On a friend’s Facebook page I left the following comment about the claim of the writer Abi Wilkinson (in the Guardian!) that inheritance should be confiscated by government to fund the UK’s welfare state. What could possibly go wrong?
I wrote:
The hostility to inheritance also comes from a mistaken sense of fairness. As Robert Nozick argued in Anarchy, State and Utopia (I quote from memory), people wrongly think life resembles an athletics race, where the racers compete to hit the finishing line. As a result, those “lucky” athletes endowed by nature/god whatever with stronger muscles etc must be handicapped by having weights in their shoes, for example. Just as a child of rich parents must be deliberately held back to give poor kids a more “fair” chance of winning. But as Nozick said, life isn’t like that. It is about people exchanging goods, services and ideas with one another. There’s no fixed end-point to which we are all racing.
Also, the idea that there is some “prize” that humans compete for implies that someone or some entity has created that “prize” in the first place. But that’s smuggling in a sort of communitarian assumption into the actions of individuals. In an open society, the prizes on offer are varied and multiply constantly.
I should add that the second section of Nozick’s renowned book dissects and ultimately rejects forced redistribution for egalitarian or other forms of “patterned” notions of justice, and he robustly defends what he calls an “entitlement” concept of justice.
One of the approaches that the late Prof. Nozick used was the thought experiment, such as the example referenced above about a fictitious athletics race in which the entrants are hampered/favoured to make the race more “even”, and then assuming that society in general should be like this. A race, held by people who know the rules and seek to abide by them, is not like an open society. “Open” is the key word here: there is no single end to which persons are heading, such as winning the race.
And yet a lot of the metaphors one comes across around discussions around equality, including equality of opportunity as well as outcome, seem to borrow, perhaps unwittingly, from this “race competition” worldview. To give another example, I remember reading some months ago about a university professor (Warwick) who suggested that when parents read stories to their children, this is a form of privilege. This also plays to the idea that life has a fixed end-measure of success, so that anyone giving a value to someone else is giving the latter an unfair “head start” on someone else. It would require a State to exercise totalitarian control of our actions from the moment we wake up to go to sleep lest our actions unfairly advantage/hamper someone in the “race” they are considered, by this worldview, to be on. (It also, by the way, shows that today’s Higher Ed. is full of certifiable fools and worse.)
On a related note, Thomas Sowell is good on this sort of topic. His book, A Conflict Of Visions, is an example.
Update: The UK journalist Lewis Goodall – he appeared on LBC the other day – says inheritance should be confiscated. No ifs, no buts. His argument is that no-one should have any wealth they haven’t “earned”. But that takes one down some very murky philosophical paths. We did not “earn” the good fortune to have been born in the current era, with its modern healthcare, high-speed travel and technical marvels. We could have been born in the Dark Ages, for instance. We did not “earn” this or that. We haven’t “earned” our genes, or for that matter, been “punished” for them, either. They just are. An inheritor is entitled in the narrowest sense of that word to X that is handed down because the person handing it down was the legitimate owner of it.
As Andrew Lilico in the Spectator argues (paywall, sorry), taxes on inheritance are attempts to block people from using their property as they choose. But what’s the point for many people in amassing significant wealth if they cannot transfer it to their nearest and dearest? Also, if the likes of Goodall claim that they are for capitalism, they cannot decide that this or that form of wealth is “unearned” and have the State seize it. The acquisition and transfer of property is an embedded feature of a free society.
As ever, F A Hayek was excellent on this sort of topic. See “Equality, Value and Merit”.
Johnathan Pearce – as you know, our late friend Anthony Flew wrote the classic refutations of John Rawls and other enemies of the principle of justice (such foes sometimes say they support “Social Justice” rather than justice – but John Rawls did not say that, he used the word “justice” for his injustice) – the works of Anthony Flew such as “The Politics of Procrustes” and “Equality in Liberty and Justice” are well worth remembering.
As for confiscating inheritance – if people can not hand on their farms and other business enterprises to their children then society will be utterly dominated by the government and “partner corporations”. Many things take generations to achieve – a man who plants an oak tree will never see it its prime.
Income is already taxed (it did not use to be – but it is now) so there is no argument for taxing stuff again upon death – especially as corporations do not have natural death and so inheritance tax gives them yet another tax advantage (on top of all their other tax advantages) – sadly the idea that corporations serve ordinary share owners (an idea I used to believe myself) is not correct. Something that William and Edmund Burke noted with the East India Company centuries ago – its decisions did not serve the interests of the ordinary people who supposedly owned it, and the managers of the company knew (yes they knew) that their decisions did not serve the interests of the ordinary people who supposedly owned the East India Company.
