From: Jim Choate <ravage@ssz.com>
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 1997 13:06:51 +0800
To: cypherpunks@ssz.com (Cypherpunks Distributed Remailer)
Subject: Comdemnation of 'The Sovereign Individual'...
Message-ID: <199709100511.AAA08834@einstein.ssz.com>
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In the authors own words....

The Sovereign Individual
Davidson & Rees-Mogg
ISBN 0-684-81007-7

re: pp. 207 - 208

Chapter 8
The End of Egalitarian Economics
The revolution in Earnings Capacity in a World Without Jobs

   Those who have employed compulsion and local advantage to redistribute
income are destined to lose much of their power. This will alter the command
of resources. Privately generated wealth that heretofore has been
commandeered by the nation-state will be retained instead by those who earn
it. Increasing amounts of wealth will find their way into the hands of the
ablest entrepeneurs and venture capitalist worldwide. Globalization, along
with other characteristics of the information economy, will tend to increase
the income earned by the most talented individuals in each field. Because
the marginal value generated by superlative performance will be so huge, the
distribution of earnings capacity throughout the entire global economy will
take much the shape it does now in the performance professions like
athletics and opera.


I don't know about you but I don't think the implicit assumption in the
title about our current economic system qualifying as egalitarian is in any
way realistic.

Furthermore, it is seriously expected that the majority of people will
survive by doing the equivalent of porno flicks to pay the bills while a
handfull of people wield all the money, and hence the power in this system.
Man, this sounds like zaibatsu heaven.

How exactly is it better to take all those resources away from a government
I have some control over irrespective of my socio-economic standing (further
protecting my minority status) and give them to a system which tells me a
priori that I have little hope of getting any realistic income increase
irrespective of my effort level.

While it will be true we will be living in a world without jobs it won't be
the socio-fantasy of Star Trek but rather the simple fact that there are no
jobs to be had. And to top it off, their going to tell me up front that I
have no hope of support if something happens and I can't pay the fee for
government intervention. We are further shocked to realize that the tried
and true philanthrope won't be around because those sorts of resource uses
are inefficient and will be quickly eradicated because of it.

A call to the gas company,

"I'm sorry Mr. Bilbo, we can't turn your service back on because of your
not paying bills. If you wouldn't buy quite so much soup to feed those bums
you might have the money to pay the bills."

Yeah, take everything I got, take everything the person who might be
motivated to help me has for trying to help me, and then tell me I don't have
anything that I can do about it...woo woo, sounds like fun to me.

It may come as a shock to you, but money is not the goal. The goal is your
grandkids and the world they will live in.

We pay taxes to pay the bills of the indigent not to let the mother sit
around on her ass but rather to protect the innocent kids who don't have a
say in it. Those kids deserve a chance, whether you as an individual believe
in them or not, THAT is the cost of humanity. We are just stewards of this
reality, the real owners are the generations to be born. Their the ones we
have to explain ourselves to. Please review Santyana.

While I strongly suggest reading the book because it has a lot of good
individual ideas, the work taken as a whole is seriously flawed.

Also, please remember;

You are
What you do
When it counts

     -The Masao-


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