts that we don't own anything, that we only "borrow." I'm not clear how that explicates, because if DMT is correct, then the entire foundation upon which it can be said that, for example, "Slavery is wrong," evaporates. After all, I'm only "borrowing" my slave. Since my slave only "borrows" his life and does not own it, well, we're all in one collective of "resources," and I highly value (and have the force to control) the "resource" that is my slave. There's no right or wrong. There's just one resource borrowing another out of one, big resource pool. And the one who CAN borrow gets to.
And there the problem emerges, because we ALL actually want to say that some "borrowing" is "legitimate," and other "borrowing" is not. We ALL want to say that might doesn't make right and that, thus, just because you CAN do certain sorts of "borrowing," that doesn't mean you are RIGHT to do so.
Without a robust notion of rights, you have no framework in which to assert anything like: "Regardless of what the 'majority' prefers at any given moment, regardless of how 'useful' the practice might be, and regardless of the 'might' of the nation in enforcing this or that policy, SLAVERY IS WRONG. It's objectively, factually wrong. And no amount of force or tradition or context or preference can make it legitimate or right."
Intersubjective preference cannot sustain the weight that bears upon such objective moral claims. The law cannot sustain the weight, and, worse, conflating morality and legality has implications that most people have not thought of. For example, no genuine social reform is possible, once legality and morality are conflated.
Thus, a robust notion of rights is literally the foundation of our everyday moral claims. And even the most basic appeal to right just is an appeal to rights. Many centuries of thinking on these points has produced an almost (I say "almost" only because I leave open the logical space for dissenters I'm not aware of) universal commitment among ethicists to a rights-based morality.
From the very left-wing John Rawls, talking about "distributive justice," to Joseph Raz, talking about the nature of authority, the exact same fundamental commitment to rights is the implicit or explicit presumption.
But what is a right? Multiple theories are quite well known: Natural rights, divinely granted rights, and so on. However, the one thing that all rights theories have in common is the foundation of ownership.
For example, a divine rights theory, such as appears in the Declaration of Independence, appeals to "inalienable rights" that are "endowed by their Creator," and this "endowment" is elsewhere referenced as an "ownership" of rights, because the "ultimate owner and Creator of rights" gave such rights to us.
A natural rights theory (which many of the founders/framers held) starts from a position of "self-ownership," and develops a theory of additional rights out of that notion of ownership. That so many of the framers held this position is evidenced in the verbiage of the Declaration of Independence: "... inalienable rights... life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Locke, the champion of natural rights theory listed: "Life, liberty, and property." In an early draft of the Declaration, "property" was edited out and replaced by "pursuit of happiness," because by that time it was universally believed that the right to life implied the right to property, or that the right to life and the right to property were coextensional.
Whatever is your preferred moral theory, and whatever is your idea of rights, ultimately an appeal to the "right to life" is going to be among your building blocks.
Asking the question, "Where does such a right come from?" is irrelevant for our purposes. A strictly biological account can be developed, such as: "Every organism strives for life; that is the most basic striving that there is, and it's very universality just is its legitimacy. So, we'll call that 'striving for life' 'the RIGHT to life.'"
The metaphysical question really doesn't matter for our purposes here. We are virtually universally committed to a notion of rights, with the most basic right being that of life itself.
But that leads immediately to a notion of "owning oneself." Seriously now, I don't "borrow myself from the universe." Rather, "the universe" in some way "gives" me myself, and from then on I am the "owner" of myself.
All sorts of other concepts are in the mix here, including authority, control, usage, scope, and the list goes on. I'm trying to simplify, so that I don't have to produce a tome on just authority, for example. I encourage you to read "Authority," by Joseph Raz, if you want to start somewhere. So, I'm going to take what follows as well established.
I take ownership as being grounded in the owning of oneself, but other questions emerge in just that statement, such as: personal identity, materialism vs. dualism, and even more questions. Again, I'm going to take those as unnecessary side-tracks for our present purposes.