If there is to be any hope that inheritance tax falls out of favour it will be because of the simple observable fact that inheritance will be, for many young people, their only hope of ever owning their own property.
If you think that the current government wants young people to own property, I have a bridge etc etc
Peter MacFarlane – correct Sir.
The international agenda is for people to be tenants of governments and partner corporations. And the British state is supportive of that international agenda.
You can clearly see the underlying principle here. Any time money changes hands, the government wants a cut. When my employer pays me, when I buy a pint, when my grandad leaves me his gold watch, there’s the government with a cudgel in one hand and my wallet in the other.
Many things take generations to achieve – a man who plants an oak tree will never see it its prime.
SQOTD candidate.
I’m not sure there’s any point getting too philosophical about this. These are people who want anyone in possession of five quid more than them to have the ‘excess’ removed by force and ‘redistributed’, ideally to them, but not necessarily. It is the removal of it which matters. That’s why they are happy for the state to squander the money it has demanded with menaces. Any reasoning they claim to support this is simply begging the question.
JP,
As to the SQOTD – see the Swedish Navy…
As to this further assault on inheritance. Well, the first one against farmers was deliberate (“Liquidation of the Kulaks” – Stalin) and a (“Cunning Plan” – Baldrick) because it would force farmers out and then we could get mass Econoblocs to factory-farm the migrants who diversify our culture in ways beyond just the gang-rape of kids. But that is what happens when you find a stranger in The Alps.
I never thought I’d ever write anything like that. I’m a classical liberal! But needs must… And I did hold myself back. You don’t wanna hear my internal monologue.
The second phase on inheritance tax is simply because Rach From Complaints is stonier than an honour-killing. She is seriously at the, “Will drop pants for food” stage. It is not a plan – it is desperate measures.
We is buggered. And not just in Rotherham.
By their arguments, everybody must be banned from the inhertance of the learning of prior generations. Newton should have been prevented from knowing what Aritotle wrote, Maxwell should have been prevented from knowing what Newton wrote, Einstein should have been prevented from knowing what Maxwell wrote. Everybopdy must be forced to start from scratch. FOR EQUALITY!
Another reminder that the welfare state is warmed-over feudalism with “eGgaliTAraRiaN” and “dEmOcraTik” written on the box in crayon.
It is always worth mentioning the story “Harrison Bergeron” which shows the dark temptation of “fairness”.
Has Rachel Reeves decided to become the Handicapper General? She is 56 years too early (from the story timeline) but perhaps she needs a long run up.
As Marius said, sort of, at 10:05am, the problem is not that we don’t have enough good ideas and good people understanding and supporting them, it’s that we tolerate the “fools and worse” when we should be using a whip on them and chasing them out of town!
Until we get the nerve to do that, this won’t end. Actually, now that I write that, clearly this will never end. It is part and parcel of the human condition (fools and worse). So, better to say, until we take the whip to these bozos, we won’t get back to a healthy balance between good ideas in the public square and the nonsense spouted by lefties, nearly all governments, NGOs, international corporations, etc.
and jgh at 11:00am…great point! adding to your examples: lefties should not be taught leftism but the barbarism of “red in tooth and claw” Mother Nature. Let them start from there. Oh, wait, they have no skills so of course they will quickly get to “to each according to his need”.
“All races should give all runners an even chance?” I had an argument over this with a friend. She looked at a magazine and said it wasn’t fair they only put good-looking people on their covers. (I treasure that friend. We often disagreed, but she argues fairly.)
But we all are good at some things, and poor at others. Keeping covers for good-looking (or newsworthy) people is unfair to people who aren’t good-looking (or famous). And that’s true. But then we have to set aside space for stupid people in the philosophic, scientific, or literary magazines. It’s only fair. We need more clumsy people on the precision assembly lines. And it all goes down to the lowest common denominator. Because it’s a lot easier to hinder the good than enhance the bad.
Which is probably why some people are so in favor of it.
Ellen : But we all are good at some things, and poor at others.
Moving from poking fun at the Madeleine Bassetts of the world, to reality – nobody’s good at everything, though plenty of folk are bad at everything. The modern world, though, provides a huge number of opportunities to be good at something. Unlike in our caveman days, you can be :
– good at engineering
– good at pole vault
– good at cooking
– good at drawing cartoons,and thinking up accompanying jokes
– good at portraying very camp fellows on the TV
– good at restoring antiques
– good at foreign languages
– good at chopping down trees
and so on, a thousand times over. You can earn a living, and even respect, from any of these. Lots of good cooks are hopeless at weightlifting – but do they care ? I doubt it.
