I see what you're saying. Personally, I think a fiduciary duty towards stakeholders is a much better approach, and will actually be more profitable than the short-term 10-Q-based decision making many publicly traded firms have. Stakeholders, in case the term is unfamiliar to anyone, would include all involved in the life of the firm, such as employees, communities in which business operations are located, suppliers, customers, etc., as well as shareholders. Shareholders are still very important in my model: without them, precious little could get done, but they're not the only people to whom the firm is beholden. As for personhood: well, imho, it's a wee bit more complicated than that. I absolutely agree that giving a corporation the same rights (without the responsibilites ) of an actual human being is reprehensible. But there does need to be a mechanism whereby folks can go into business without subjecting themselves (any more than necessary) to financial ruin. There's a new business here in San Diego. It's an indoor surfing trainer, with a wave machine. Folks climb on a surfboard, wave starts up, folks surf. Lots of fun (I imagine) but a bit dangerous. No one person should have to hold the liability for this. However, the market supports this particular venture. Without the corporate veil, how could this company go into business? Small firms like this incorporate precisely because of the liability shield. Non-profits have the same benefits, but without the double-taxation. Now, extending this to the right to free speech -- that's bizarre. As for the rest of your explanation: market as panacea for human ills, concentration of power amongst a moneyed few, politicians more beholden to corporate lobbying than personal lobbying -- I'm down.
There we go; in fact, this is the model I argue in my take on sports/football governance, the first of three books about which hopefully will be completed soon. I'm 100% for this approach. Too bad it doesn't exist. I think that the above stakeholder model has room for such offerings. I think that the insurance and litigation culture (or the sensibilities and spin surrounding them, at least) get substantively changed and affected by a requirement for businesses of all type to be duty-bound to the stakeholders in a community rather than the model we have now. Changing that changes everything.
I disagree; I think that the promise of authentic social mobility is the central pillar upon which assent to the capital take on what freedom can be is what drives commitment to the American model now, and has for a long time. Wealth accumulation reduces that possibility, has reduced it, for some time now. Even if we reduce the argument to just the numbers on inherited wealth, what do you think that their offspring's protfolio will look like? More entrenched, and hoping to further entrench their own dynastic position, or socially mobile? American freedoms and values are still being formed; as a nation, we just GOT here; very few things can be said to be written in stone. You know as well as I do the various freedoms and values that were considered right and moral and just in the FOunding and early propagation of the nation that are considered patently immoral and pathological today. We're young, and still defining what we can be. I appreciate the spirit of that, while respectfully disagreeing.
If there was a finite amount of wealth out there, I may agree with you. But it's not the truth. Wealth is there to be created and the creation of it is the central pillar of upward mobility. But, I'm just an angry white boy poser ass bitch, so what the fcuk do I know.
Either you are overly sensitive, or your intellect just needs to grow a pair. I suppose a "fukc you, too" could be in order. Maybe it's just me, but when a group of reasonable, rational people refute my views, I usually want to query them further, or at least re-examine how I arrived at them. Most of what's been posted in this thread is only "guilt-centered rebuke, and various and sundry bullsh!t" because your over-sensitivity and/or intellectual gutlessness needed to call it that. Perhaps it's disappointing that nobody here was willing to join your wealth-redistribution hatefest, but such a chickensh!t dismissal of just about everybody else's views is an act of transparent desperation, something I'd expect from the dumb kids in highschool debate.
Here's a very very simple principle: If it's your money, and you acquired it legally and morally, you can do whatever you want with it, as long as what you do with it isn't immoral (or illegal, assuming the law doesn't violate YOUR individual freedom). If that means giving it to your children, you can give it to your children. If that means spending it frivolously, you can spend it frivolously. Wanna save it and invest it? Go right ahead. If that means giving it all away to charitable causes, then by all means, you should be allowed to do that, too. Wanna do some combination? Yep, you should be able to do that, too. It's your money; it's not society's money, or the money of some communitarian group, Teddy Roosevelt notwithstanding. Individual liberty, pal. Individual liberty. This concept is hard for Mel to grasp. Only someone with the warped sensibility of Mel would assume that a person who WANTS to give it to their children, shouldn't because, well, Mel and his ilk, in their wisdom, believe that they know what's best for that person's children, and therfore will have to stand in the way of that person exercising his individual freedom. Since Mel won't be able to process the meaning of individual freedom -- because for him, and his ilk, the collective wisdom is ALWAYS better, and more enlightened than the freedom of any one individual -- this discussion is over.
