Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030 • Hacker News Board

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#281

Post by dogma1138 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:05 PM UTC

monort wrote: post #209

dogma1138 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way for a communist government to be non-authoritarian communism can’t work in any other way. Planned economy and lack of personal liberties cannot coexist in what we would call a democracy unless your definition of democracy is a slightly less violent conflict resolution method. Overall democracy works because it respects the wishes of the individual essentially it gives everyone the right to express the…

Kibbutzism was less authoritarian, than you can expect from communism. I think it was because people always had a choice to leave.

The Kibbutz wasn't really communism not in what we would define as political / national communism, it was a cooperative and there is a good reason why virtually all of them were "privatized" by the mid 90's.

And yes you hit the point I was trying to make, no one forces you to live under capitalism even in a capitalist country it's perfectly legal for you to go and live in a commune it is not however true the other way around.

I had a grandparent die to Stalin's purges in the Gulag and I grew up in a Kibbutz I can say that my family experienced at least 4 different flavors of authoritarianism in the past 80 years and I've learned to be very weary of the very early signs of any authoritarianism.

Polish/German (mainly due to the fact that they lived in a region that went back and forth between Poland and Germany since the unification of the Prussian states) Jewish family my parents were born in 1942 after their parents have already escaped eastwards because of some guy that couldn't get into art school.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#282

Post by iguy » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

btcindivist wrote: post #214

dogma1138 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way for a communist government to be non-authoritarian communism can’t work in any other way. Planned economy and lack of personal liberties cannot coexist in what we would call a democracy unless your definition of democracy is a slightly less violent conflict resolution method. Overall democracy works because it respects the wishes of the individual essentially it gives everyone the right to express the…

It is a common mistake to characterize communism as collectivist. Marxist notion of communism is brutally individualistic.

"Collective" is practically a trademark term of the communist movement. It's one of their signature policies, the #1 guaranteed way to produce mass famine on fertile land!

(When tired of mass starvation, the strategy is to export oil & buy wheat from the prairies, if you have enough oil.)

What labels marxist theology applied to its imaginary systems is besides the point. This was all just words which the guys with guns made a certain class of intellectuals spout for their bread, to make sure everyone knew who was the boss.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#283

Post by dogma1138 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

KozmoNau7 wrote: post #191

dogma1138 wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no way for a communist government to be non-authoritarian communism can’t work in any other way. Planned economy and lack of personal liberties cannot coexist in what we would call a democracy unless your definition of democracy is a slightly less violent conflict resolution method. Overall democracy works because it respects the wishes of the individual essentially it gives everyone the right to express the…

That's not communism, though. Communism requires the withering of the state, so a communistic government is a contradiction of terms.

Now we're back to the "no true scotsman" argument, a communist government is not a contradiction unless you go by the most extreme anarchist interpretations of communist doctrine.

But sure show me how you transition from the "dictatorship of the proletariat" phase to this stateless paradise and I'll concede my argument.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#284

Post by iguy » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

mpweiher wrote: post #233

iguy wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

everything gets worse in a country when there is "too much" inequality How sure are we of the causality here? Does inequality make these things happen? Maybe countries with strong feelings of unity tend to look after their poorest members better, and tax or restrain their wealthiest members more strongly. In countries with no such feelings it's every man for himself, and those who can screw those who can't, economica…

> How sure are we of the causality here? Does it matter? In fact, I am almost certain that these are results of other things, but that they are so closely linked that if you get income inequality as an outcome of those other things, you also get the other negative results. And vice versa.

I think it does matter. Almost every discussion of inequality seems to be tied to a discussion of whether to use taxation (or other laws) to change it, with a view to changing these other things. And that only works if the causal link is from the money to the bad things.

I'm not sure that there is no causality, BTW. I'm just objecting that too much discussion assumes it's obviously all causality: The money just falls from heaven onto certain Brazilians, not others, and that's why Rio has the murder rate they do, and you could fix it with income tax. This seems crazy.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#285

Post by dogma1138 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

noobermin wrote: post #268

iguy wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to come down to prescriptivist / descriptivist. The word communism is used to label the empire of Lenin & Stalin, and their friends and admirers. That's what it means. They didn't all call themselves communists. The germans also don't call themselves german. We do. It was invented long before, as a label for some imaginary perfect system which did not need to run gulags to keep the lights on. This perfect…

I'm sort of agreeing with you? My point is leftists say communism and mean something different (some leftists don't even consider Stalin a proper communist, Trotskyists for example) but people outside use it as a blanket term for the left. Even some in the US call conservative democrats "communists". Regardless, it's just a word. My point is people commenting don't know the difference anyway, it's best to just read t…

Then they don't understand what they mean, "benign" AKA elective communism can only exist in a free and pluralistic open market society where people have the personal freedom to choose how to live.