It’s odd that in a world with so many different opportunities to make yourself a success of some kind or another, so many people are obsessed with their opportunities to be a failure. Which no one can escape. Even The Donald, even Einstein, even I fail at some things.
I think Jonathan is too benevolent and made a mistake – fought in the battlefield exclusively designed by the other side – not even once the word FREEDOM was heard.
You should always expand the battlefield when it is designed by the enemy.
I admit to quite liking Nozick, particularly wrt to Anarchy, State, and Utopia, even though I ultimately reject his concept that a minarchist state is inevitable (he’s missing a few vital points particularly on the costs, external or otherwise, of paying for it)
I don’t hugely have a belief in Lockean property rights – property rights are not universal, obviously enough, and will vary according to siutation – but I have some sympathy towards the proviso-Lockean rights he proposed. Of particular interest is that he was *hugely* in favour of reparations to be paid to people who had been dispossessed in the past, even indirectly and without being able to strictly say that party X had stolen from party Y – whilst he wasn’t sure how this was to be achieved, he was very much *pro* addressing past injustices and restoring a measure of fairness in ownership, in line with his ideas around legitimate property ownership and transfer (ie. any property gained by violence is non-legitimate, and cannot be considered legitimate)
It always made me wonder how they are going to solve “pretty privilege” where attractive women gain an advantage in the workplace (and for that matter everywhere else in life.) Perhaps mandatory pizza eating contests for women who weigh in below 130 lbs? Don’t we need pretty equity? After all their solution is always to bring the successful down rather than lifting the unsuccessful up.
Which it seems to me shows how ridiculous the whole thing is.
But there is another thing here — namely that a lot of the inequities are directly the result of the government’s intervention or failures. For example, as far as I can see, far and away the biggest causes of poverty and disfunction in the black community in the US comes both from the scandalous schools and the lack of a nuclear family structure. The scandalous schools could be fixed in five years by allowing moms to transfer education money to a school of their choice. The lack of family structure is a bit harder to fix, but at the very least we can make it absolutely mandatory that fathers financially support their children — and that single moms aren’t married to the government. It is an absolute tragedy what happens to some of these kids — in schools where the main things on the curriculum are crime, sex and drugs. Raised by mom’s who want the best for their kids but have no choices and no power, and also no time because she is working three jobs, and where there is no dad to help or give them guidance.
It is this dreadful foundation that is at the root of a huge amount of the inequities in society and the government could fix it by changing their own ways rather than pompously demanding that others on whom the government’s failures are imposed must fix the problem. Or even worse scandalize the whole society by blaming their failures on “systemic racism”.
Or to use the analogy of the athletic race — how about instead of hobbling the ones who run the fastest you instead train the slower ones to be more swift of foot? And the way to do that is to give them a quality education and build an environment that allows a family structure to thrive.
Sorry, this is a USA centric answer. I imagine there are some parallels in the UK, but I’m not too familiar with the situation there.
Good vs. Bad.
Ellen is onto something. On this day when the GCSE results come out and all shall have prizes! I have this to say. I knew a woman as an undergraduate who was excellent at mathematics. Better than me (at the time) but terrible at physics. Unusual in such allied fields but it does happen. Dreadful for her because she was doing a degree in physics. She crashed out and became a paramedic.
We are all individuals!
I’m not!
I imagine that the majority of parents, told that the beloved fruit of their loins will not be allowed to benefit from what remains of their life’s work after they depart this world, will probably choose to solve the problem the ‘K Foundation’ way rather than allow it to adhere to the sticky mitts of the confiscatory State instead.
If that happens, then why bother accumulating any wealth or property? I have an idea for a business but why bother working hard and taking all the risks to make it succeed if I can’t leave it for my children’s benefit?
Why bother buying land and building a house if I can’t leave it for my children’s benefit?
Why bother with anything?
No. I’ll go Galt and all my wealth producing ideas, risk taking and hard work that would benefit any potential employees and society won’t happen.
There. Is everyone happy now?
The people advocating for wealth confiscation haven’t thought things through, have they?
At least part of the animus against inheritance comes from a belief in “economic coercion” as something morally equivalent to force or fraud. That there’s little or no difference between “Will you sleep with me if I offer you a million dollars?” and “Will you sleep with me if I hold a gun to your head and offer not to shoot you?”
From this, the conclusion is that only The State can be allowed to have large, war-like amounts of wealth, and inheritance is an effective place to confiscate large amounts of wealth in private hands.
There’s a part here that I have just never understood.