Either you are overly sensitive, or your intellect just needs to grow a pair. I should have included your contributions in those that have benefitted the discussion; mea culpa.
Cheer up Mel. It is true that some people don't deserve to inherit money. But in the long run, most of the people who are too irresponsible to deserve their inheritance will probably end up losing it anyway. And if they manage to keep it, I think they don't enjoy it as much as those of us who earned every penny we have. As far as the income gap, I think in general terms in America more than in places like Brazil or China those who get superrich tend to be achievers rather than corrupt wealth-gatherers. The reason there is such an income gap is that perhaps in American society responsibility and success are rewarded too highly. But there are reasons for it. CEO's make millions because they are responsible for billions. Athletes and celebrities make millons because they create billions in wealth. Some entrepeneurs can make billions, but only a very few of the most succesful of them do. Should these achievers not be making what they are making? Is that what is being proposed in this thread?
Yes they should. Nobody argues Bill Gates is making too much. People might have problem if he passed all of these wealth to his son and daughter, who just happened to be two lucky sperms.
I didn't even bother reading this. It's unjust to accumulate wealth? Why not take a dump on the Statue of Liberty and eat a Bald Eagle sandwich while espousing this wisdom? Holy crap! Accumulating great gobs of wealth is the American way!!!
We're all lucky sperms. Do you have any idea of your odds of being the one sperm to come out off your father's balls to actually get to fertilize your mother's egg? Even the biggest losers among us managed to win against all odds the biggest, most important race of their lives, basically by sheer luck. So some lucky bastards came out of the ordeal with a little more than others. What's the problem? We should be thankful with our lot and not envy what others got.
Mel’s theory is that societies where the wealth is concentrated and passed down from generation to generation tend to atrophy. Hardly describes the American economy, where most millionaires are self-made, but the hypothesis probably has validity.
The ancient Egyptians seemed to do just fine with their wealth concentration for thousands of years, but it is true that their society could hardly have been called dynamic. It probably sucked to be an Egyptian. Maybe it proves Mel's point. Didn't the ancient Hebrews have a year of reckoning, (the year of Jubilee) every 50 years in which all debts were forgiven and everything was redistributed fairly? I bet if we did that, after a couple of years most of the money would go back to the same people.
You're right, people often amass fortunes only to lose it all and the start all over and get rich again. That's why capitalism works.
Oh nothing. Let's start by doing away with meritocracy altogether. The "Super Bowl" now goes to all of the NFL teams who participate. No team is allowed to beat another team by having better players/coaches/etc. No more useless Fifa rankings. All rankings are now alphabetical, then rotate weekly to allow each country to have its team at the top of the pile. Any research or development must be shared with anyone who wants it, rather or not they can actually use it for good. Yea. Merit is overrated. No more grades in school. Only marks for attendance. Meritocracy is the best and most efficient use of labor, etc yet devised. The alternatives pale miserably in comparison...
Highlights the need for tax reform, not wealth redistribution. And from the same article: Over all, the top 2 percent of earners, the 2.5 million filers with income of $200,000 or more, paid almost 27 cents in taxes for each dollar of income they reported in 2002, other I.R.S. data showed. This group accounted for 53.5 percent of the income tax paid by all Americans.
The last figures I saw from the IRS (for tax year 2001), showed the bottom 50% of households (which included incomes up to $42,228) paid less than 4% of the country's tax revenues. Hmm....does anyone think the benefits they receive are less than 4% or revenue? But what about meritocracy? Most Americans should be glad they don't live in a true meritocracy.