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The Real Adam Smith

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Re: The Real Adam Smith

#111

Post by tim333 »

conanbatt wrote: post #80
nwah1 wrote: post #43

I'm surprised it didn't mention an obvious difference from modern conceptions of the free market: he thought landownership was a monopoly privilege that could be taxed without harm, so long as you are taxing only the land rent itself, not the improvements. "Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altog…

Taxes on land have been popular forever. Adam smith talked about it, then Ricardo formalized why rent is what it is, to which Marx barely made an addition and Henry George made an economic and moral argument for Land Value Tax in California. That was over 100 years ago. Today, Krugman, Stiglitz and Milton Friedman agree on land value taxes. The economic consensus on this topic was achieved long ago. Its a political i…

Popular with economists maybe. What has worked well in practice is the government owning much of the land and raising money by renting or selling it which is how Monaco gets by with zero tax and how HK raised quite a lot of money while keeping tax <17% on income, zero on gains.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#112

Post by adynatos »

aidenn0 wrote: post #105
adynatos wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sure: http://www.ozarkia.net/bill/anarchism/faq.html#part17 should i tell you who will build the roads next?

The bigger issue is that societies organized around a state tend to conquer societies not so organized, because states are much better at forming armies

so you agree that the state is almost always the initiator of aggression? if so, it's simply immoral to allow it to exist, just as you wouldn't allow organized crime to exist. my opinion about the state stems fully from morality, as presented in the non-aggression principle.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#113

Post by hjiiuhv677 »

conanbatt wrote: post #80
nwah1 wrote: post #43

I'm surprised it didn't mention an obvious difference from modern conceptions of the free market: he thought landownership was a monopoly privilege that could be taxed without harm, so long as you are taxing only the land rent itself, not the improvements. "Ground-rents are a still more proper subject of taxation than the rent of houses. A tax upon ground-rents would not raise the rents of houses. It would fall altog…

Taxes on land have been popular forever. Adam smith talked about it, then Ricardo formalized why rent is what it is, to which Marx barely made an addition and Henry George made an economic and moral argument for Land Value Tax in California. That was over 100 years ago. Today, Krugman, Stiglitz and Milton Friedman agree on land value taxes. The economic consensus on this topic was achieved long ago. Its a political i…

All hail the word of unaccountable economists!

I’m sure they’re pure of motivation when approving of a system they know how to game inside and out!

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#114

Post by hjiiuhv677 »

marnett wrote: post #106
randcraw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an increasingly compelling argument to be made at this moment in history, with the rise of powerful increasingly intelligent software that can 1) rigorously shape policy to ensure that ends are met and that 2) the means to those ends employ minimal bias, and 3) do so adaptively, shifting policy dynamically as circumstances evolve. I believe it's time to start planning for the day when we shutter the v…

Yea... technology at large scale has, countless times, been a large detrimental to large amounts, if not all, members of societies. I can already see the hyperintelligent AI realizing the only way to force pliability amongst very slow-to-change socialized humans is what many throughout our history have also learned - force and slavery allow the cogs to adapt to where you need them. I'd rather not be totured because I…

Agree. Such pipe dreams smack of laziness and disinterested minds to me.

“I’d rather not learn to cope in the world and let the thing I know best deal with it.”

It’s similar to a religious person pointing at the Bible for everything.

“This is my thing, I know it well, and it can just deal with everything for me!”

It’s freighteningly anti-curios and smacks heavily of approval of utilitarian sacrifice

Example: those blockchain clods and their “code is law”. Puritanical nonsense pushed by self-proclaimed holy wise men of blockain

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#115

Post by hjiiuhv677 »

ScottBurson wrote: post #94
randcraw wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think there's an increasingly compelling argument to be made at this moment in history, with the rise of powerful increasingly intelligent software that can 1) rigorously shape policy to ensure that ends are met and that 2) the means to those ends employ minimal bias, and 3) do so adaptively, shifting policy dynamically as circumstances evolve. I believe it's time to start planning for the day when we shutter the v…

The idea that AI would rise up and seize power over its human creators has always seemed preposterous to me. But it is not at all preposterous, as your comment demonstrates, that we might imagine AI as some kind of savior and put it in that position intentionally. This is the real danger. It is a prescription for dystopia. Either the machines, acting without understanding, will botch things up royally, or unscrupulou…

Giving human propensity for unverified beliefs, I agree with this.