If there is a mindset – a socialist or communist or whatever mindset – that holds that, as a moral person, I must value the lives and happiness of all of society’s downtrodden over the lives and happiness of my children – or even that I hold these as equal things – then we might as well declare war now and commence the fight.
While that seems to be what they’re saying, I cannot believe that anyone could actually believe this.
And so I wonder what they’re really thinking.
Note that any law is an authorization to use violence.
Fraser, LP Hartley wrote a book a few decades ago called Facial Justice, which posited a dystopia where beautiful women underwent surgery to take away some of their beauty so that plainer, uglier women did not feel subject to injustice.
In some ways a welfare state subsidizes the thick, unpleasant and lazy at the expense of the intelligent, upstanding and able. There is a whole school of thought, which I imagine is influential on the Left, that argues that even being a person of good character is partly or wholly down to the luck of having good parents and living in a nice neighbourhood. When Obama gave his notorious “you did not build that” speech a few years back, this is partly what this is all about.
Egalitarianism is ultimately a totalitarian nightmare for some form of “perfect” world where the difficulties and obstacles of real life are wished away, and blamed on a deity. It bottom, it is a sort of religious mania, and not easily resolved by resort to pointing out its logical absurdities.
“But we all are good at some things, and poor at others.”
I recall a tv programme years ago (C4 UK). It took several people in low grade jobs and with a little training, unearthed their hidden talents. One proved excellent at orienteering, another at spotting fake paintings, another at spotting liars etc.
Perhaps standard education is too limiting.
@Johnathan Pearce (London)
Fraser, LP Hartley wrote a book
About Fly Fishing, right? 😉
a few decades ago called Facial Justice, which posited a dystopia where beautiful women underwent surgery to take away some of their beauty so that plainer, uglier women did not feel subject to injustice.
My pizza idea seems like a lot more fun!!
FWIW, there is a useful point here. Why chose to make the beautiful ugly rather than the ugly beautiful? Why choose to tear down rather than build up? Or, to use a more relevant example to the OP — why enact policies to make the rich poorer instead of enacting policies to make the poor richer?
that argues that even being a person of good character is partly or wholly down to the luck of having good parents and living in a nice neighbourhood. When Obama gave his notorious “you did not build that” speech a few years back, this is partly what this is all about.
FWIW, I think that is true, to some degree anyway, don’t you? You seem like a lovely person but had you been raised as effectively a feral child with zero educational opportunities in a miasma of pervasive crime, nihilism and violence, like happens to many kids, perhaps you’d be a bit less of the charming, erudite bloke we have all come to know and love?
The question though is, irrespective of one’s circumstances, do we as a society hold you responsible for your actions, and surely the answer is yes. That, after all, is one of the countervailing forces to the negative pressures from your upbringing. And, moreover, the justice system needs to seek justice and equity, but not just for the criminal but also for the victim and the rest of society.
Though having said that, our prison systems are so disgraceful, I’m not sure you are doing society any favors by sending someone to those universities of torture, abuse and gladiatorial combat before releasing them back to the public.
Nemesis, it’s quite possible to find hidden talents. But even there, some talents are missing, no matter how you train. I trained as a physicist, and I was quite good at devising ways to collect data. Though I managed my doctorate, that particular career went nowhere. They wanted me to analyze the data and turn it into papers. Not unreasonable, and I got several peer-reviewed papers out of it. That, I could not really do. I managed differential and integral calculus. I could add imaginary numbers and half-integral spin to that. But no matter how I tried, I simply couldn’t get tensors. While I managed to cookbook them for one paper, I saw no future there. So I ran away to the museum world — science museums — where the part of my education I did get was extremely useful — and ended up a curator for a quarter of a century.
I can make musical instruments, but my playing is pretty low-level on the dulcimer or the pennywhistle, which are among the easiest instruments to play. Don’t ask me to sing, let alone run a race.
“But we all are good at some things, and poor at others.” True — but we all have talents, and while it may make sense to dig for those talents, sometimes the ones you want simply aren’t there. And the ones you do find may not be what you want.
When you level land, you bulldoze the high parts down into the low parts. You have to – it’s a zero-sum activity. Extra dirt doesn’t just appear. It’s expensive to truck it in.
Human outcomes aren’t zero-sum, but you won’t convince the equity-focused people of that. A productive billionaire might produce enough to feed an extra pile of people, but they’ll be too busy looking at the billionaire’s increased income to notice the improvements below.
So the answer is, humans are a jealous and irrational lot. They’ll just bulldoze.
There are still a few Swiss Cantons that do not tax inheritance – how long the “international community” will allow this to continue, I do not know.
