> The current economic system funnels economic value from the poor to the ultra rich.
The economic system creates values (and you can compare it with alternatives such as Soviet Union to realize just by how much). It does this in an unequal way, by chance, historical context and self-selection preferences. But the creation of value still trumps any inequality it might have. With TV, air conditioning and phones, an entry mid-class person in US is having it ten times better than the kings of middle ages.
This is precisely what Rawls is trying to get at with his "original position". Our system certainly creates value and that value is certainly unequally distributed. Would someone support that situation if they did not know what part of the value distribution they would receive?
I think it's likely that a lower class person might prefer an alternative system that produced somewhat less value but distributed it more equally.
> I think it's likely that a lower class person might prefer an alternative system that produced somewhat less value but distributed it more equally.
As evidenced by the vast amount of poor Americans emigrating to Cuba, or poor Brazilians crossing the border to Venezuela. They really desire all that sweet equality.
You are presenting a false dilemma. The only options are not American corporate capitalism or authoritarian communism. We could instead have varying degrees of welfare capitalism or one of the numerous other systems that have been suggested such as anarcho-syndicalism.
> you can compare it with alternatives such as Soviet Union
Not really because there are too many other variables
> But the creation of value still trumps any inequality it might have.
Why is inequality even necessary here in the first place? How do you know that creation of value can't exist in the presence of equality? The Nordics do a better job at it
> With TV, air conditioning and phones,
This is the mysticism I was referring to. Look at all of this cool stuff, no don't look at the rich people poisoning the water supply
> is having it ten times better than the kings of middle ages.
yeah and it's 1000x better than cavemen banging on rocks in the stone age, so the peasantry should be 1000x as grateful
> Not really because there are too many other variables
You can average out countries that equalize property rights to the state vs. average of countries where property variance is respected, and check which ones are doing better vs worse.
> How do you know that creation of value can't exist in the presence of equality?
Equality of output would imply equality of inputs? People will no longer have the right to decide for themselves if they want to be busy creating wealth or busy doing more social/pleasurable things?
> yeah and it's 1000x better than cavemen banging on rocks in the stone age
Why do you take that improvement for granted? (in the context of today's nuclear treats, it's not a given that we'll able to propel this rate moving forward in the next 100 years, there's a non-zero probability that we wipe ourselves back to the stone age).
Or more generically, if you had to chose between two economic policies, one with 1'000x improvement where people can take risks and see variation in rewards according to their choices (and an element of luck/historical background), and another one where everyone is forced to the same output, irrespective of their actions, which leads some to pursue more pleasure activities to a larger fraction of their existence and the improvement is just 50x, which one would you choose for the society?
Is equality worthy as a goal in itself? And if so, enough in order to stop people in self-selecting doing what they want and letting them keep some percentage as a reward for assuming the risk? Even if it leads us as a society to slower growth?
Since bonds are always reaching their promised payout terms upon their maturity, you can manage that risk through proper alignment in maturity dates.
You can purchase multiple bonds that are spread around their term duration. E.g. buy now 1-year bonds, and repeat every 3 months. After 4 such cycles, you will now always have bonds reaching maturity every 3 months.
Or just buy shorter term ones to begin with (if the interest is still appealing), and move to longer term ones once you have enough maturity diversity for the advice in the previous paragraph.
This works if you never need to liquidate early. For most people such a need to get their cash out occasionally happens. Regardless of how you stagger your bonds, if you need to sell before maturity, there is a chance they will be worth less.
Bond ladders are almost exactly the same as CD ladders. Bonds and CDs are almost exactly the same thing, mathematically.
The tax treatment is a tiny bit different. T-bill interest is exempt from state/local tax. CD interest is not.
Default risk is the tiniest bit different, but not by much. With the CD, there is some probability that the bank will fail, at which point you then need to wait for the gears of the FDIC to slowly turn to pay you your CD insurance. The FDIC actually doesn't have that much money, so in a sufficiently large bank run the Federal Reserve will have to backstop it. On the other hand, you can just buy a T-bill directly from the Treasury, which is also backstopped by the Fed. So there are some additional middlemen in the case of the CD. Maybe that's good -- more failures in a row are necessary before you get to the Fed. Maybe that's bad -- there are more parties and more bureaucracy involved in the unlikely event of a bank failure. I think you might as well go straight to the Treasury for the high rate and better tax treatment.
(Or I'd plow it into the S&P 500 because T-bills ain't never gonna outpace inflation, no matter what they say the numbers are.)
If the business is the customer, upgrading a machine increases the customer price hence it requires communication as it changes the benefits/cost value proposition.
The trick is to wrap your technology with a service-style abstraction so you don't have to communicate all of these painful little details. Then, all of those details get rolled up into something like a quarterly report.
The terms of this relationship (contract) should be approximately along lines of "you provide us a service with a certain level of quality and in return we grant you an annual budget of $X".
At a certain point, having detailed analysis of every last expense will cost you way more money than it will save.
Not upgrading a machine affects quality of service. If they don’t trust that that’ll happen until they can feel the problem themselves, what do they have an IT team for?
Yes, I’m familiar with how it’s used. And its usage seems pretty clearly at odds with “People cannot create fiat currencies out of thin air without it being a crime”. (I could have used any number of other examples - WoW gold, Disney Dollars, etc.)
Yea, turns out the rule of law works rather well, and when it doesn't work well nothing is going to stop the henchmen from beating you to death with a hammer anyway. What makes a government a government is their monopoly on violence, what makes a good government good is only having to minimally exercise their monopoly.
Yes, it works well for transferring enormous amounts of wealth into a few hands. As seen ever since the introduction of fiat money, for thousands of years of history.
The essential point is that they are not ruler or lords or saviors. We hired them to work for us, and democracies turn out to work better than any other form of government in history (and it's not close).
We are the rulers, lords, and the only hope for our own salvation. You'd better get to work.
I didn't hire or vote for any central banker, and neither did you. We were born into the fiat system, the rules already written and specifically made to exploit us.
And I completely agree with your second paragraph.
I did vote for my president, who hired the central bankers, and senators, who confirmed them. They also built the entire structure of the current fiat system over time.
Vs the very poor peasants of the people who run the mining companies or control the software? Haven’t you just swapped one set of sovereigns for another?
Except that anybody can mine, just like anybody could mine gold or trap squirrels. To make fiat currency emissions you need to be born into the right family.
I created a "Reddit for News" where various RSS feeds provide an initial stream of stories but people have Reddit-like abilities to upvote or submit their own.
It's at https://www.goobix.com/news/ , I would be happy to get feedback or build capabilities people feel as missing.
Just to remember that there are different sorts of liabilities and punishment.
For example, losing one's net worth might be an example. Shareholders are already subject to it, while for employees, even when fired, they just lose the potential of future earnings, leaving their accumulated net worth untouched.
Wikipedia calls this the principal-agent problem ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble... ). Should employees in a position of power be agents that are putting up some collateral as a guarantee to be forfeit in case things go south? Or otherwise would unwarranted risk-taking behavior in their job be enough to go to jail when the results of their actions impact others in the world at large negatively?
The economic system creates values (and you can compare it with alternatives such as Soviet Union to realize just by how much). It does this in an unequal way, by chance, historical context and self-selection preferences. But the creation of value still trumps any inequality it might have. With TV, air conditioning and phones, an entry mid-class person in US is having it ten times better than the kings of middle ages.