Top income brackets should be taxed at 99%.

Discussion in 'Budget & Taxes' started by Bic_Cherry, Oct 8, 2019.

  1. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I don't advocate feudalism. Nor do I agree with your idea that the state should administer all land. I'm in favor of private ownership of land.
     
  2. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    He doesn't understand that in Feudalism the nobility and lords were government. Private land ownership was not allowed by anyone else but the ruling elite. He draws a false equivalence between it and private land ownership that recognizes natural right to life, from which all rights of property (including land) is derived.
     
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  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Private landowners were government under feudalism because they were the sovereign authority over land. That is what Longshot advocates.
    No. More accurately, the elite ruled because they privately owned the land.
    No, that's false. The genuine universal human rights to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor all derive from the evolutionary advantage they confer by strengthening the community. Private landowning removes people's rights to liberty, as I have proved repeatedly, and therefore their rights to life and to property in the fruits of their labor. That is why there was no such thing as private landowning until a few thousand years ago, and why private landowning has killed more people than all other evils combined.
     
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Private landowner sovereignty, which is what you advocate, IS feudalism.
    Sorry, but that is what the state IS: the sovereign authority over a specific area of land. The alternative is either the end of exclusive land tenure and thus a return to a nomadic herding or hunting-gathering economy, or feudalism: private landowner sovereignty.
    I.e., the forcible, uncompensated removal of people's rights to liberty, and thus to life and property in the fruits of their labor, by private landowners. That's what I said. You keep agreeing that that is what you advocate, and then denying it, sometimes even in the same sentence. The problem here is that you want to be a feudal lord, and be legally entitled to deprive others of their rights to liberty without making just compensation or accounting to the community for what you are taking from the community, but you don't want to admit that an economy in which the land is all owned by feudal lords is feudalism.
     
  5. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Perhaps your understanding of feudalism is erroneous. Could you please provide the definition you're using when you use the term?
    One alternative would be for the state to allow private ownership of land and simply be the arbiter of disputes between landowners.
    What is a feudal lord?
     
  6. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Feudalism is the economic system based on hereditary land-use contracts between landowners and the landless that emerges when landed private property survives the demise of the government that originally issued and enforced the land titles.
    Right. Landowners would in effect own everyone else's rights to liberty, and consequently their rights to life and to property in the fruits of their labor. Under such a system, the landless could only obtain permission to exist by indenturing themselves permanently to a landowner, who would not be answerable to the community for what he took from the community. That's feudalism.
    Someone who privately owns land and requires personal servitude from the landless in return for permission to use that land, but is not accountable to government or the community for what he takes from everyone else by owning the land.
     
  7. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    nvm
     
    Last edited: May 18, 2020
  8. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Actually, feudalism was a system in which land was granted as a payment for regular military service. Check your definitions.
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, that arrangement was common (though by no means universal) in Western Europe in the Middle Ages, but other feudal systems, such as in Russia, China, and Japan, had no such provision. In feudal Japan, only the parasitic landowning samurai class were permitted to bear arms. In feudal Russia and China, soldiers were almost all full-time professionals, and the peasants who worked the land in return for protection played little military role.
    I have:

    "Feudalism 1. The dominant social system in medieval Europe, in which the nobility held lands from the Crown in exchange for military service, and vassals were in turn tenants of the nobles, while the peasants (villeins or serfs) were obliged to live on their lord's land and give him homage, labour, and a share of the produce, notionally in exchange for military protection." -- OED

    "Feudalism was a combination of legal, economic, military and cultural customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour." -- Wikipedia

    "the medieval “feudal system” was characterized by the absence of public authority and the exercise by local lords of administrative and judicial functions formerly (and later) performed by centralized governments; general disorder and endemic conflict; and the prevalence of bonds between lords and free dependents (vassals), which were forged by the lords’ bestowal of property called “fiefs” and by their reception of homage from the vassals." -- Encyclopedia Britannica
     
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  10. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    So my neighbor who has a house on a 50x100 lot is a feudal lord? I'll be sure to tell him. Maybe he's a duke, or an earl. He'll be so pleased.
     
  11. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, because unlike under the feudal system of landowner sovereignty you advocate, he is accountable to the democratically responsible local administrator of possession and use of land -- i.e., government -- not just himself.
    Why do you always feel you have to make $#!+ up and falsely attribute it to me?

    As if we both don't know perfectly well why....
     
  12. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    Is my neighbor who owns a 50'x100' lot a feudal lord or not?
     
  13. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Of course not, as I already directly told you in clear, grammatical English: we -- meaning me, you, and your neighbor -- don't live under the feudal system of landowner sovereignty that you advocate.

    And btw, thank you for your transparently disingenuous pretense of not understanding the simplest and most self-evident of facts. It is more eloquently instructive than any argument I could make.
     
  14. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I thought you said that private land ownership was feudalism. Are you taking that back now?
     
  15. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, I said private landownership in the absence of government that administers possession and use of land, as you advocate, is feudalism.
    Please provide a direct, verbatim, in-context quote where I said what you claim I said. Thank you.
     
  16. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I think that the government should only settle land ownership claims, not administer possession and use of land. We beat the commies in the cold war. I don't want that communism here.
     
  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right, because you believe government's job is to forcibly abrogate people's rights for the unearned profit of landholders, and to prevent the people from defending themselves against attacks by landholders, not to secure and reconcile the equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of their labor.
    Which was certainly a good thing. But do you think people are attracted to communism for no reason?
    Nor do I. So why are you falsely and absurdly equating liberty and justice in land tenure and public revenue arrangements with communism? Is it because you know you have no factual or logical arguments to offer, so you have no choice but to just name-call?
     
  18. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    I prefer millions of private administration and possessions over a single monopolistic government administration and possession.
     
  19. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right, that's what I said, because you want to be a feudal lord who can forcibly abrogate others' rights to liberty without making just compensation, and you know that for that to happen, there has to be feudalism instead of democracy.
     
  20. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    The fact that you think a person who owns a 50x100' lot is a feudal lord demonstrates the idiocy of your position.
     
  21. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Direct, verbatim, in-context quote to that effect?

    Of course not.
    The fact that you have to just make $#!+ up and falsely attribute it to me demonstrates the indefensibility of yours.
     
  22. (original)late

    (original)late Banned

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    This is so annoying. I can't remember the name of the book.

    About a decade ago a historian wrote a book on how law creates economic value. That's the really short version. The modern world depends on having legal standards that protect rights and that, in turn, requires the government to referee the disputes that inevitably rise.

    Btw, the other guy has a terrific point about feudalism. But you'd have to understand what he meant, and that doesn't seem to be happening. The more power that gets concentrated into the hands of a few, the worse off it is for everyone else.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2020
  23. TedintheShed

    TedintheShed Banned

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    This accurately describes government.
     
  24. Longshot

    Longshot Well-Known Member

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    So a person who owns a 50x100 lot isn't a feudal lord?
     
  25. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    in reply to (original)late who wrote:
    But of course, Anarchy as a conceptual basis for government is delusional, because self-interested individualism needs to be balanced by community cohesion. Otherwise the result is....anarchy.

    And as for economic prosperity, you haven't the nous to defend your erroneous mainstream view that private citizens' money aka "taxpayer money" is "government money", which is a complete misreading of Abba Lerner's functional finance, the forerunner of MMT.
     
    Last edited: May 26, 2020

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