Remember Switzerland is not the independent, and deeply conservative, country it used to be – these days it is signed up to most international organizations, and their sickening agenda.
The political, corporate, academic (and just about every other part) of the establishment of most nations is rotten, rotten to the core.
Every organisation and every conference, whatever its official objective, works to destroy what is left of liberty.
For example, the World Health Organisation is led by someone with no knowledge of medicine – which should surprise no one, as its role is now political (part of the world governance totalitarian agenda) not medical.
The Economist magazine says that the United States, once the most advanced industrial power in the world, is incapable of making computer trips – and should not even try. America should just accept that it can not “cut itself off from the world” and most depend on the international community for supply chains of high tech goods.
America supposedly can not supply the “skilled workers” – which, to a sane person, would indicate that “Progressive” education in America needs to be rolled back, and a return to a more fact-and-skill based education be undertaken (even the moderate President Eisenhower denounced the terrible harm that John Dewey and other Progressives had done to American education – and it is got vastly worse since then). And “permits for factories take too long” – again, to a sane person, this would mean that permits for factories should be abolished. But NO says the Economist magazine – production of vital high tech goods much be OUTSIDE the United States – again America “can not cut itself off from the world” (translation – must allow the international community to have a stranglehold on its throat) and must, supposedly, depend on production thousands of miles away for the supply chains of vital high tech components.
In which case such things as the First and Second Amendments are going to die – as the international community is dedicated to Hate Speech laws and “Gun Control”.
As for putting the production of high tech supplies to the United States in Taiwan – only a relatively short distance away from the People’s Republic of China (the principle enemy of the United States), this is a policy the Economist magazine is quite comfortable with – although the policy is clearly suicidal for the United States.
But then the policy of the international community is to destroy the United States – at least the United States of the Bill of Rights (which the international community regards as “Crime Think”).
This version of (this-version-of – the version of the international community) of Globalization is fine – if you want a boot grinding on your face, for ever.
’…if the likes of Goodall claim that they are for capitalism…’
Then they are lying.
Fraser, luck in upbringing is part of it, but there are all kinds of countervailing influences in society – if they are allowed to flow. Today’s welfare state tends to block the flow by enabling bad behaviour to not have bad consequences for people.
I’d add that a culture full of militant victimhood will mentally impoverish those who accept it. I’d argue that this is as debilitating as being raised in poverty and surrounded by gangs.
Our Victorian ancestors understood that a culture of meritocracy and excellence, for all the imperfections it had, is the best thing that those from tough backgrounds can have.
Nor is it “just” a matter of Freedom of Speech (which the international community seeks to destroy by “Hate Speech” laws and other means) and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (which the international community seeks to destroy by the United Nations Small Arms Agreement and other means), it is also LAND.
Via land use regulations and taxes, the international community seeks to undermine individual and family ownership of land, private forests and reserves, ranches, farms (yes farms), business enterprises and even homes.
Such excuses as the “Green” agenda, firmly supported by the Economist magazine (a loyal servant of the international community), are used to justify these land use regulations and taxes whose real purpose is to concentrate ownership of land and other property under governments and partner corporations.
So the price of becoming dependent on the international community for such things as computer chips is very high – the price is everything you have got and everything you and your family might have ever had.
Note to those do not know – the above is NOT what the great Free Trade economists wanted, they did not want “international governance” – so what is now presented as Free Trade, “international governance” (government and corporate) is NOT what they wanted.
So remove all legal privileges that allow billionaires to become billionaires whilst others are having to choose between feeding themselves and feeding their kids.
A majority of libertarian-minded souls, of both the right and left variations, are against regulations (like the Online Safety Act, to choose a topical one in the UK). The more sensible ones understand that regulations like these disproportionally benefit larger players; ergo make competition unreasonably difficult, and has a ratchet effect which increases the wealth of, say, Mark Zuckerberg because he’s shielded from competition.
(If he was still able to become a billionaire after that, I’d still dislike him, but I’d dislike him because I think he’s pretty gauche, style-wise and seems like a basically unlikeable person, which are much more trivial reasons)
Agenda 2030, and all the rest of it, may allow inheritance in theory – but, in practice, by land use (and other) regulations, and taxes – they destroy it.
The objective is to concentrate control of resources under governments and partner corporations (corporations really owned by no-one, corporate bureaucracies not essentially different from state bureaucracies – and joined at the hip with them), reducing individuals and families to serfs – or worse.
neonnake – most people in history have always faced the threat of terrible poverty, indeed possible starvation. Not because of regulations – but because this is the natural state of humanity, one which, historically, was only ever one bad harvest away.