It’s painfully obvious the opportunity for manipulation of the public

It would be treated as a new divine, infallible ideal we MUST protect, like God, free markets, and nation states

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#116

Post by IanDrake »

croon wrote: post #46
IanDrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t make sense, unless you meant... If one governs your rights, you don’t have any. Freedom isn’t government granting you rights, it’s government protecting you from coercion. If government is the source of your rights, then government can take those rights away. If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of…

> Corporations don’t have any power without government, which is why a limited government limits corporate power. They have as much power as they have resources to enforce, which is a lot more than you have, meaning they have a lot more - and in practice all - power. > If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of pro…

Unless corporations have the right to coerce you (which only government can grant them), they have no power over you.

Walmart is one of the largest corporations around and they have no power over me. I can voluntarily work or shop there, but they can’t force me to do it.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#117

Post by IanDrake »

optimuspaul wrote: post #45
IanDrake wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That doesn’t make sense, unless you meant... If one governs your rights, you don’t have any. Freedom isn’t government granting you rights, it’s government protecting you from coercion. If government is the source of your rights, then government can take those rights away. If government is the source of protection for your rights, they can only take that protection away. Leaving you your rights and now full burden of…

> Corporations don’t have any power without government, which is why a limited government limits corporate power. That's a fairly naive view. Corporations have lots of power, potentially unlimited power, without government. A limited government has a limited ability to protect the people and limit corporate power. We need a strong democratic government, because in the end people are what matters.

No they don’t. Seriously, you watch too many movies.

Corporations have no power over you. You can voluntarily do business with them, but they don’t have the power of coercion.

Please name one instance where a corporation had the power to forcibly coerce someone without the government’s backing.

To be clear, don’t cite voluntarily-entered contractual obligations.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#118

Post by aidenn0 »

adynatos wrote: post #112
aidenn0 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The bigger issue is that societies organized around a state tend to conquer societies not so organized, because states are much better at forming armies

so you agree that the state is almost always the initiator of aggression? if so, it's simply immoral to allow it to exist, just as you wouldn't allow organized crime to exist. my opinion about the state stems fully from morality, as presented in the non-aggression principle.

If you believe in any form of consequentialism, unilaterally disarming is rarely the moral choice.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#119

Post by primroot »

CryptoPunk wrote: post #83
primroot wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smith does not seem to be a private-propery-idealist as almost anyone in the mainstream today. Take this passage for example, also from book V. "Wherever there is great property there is great inequality. For one very rich man there must be at least five hundred poor, and the affluence of the few supposes the indigence of the many. The affluence of the rich excites the indignation of the poor, who are often both driv…

Also note this passage, as a counter-point: >>[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thu…

Thanks. As the article states, Smith was clearly not some sort of proto-left-wing intellectual. Here is the source of your quote http://www.econlib.org/library/Smith/smMS4.html#IV.I.10

Evidently, Smith was unfamiliar with golf courses. I see the whole paragraph (of your quote) as being even more detached from today's reality than his oft-cited quote regarding famine and government.

Re: The Real Adam Smith

#120

Post by RMGgondella »

marnett wrote: post #107
RMGgondella wrote: post #103

This is certainly a nuanced look at a figure who is generally cited in stark black and white. The notion of the "merchant elite" setting the tone of politics within the state -- and with neighbors and other competitors -- is a bit of a wake-up call. After all, for better or for worse, what finally dragged the US out of the Great Depression was World War II, and the sudden bulge of manufacturing it brought. The questi…

Your second paragraph is answered by post-9/11 American foreign policy in Iraq (to say the least). But just to echo that answer, yes - Halliburton (and plenty of other private military, security, cyber security service companies) did and continues to thrive off war profiteering. War is an economy. That's why the military-industrial complex is discussed so frequently. Not many other nations subsidize an entire market…

Yes. I agree.
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