We actually talk in terms of ownership when we say things like, "my body," "my mind," and so on. And our deepest intuitions about freedom, autonomy, and so on are grounded in this "ownership of self" idea. Moreover, if you abandon a robust notion of "ownership of self," then you immediately find yourself without a foundation for the most "obvious" moral claims, such as: "Slavery is wrong."
What MAKES slavery wrong is that it violates the "ownership of SELF" right of another human being, treating that human being as NOT POSSESSING him or herself, treating that human being as being a POSSESSION of OTHER than him or herself.
How can we know that such a basic right has indeed been violated? Well, we immediately employ all of the other notions that are basic to ownership, such as: control, scope of authority, disposition, and the litany goes on. In a nutshell, we say things like, "Well, a slave cannot do what they please, own anything themselves, pursue their own happiness, or, indeed, enjoy the most basic aspects of self-determination, autonomy, or being an active agent."
Now, Locke got it right when he linked the right to life (self-ownership) to the right to property (the ownership of things other than oneself). If an organism has no rights to anything needed to sustain life, then that organism really doesn't have a right to life. Again, a purely biological account of this relation might be adopted. The right to life at least implies the right to the means to sustain life. And liberals should be enthusiastic in their agreement with this principle!
But all of the above just means that "ownership" is all wrapped up in the striving to sustain and improve life.
Next, we turn to the "process" by which a legitimate ownership of something other than oneself can come to be.
We start by considering what a "person" actually "owns" when they own themselves. There is more going on here than just "a body," as in: "You own your body, and that's it." Consider: What is our most precious commodity? What is the essence of "life"?
You will find that everything comes down to time. Life is, at a minimum, directed processing through time. The striving to "continue" life implies time. Our "lives" are measured in time. And we think of "our time" (as if we owned it) as "our" more precious commodity. So, indulge me a brief thought experiment:
A crazed philosopher you know comes up to you and pulls out a loaded gun. Point it between your eyes, he impassively says: "In about five seconds I am going to shoot you between the eyes just to make my point."
You know that this philosopher is crazy and will do anything to make a point! So, to the best of your knowledge, you have about five seconds to live. You respond calmly: "Wait just a minute. I want to talk with you about this point."
The philosopher responds: "I'll give you five minutes, but it's going to cost you 1 million dollars for those five minutes."
You say, "Wait, wait! I don't have a million bucks."
The philosopher says, "Okay. How much do you have?"
You respond, "I have some change in my pocket. I use a credit card for pretty much everything."
The philosopher asks, "Do you have fifty cents? I'll take that much."
You reply with some relief, "Yes, and here it is," as you pass over two quarters.
The philosopher pockets the quarters and says, "Alright, you've just bought yourself five minutes. Use them as you will, and then I'm pulling the trigger."
You say, "What makes you think that you the right to end my life? My life is mine to do with as I please, and it's not up to you!"
The philosopher responds, "You apparently don't agree with what you just said, because YOU just paid ME for what is supposedly YOUR time. So, apparently it was MY time all along."
You say, "But you threatened me out of the money. I didn't willingly give it. You robbed me at gunpoint."
The philosopher replies, "But you only 'borrowed' that money and that time in the first place. It was never 'yours' in any robust sense. So, YOU have 'lost' nothing by allowing ME to 'borrow' 'your' time and 'your' money. And the universe has 'lost' nothing; there will just be a 'transference,' and that doesn't imply any rights of any sort!"
The philosopher continues, "By the way, the time is ticking down. Do you have any last words?"
You entreat, "Wait! How much do you want to give me more time?"
The philosopher responds, "One finger. Just a pinkie. Here's a knife. Just lop that little guy off and hand it over to me, and I'll hold off pulling the trigger for an entire hour."
Realizing that you NEED time to get to the bottom of this "point" and keep negotiating, you do lop off your off-hand pinkie finger and pass it over.
The philosopher graciously responds, "Thank you. Much appreciated, and now you have an additional hour." He then tossed the pinkie into the trash: "It turns out that I actually have no use for it."
You wail, "But that was MINE, and I DID have a use for it."