True the Romans (after the politician Clodius established it – before him the grain dole, set up by the younger Gracchi brother, was at a fixed price, a crazy system in-its-self, but not free) managed to hand out free food to a few hundred thousand people in Rome and (to a less extent) a few other cities – but only by taxing millions of farmers, and if there was famine among those farmers (in one Province or more) the Romans did nothing about it – because they could do nothing about it (not even with a vast Empire). Neither the slave tilled estates (which I am AGAINST) or the small scale farmers (who made up most of the Empire) could change that.
By the way there was little manufacturing in the city of Rome (unlike Alexandra – which was famous for various manufacturing trades in the Roman period) so its bloated population had little economic foundation – rather like New York City and so on today (once places such as NYC had lots of manufacturing – now they are shadow of what they once were, yet their population is actually higher – this will NOT turn out well).
To forbid “the accumulation of wealth” (private wealth) as the 1964 constitution of Tanzania did, does not reduce poverty – it increases poverty. And it makes no difference if the government is honest and well meaning – the government of Tanzania was honest and well meaning, and poverty increased anyway.
“No one shall become a billionaire whilst other people are starving to death” means MORE, not less, people starving to death.
Paul, are you arguing for more regulations of the kind that are, in all practical senses, barriers to entry for smaller players?
neonsnake – no I am not.
However, even if all the restrictive regulations were removed (and I support them being removed) – some people would still be very rich, and some people would still be very poor.
Demanding that no one be allowed to be a billionaire whilst other people are very poor leads to MORE, not less, people being very poor.
I’m not demanding that; I’m sure some people are, but I’m not.
I’m “demanding”, as much as that can be said to be true, what I actually said – “remove all legal privileges that allow billionaires to become billionaires”
*shrugs* If Zuck could still manage to become a billionaire if those privileges didn’t exist, then fair enough – I’ll still laugh at him because he’s got a silly haircut, but that’s a very different thing from disliking him because he’s weaponising regulations and IP to ensure that his company remains, in all practical senses, untouchable.
if all of the restrictive regulations were removed, then the gap would be much smaller – and most importantly, the people at the bottom would not likely be dying of preventable starvation, health issues and the like, since the artificial scarcity barriers would no longer exist.
neonsnake – understood Sir.
So some people would still be very poor – but far fewer people would be very poor than are so today.
In 18th (1700s) century Ireland taxation was, in proportion to the income of the people, higher than it was in England (it was Edmund Burke who pointed that out – answering people who claimed that taxation was lower in Ireland, taking the wealth of the country into account taxation was really HIGHER in Ireland – and continued to be so in the 19th century, indeed things got WORSE). There were also various restrictions (the Penal Laws) that did not exist in England, Scotland or Wales.
So people left Ireland for the American colonies – firstly it was Protestant (yes Protestant) Irish who left (mainly Dissenters – but some Church of Ireland people do) – they became the cultural (and to some extent the genetic) ancestors of what Americans call “Rednecks” – these, originally, were the Protestant Irish in America.
And they brought with them certain political and cultural ideas – such as the idea that people should choose their own minister of religion (although the English “Brownists” also had that idea – in England under “Good Queen Bess” someone could be executed for handing out “Brownist” writings) rather than having one imposed upon them. In Scotland ministers of religion were imposed from above from 1712 onwards (in England and Wales they always had been) – but not among the Dissenting Irish Protestants (of various sorts), not among the “Rednecks” (so called because they were pale and burned in their outdoor work in the sun – yes it is both a racial and a class slur, it always was one).
Later (19th century) Catholic Irish started to leave (in large numbers) as well.
The biggest place they both went to was New York City (then only Manhattan Island – pre 1898).
In America there were no taxes (tithes) payable to an established church, and there was (at least before the Civil War – 1861-5) no vast National Debt demanding taxes to service it.
Yet the film “Gangs of New York” (although rubbish in much of its presentation) is not wrong in pointing out that there was a lot of poverty in New York – in spite of there being (back then) few taxes and regulations.
At that level of technology mass poverty was unavoidable – lower taxes and less regulations could reduce it, but not eliminate it.
So it was “go to America and you have a smaller chance of dying than if you stay here” – not “go to America and you have a really good chance of becoming rich”.
Ditto for leaving New York and other big cities – with all their diseases (which doctors could do nothing about – even the rich died of the diseases) and “go West young man” – again it was not about getting rich (not for most people) it was about a lower chance of dying, getting a disease in New York (or some other big city) being a bigger chance of dying than being killed by a wild animal (or dying fighting tribal peoples) “out West”.