Trotsky would've been just as bad as Stalin in the end not because he was evil but because an authoritative regime has no other means of asserting power other than force and violence.

Which is why under any autocracy even the most "benevolent" ones any challenge to the authority, ideology and core philosophy of the rule must be squashed.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#286

Post by tomashm » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:21 PM UTC

And many of them are not very sympathetic, https://www.npr.org/2018/02/19/586457604/whats-it-like-to-be....

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#287

Post by austenallred » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

v_lisivka wrote: post #275

v_lisivka wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody cares. If you have computer and Internet, you are in top 5%. Communists says that they need to hung top 10% to "clear world".

These downvotes are suspicious. Admins, can you check them, please?

The comment read to me as "nobody cares, communists want to kill everyone that has the Internet." A pretty reasonable thing to downvote IMO.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#288

Post by mikeash » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:27 PM UTC

ericd wrote: post #248

mikeash wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not true either. The top quintile accounts for a slight majority of income in the US, and someone at the 20% mark, while doing quite well, is far from rich.

When people talk about the top 1% owning almost all the wealth, they're typically referring to the global top 1% (at least that's the case with this article). The top quintile of the US is certainly considered rich globally, even if they don't feel like they are. I'm interested to see your source for the US tax receipts by quintile, though. I could definitely believe I was wrong about the richest portion paying "the…

If you want to count the entire world for wealth then you need to count the entire world for taxes too. I strongly doubt that the super rich are paying the vast majority of taxes worldwide.

For US taxes, see: https://itep.org/wp-content/uploads/taxday2017.pdf

The rate is definitely lower for poorer people, but nearly as much as the standard punditry, focusing only in federal income tax, would have you believe.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#289

Post by dogma1138 » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:35 PM UTC

iguy wrote: post #252

noobermin wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

S/he probably meant socialist. Most of the people commenting don't know the difference.

This seems to come down to prescriptivist / descriptivist. The word communism is used to label the empire of Lenin & Stalin, and their friends and admirers. That's what it means. They didn't all call themselves communists. The germans also don't call themselves german. We do. It was invented long before, as a label for some imaginary perfect system which did not need to run gulags to keep the lights on. This perfect…

Even if we take the most theoretic and idealistic interpretations of Marxism you always have what is called the dictatorship of the proletariat.

The dictatorship of the proletariat is essentially the phase that all communist governments get stuck on because there is no way for it to evolve into anything but another dictatorship, free market democracy or pure anarchy.

The idealistic state which is supposed to come after the dictatorship in which 7 billion people somehow live in harmony and prosperity with no laws to enforce how to live or to protect them isn't possible.

And a dictatorship by definition does not have the mechanism to yield power or to evolve in a non-violent manner and a natural instinct to preserve it at all cost even if that state was achievable it could never get there.

Re: Richest 1% on target to own two-thirds of all wealth by 2030

#290

Post by iguy » Sat, Apr 07, 2018, 9:47 PM UTC

dogma1138 wrote: post #289

iguy wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems to come down to prescriptivist / descriptivist. The word communism is used to label the empire of Lenin & Stalin, and their friends and admirers. That's what it means. They didn't all call themselves communists. The germans also don't call themselves german. We do. It was invented long before, as a label for some imaginary perfect system which did not need to run gulags to keep the lights on. This perfect…

Even if we take the most theoretic and idealistic interpretations of Marxism you always have what is called the dictatorship of the proletariat. The dictatorship of the proletariat is essentially the phase that all communist governments get stuck on because there is no way for it to evolve into anything but another dictatorship, free market democracy or pure anarchy. The idealistic state which is supposed to come aft…

I just don't know why we give these imagined phases any more credence than the coming of the Twelfth Imam.

They simply aren't relevant for talking about the brutal 20th century system of organising human affairs called communism. (Or rather, perhaps, no more relevant than the details of the Imam are to understanding the Iranian regime. If you want to go deep and read between the lines in speeches etc, then of course you have to know the relevant theology.)