The philosopher impassively responds, "Yes, and your most pressing and immediate use for it was to buy one more hour of life."
Anddddd, hopefully you get the point. Most people will sacrifice almost anything at any given moment for a "bit more time." We almost universally value "our" time above all things, and we intuitively know that "our" time just is the very essence of our lives. So, if we own our own lives in a rights-based sense, then we own our time, however much of it we have, and we have NOW at any given moment. We STRIVE to have more NOWs, and we invest "ourselves" into gaining more NOWs.
So, I spend some NOWs to gather up a few apples from the ground, so that I can feed myself beyond just NOW, and thereby give myself a better chance of having more time "in the future." I SPEND time to get more time. But TIME is the currency! And I always seek to get a net increase of time in that exchange!
I own myself, and "myself" implies the very TIME in which my LIFE has context and activity. I INVEST myself (my life energy and time) into accumulating the very things that will, to my mind, give me a net increase of energy and time. Thus, I invest MYSELF into a thing and (loosely speaking) bring that thing INTO myself. I glom my self-ownership onto that thing by PAYING for it with my energy and time.
Now, at this point we could get into a discussion about legitimacy of ownership and the rights that are presumed by legitimacy. But this is enough for the moment.
The "Cliff's Notes" of ownership is self-ownership, which implies the time/energy expenditures of striving to not LOSE my own self, which implies the "gathering" of things intended to provide me a net gain of energy/time, which I come to "own" BY investing my very SELF into their "gathering." So, as Locke said, the right to property just is the right to life, which is why the right to property doesn't appear in the list in the Declaration of Independence; it was presumed as implied by the right to life.
It seems to me that liberals should be quick to embrace just such an account, because it successfully explains the intuition that, "People have a RIGHT to what they need to sustain and improve life." This is not a matter of preference; it is a matter of RIGHT.
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 24, 2019 - 01:47pm PT
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^^^ Well, I keep asking YOU to explain that, and you have so far failed to do so.
Do enlighten us!
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BruceHildenbrand
Social climber
Mountain View/Boulder
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Jan 24, 2019 - 02:16pm PT
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As a bit of levity(and in response to Madbolter1's truck driving buddy, Will) here are a few photos of a guy backing his rig onto the ferry in the port on El Hierro, Canary Islands. Lest you think he doesn't know what he is doing it isn't a straight shot into the hold. He had to crank it to the left to get it in the proper place.
BTW, my favorite boss in high tech had his BS in Computer Science from MIT and was one smart guy. He was also a very proficient private pilot. He decided to take a 6-week sabbatical to live out a dream of becoming a big rig driver. He signed up for a truck driving school but dropped out in two days when it was clear he coudn't cut it.
Back to the thread.....
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madbolter1
Big Wall climber
Denver, CO
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Jan 24, 2019 - 02:21pm PT
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^^^ Nice! TFPU
You don't have to be "smart" to be skilled.
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EdwardT
Trad climber
Retired
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Jan 24, 2019 - 05:50pm PT
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Ed Hartouni
Trad climber
Livermore, CA
Jan 24, 2019 - 09:31am PT
But you do not refute the logic, that is: you believe you were told something was going to happen, it didn't happen, therefore the tellers lied.
You use this argument on many other examples to refute the "authority" of "experts," all in the support of your self interests. You should just own up to that.
In this post and the one before, you made some rather twisted conclusions, that were unrelated to what I said or meant. I don't recall any unpleasant exchanges in recent years. Yet, you seem to be nursing a lingering butthurt. Kind of petty, don't ya think?
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
Sands Motel , Las Vegas
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Jan 24, 2019 - 06:02pm PT
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Ed's right...You should own up to it...!
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Happiegrrrl2
Trad climber
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Jan 24, 2019 - 07:15pm PT
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Reilly- your comment about poor choices and how you've met nurses now making 100k to 150k...
Does every person from the country you mentioned make that sort of wage?
I know...of course not. But, like what rpercentage of their population finds themself, due to good choices, in that situation? How does that percentage compare to ours here in the US?
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