There was no chance of buying a farm in New York State (or other eastern States) – not if you were poor, because the land was already being farmed (other farmers had got there before you) – so it was out West for you, where there was land if-you-could-hold-it (wild fires, storms and floods, drought, animal attacks, tribal nomad human attacks – and so on).
Technology matters….
With the technology of 1860, and the taxes and regulations we have now most (yes MOST) people would die – they really would, the present society would utterly collapse.
But with modern technology the society of the 19th century would have much LESS poverty than we do now – because they had less taxation and less regulation.
Yeah, pretty much.
Paul, I really struggle to understand your position – in this in as much as many things.
I’m always very unclear whether you are arguing against things that you think I’ve said (and by all means, I can be clumsy in wording, as much as anyone else), or are introducing your own ideas in good faith – or indeed bad faith. Here, you’ve introduced both taxation and religion, neither of which I’ve touched on in this particular conversation.
On one hand you argue against “regulations”, and on the other you (seem to?) argue that removing them would make no difference; this is odd.
(I don’t care about Burke, or religion, or the like, by the way, and my knowledge on such is limited – I do not intend on remedying that. I’m too busy in my actual life looking after people to spend time on homework of that nature that does not, and cannot, inform what I do today or tomorrow)
On tribal nomad attacks.
Perhaps the most fierce were the Comanches in Texas.
The Comanche came from the north (I think what is now Montana – or there-a-bouts) – they were originally a very poor tribe, but they mastered the horse and became experts at raiding – raiding other tribes, raiding Mexicans, raiding Anglos – they did not care. Farming or even ranching (although Chief Q. Parker ended up a rancher – he “learned the ways of his mother’s people”) was for weak people – in their view. Raiding was what true men did – again in their view.
They tended to favour attacking under a full Moon – and such a Moon is called a “Comanche Moon” in Texas to this day.
If you were male they would torture you death (so if you were losing in a fight against them it was wise to shoot yourself to avoid capture), and if you were female they would gang rape you, torture you, but often not kill you – instead keeping you as slave (slavery was common among most tribes – not just the Comanche).
But, oddly enough, they were respected (even admired) as well as hated – they were fine fighting men (as were the Apache and some other tribes). One Texas Ranger (I forget his name) went off to California and got married – and on his wedding day a gift of gold turned up, it was from a Comanche chief who had (somehow) heard he was getting married – and wanted to send a gift to a fellow warrior who had killed many Comanche.
To kill many enemies was the highest virtue in Comanche culture (and the culture of many tribes) – so if you personally killed, with your own hands, many of the members of a tribe – that tribe respected and admired you, although (of course) they would kill you if they could.
As for “blood” – the old “American Eagle” look did not come from mating with birds, intermarriage with various tribal peoples was a lot more common than it became fashionable later to admit.
One sign of the old attitude was the election of “Indian Charlie” Peters as Vice President of the United States in 1928 – his nickname (which he had no objection to – indeed he wore a tribal headdress sometimes) shows his ethnic origin – and his first language was not English, and he had seen killing in his youth. A fine man – and a firm supporter of the idea that tribal people could become independent farmers and ranchers (an idea undermined by the vile “New Dealers” with their Act of 1934 – I suspect they would have imposed communal land ownership on Anglos as well – if they had not been too scared of Anglo firearms to try and imitate their beloved Soviet Union).
Sadly all forgotten now.
neonsnake.
I did not say that removing regulations would make no difference – I said that some people would still be very rich (which they would) and some people would still be very poor – although a lot fewer than now.
Good, we agree on this. And therefore you agree that some people are rich primarily because such regulations exist, I can assume?
neonsnake – artificial wealth is sometimes caused by regulations, but it is more often caused by fiat money and Credit Bubble finance, not a discovery by Paul Marks (if only it was) – a discovery of Richard Cantillon some three centuries ago, which is why it is called the “Cantillon Effect”.
By the way I got the story wrong – the Texas Ranger was real enough, Captain Jack Hays (a friend of some tribes and an enemy of other tribes – as Kit Carson was), but it was a gift of silver (a silver cup) not gold – and it was on the birth of his first son (not on his marriage). Chief Buffalo Hump is supposed to have had “Buffalo Hump Jr” engraved on the silver cup – implying that he was the real father (a joke).
Frank Hammer was an interesting Texas Ranger – he died in 1955 (got heatstroke in 1953 and never really recovered) – volunteered to help Britain in 1940, but was turned down because of age (which was unfair – as he was still a good fighting man).
In 1948 he almost changed American (and world) history by opposing the election fraud that got the despicable New Dealer Lyndon Johnson elected to the United States Senate.
Frank Hammer, he was alone, told the Johnson men to “git” (one word was enough) and they did (even at his age they did not care for a shoot out – even though there were a lot of them) – but the courts did not care that the documents showed that “people” were voting for Johnson in-alphabetical-order (the old fake votes trick).
The 1948 Senate election in Texas was rigged – but the courts (the judges) just did not care – no more than various courts cared in 2020 (put not your faith in judges).
In his life Frank Hammer was wounded 17 times and left for dead four times, he killed between 53 and 70 criminals (he did not keep count) – including Red Lopez (the “Social Justice” bandit) back in 1921. He also tracked down Bonnie and Clyde in 1934.
Whether people like it all not – great nations need men like Frank Hammer, and when they stop producing them, nations start to die.
In the 1940s the Dems rigged the election in Athens Tennessee – but their police, holed up in the county court house, got defeated by rifle fire and explosives, and begged for mercy (which they did not deserve – but got).
“The Battle of Athens” (Athens Tennessee – rather than the defeat of the Communists in Athens Greece) is still remembered – these days it would be called an “insurrection” and Dems, and RINOs, would shed tears on television about it.
The, private, justification for vote rigging is always the same – “we have to be in power – so we can help the poor”, the “Social Justice” tap dance, which, supposedly, justifies everything.
Under both traditional Germanic (Common) law and traditional Roman law both fiat money (money that is not an actual commodity such as gold and silver) and Credit Bubble finance (lending out “money”, to buy land and other property, when this “money” DOES-NOT-EXIST – it is just book keeping tricks by bankers and other such) is unlawful (for example Roman Law was very clear that you must have the money before you can lend the money – and a person, or group of persons, calling themselves a “bank” does not change this) – it is “legalized” by statutes and intellectually corrupt court judgements.
So neonsnake could argue that most artificial (artificial – not natural) wealth, is caused by “regulations” – if we include the “regulations” that give the world the curses of fiat money and Credit Bubble finance.
Indeed, I’m very aware of the Cantillon effect – it’s a by-product of the money monopoly that Benjamin R Tucker spoke about in “Instead Of A Book”
That said – to the very best of my recollection – he did not address it directly by name. I could be wrong, it is after all, an entire series of essays, and I do not have a photographic memory.
Even if not, it does not take great leaps to imagine that he would have seen it as a very undesirable by-product, and yet another reason to oppose the government money-monopoly.
Either way, it’s not hugely relevant to my original point, except maybe to note again that an argument has been put forward against something that wasn’t said.
neonsnake – true in part.
But the problem is not quite “monopoly money” – after all (as the old saying goes) “free trade in banking is free trade in swindling”.
The problem is money that does-not-exist – that is not anything (such as gold or silver) that people voluntarily choose to value before-and-apart-from its use as money.
“Money” that exists only in the records of government and bankers.
As for things not being relevant….
A society which remembers, and admires, Bonnie and Clyde (thieves) and has forgotten Frank Hamer (does not care about men like Frank Hamer), is a sick society.
And a sick society, a sick culture, is very relevant indeed.
Hard to build well on a rotten cultural foundation.
Whether money needs to be backed by something tangible has been, and still is being endlessly debated. My personal stance is that it will be context dependent (trivially, it’s obvious that credit can be extended within communities with a high level of trust and familiarity without needing to be backed; the further one extends, the “harder” the security needs to be)
But it needn’t and shouldn’t be gold/silver, or any other material imposed by a state. That’s just inviting monopolism – and indeed, in the US and Australia at least (and perchance elsewhere, I’m not certain), taxes of 10% or so were imposed on notes secured by anything other than gold (for instance, locally issued notes secured on your property).
The effects of this are – hopefully – obvious; those people doing business in state-issued currencies had to pay more to “purchase” money (the purchase cost of $100 being the interest paid on it), given the monopoly effect afforded to the issuers (ie. the holders of gold). Which is fine if you already *have* money and are looking to expand and increase (and are able to absorb the loss), but is very poor if you *don’t* already have money, and the payment (the interest) is too much to bear. Which is where private currencies came in, to lend at much lower interest rates, often covering not much more than the cost of administration, thus lowering the “cost of money” to approximately 1% or so, allowing those with good ideas but less ready “capital” to enter markets.
(Of course, this then offered competition to the state-supported banks, and to the already well-heeled, which could not be abided, so the 10% tax was introduced)
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I’m afraid I have no idea of the relevance of Bonnie & Clyde and Frank Hamer to this conversation.