why would anyone be worried about redistribution of wealth anyway?

Redistribution of wealth is a euphemism for transfer of wealth, which is a fancy way of saying theft. (Neo-Cons also redistributed wealth — to the already rich. The propaganda of the modern Republican Party conveniently forgets to mention this, however.)

Transfer of wealth also causes destruction of wealth, because it distorts market signals in terms of what problems people are working on, or otherwise disrupts investment turnover. It’s like somebody changing the rules in the middle of a game. (“Sorry Obama, we used to count votes, now we count bacon.”)

If the well-to-do capitalist of today truly believes in capitalism, then they will stay wealthy and others will become wealthy. If on the other hand,those given a chance at creating wealth blow it, that money will end up back in the hands of the wealthy anyway.

Except that wealth is not zero-sum.

Stealing — whether from the rich to the poor, or from the poor to the rich — reduces in absolute terms the total amount of wealth in the world. The only way to regain those losses are through the same honest trade and investment as creates all wealth. aka “growing the pie”, or “profit”.

“Fun toys are fun.”

–Ralph Wiggum

The only way to regain those losses are through the same honest trade and investment as creates all wealth.

I should add that this still costs us time, in absolute terms. And I’m impatient for The Future; thus I don’t take kindly to people holding us back from progress (small-P).

Is the surface of a planet really the right place for an expanding technological civilization?

I wish this weren’t the comments section of a blog, because I would love to have a conversation about this. Do you have any links where I can read more about this idea?

What immediately strikes me is,
1) Infants are naturally possessive, as well as animals.
2) Being naturally “communal” and sharing is not mutually exclusive with being naturally protective of property – I actually agree with you that humans are naturally cooperative, which is a large part of why I think laissez faire works so well.
3) What is the alternative to agriculture? Unless you’re saying that humans should remain small bands of tribal foragers? Do you also, then, think that human life spans should have remained as short as they were when this was true, or do you believe that a modern industrial society could exist at the same time as a hunter/gatherer lifestyle?

Personally, I’d call it recovery of stolen goods. How do you think the wealthy got it in the first place?

It may have to do with US conservatives’ proclivity to astroturf. That’s not saying the left doesn’t do it, but ‘turfing is actively promoted by the GOP (see: McCain Points), and GOP astroturf has ended up in newspaper Letter to the Editor sections–the same letter, little to no differences in prose but with different signed names.

It also seems like Republicans use forwarded email as a standard method of passing along (dis)information. From Clinton-ran-cocaine-out-of-Mena to Obama-is-a-Muslim, Republican operatives have a tradition of getting fringe rumors into the mainstream by dispersing it through email.

Personally, I’d call it recovery of stolen goods. How do you think the wealthy got it in the first place?

While some are wealthy because of theft, others are wealthy due to honest return on investment (which, recursively, is typically accelerating — hence legitimate wealth disparity).

Furthermore, are you suggesting that two wrongs make a right? Or, that the ends justify the means?

Taxes.

Private property.

That said, “redistribution of wealth” is a poorly chosen phrase, it brings up images of the state confiscating homes and turning them into public housing like a scene from Dr. Zhivago, and that’s exactly what wing-nuts see when they hear that phrase. It’s foolish for Obama to use this phrase, just like Bush using the word “crusade” when discussing the invasion of Iraq; in neither case does the phrase mean exactly what the opposition thinks it means, but there’s no un-ringing of that bell.

Recovery of stolen goods is not a wrong.

But there’s a burden of proof that you’re taking the right things from the right people, and giving the right things back to the right people.

That would also properly be in the purview of a judiciary, not a legislature. (Setting aside the overwhelming danger of governments powerful enough to perform such redistribution.)

Who actually says, “But it really is more fair this way.”

When the system of wealth serves these purposes, it is good and useful. But like any system, it can be gamed to produce results that are not desirable – concentrations of wealth that make it impossible for some people to ever have what they want, and that allow other people to have so much more than what they need that they wind up causing great harm through their consumption.

Ideally the system would be balanced out by ethical behavior on the part of its participants. But in practice, it is frequently the case that people act like bacteria rather than like ethical beings, and so the system can get wildly out of tune.

The process of tuning the distribution of wealth is necessary because of this. The idea that it will simply fall into tune on its own is kind of crazy. The idea that wealth and property have some inherent trueness that makes them more important than the common wealth, more important than making sure that people who work hard and contribute to society wind up with what they need, is simply crazy.

So yeah, some people are alarmed when the political discourse turns to redistribution of wealth. And they come up with pejorative ways to describe it, like the person who called it “theft.”

But they’re wrong. Redistribution of wealth is no more “theft” than is the existence of wealth in the first place. Wealth is a tool, not an idol to be worshiped. Like any good tool, it needs to be maintained. If you think otherwise, go to Somalia and try to make a living.

A socialist libertarian? I’m not sure I can wrap my head around that.

“That sounds a little conspiratorial to me. You’re suggesting that there’s a subversive set of people intentionally leading the mass of the population into poverty so that they can benefit.”

I accept the standard analysis of class. The ruling class is aware of itself and of what is or isn’t in it’s best interest. The working class is not. That’s why we have the GOP and it’s “Southern Strategy” of appealing to white racists or fundamentalists as a means to power. Once in power they didn’t give a shit about their base’s concerns and laughed at them behind their backs. It’s a con. The uneducated, disaffected white males who form much of the GOP base will believe anything. You can lie to their face, pick their pocket right before their eyes and they still believe whatever BS you tell them.

Now combine an ignorant, gullible group of people who look to authorities to tell them what to believe, combine that with a greedy, power hungry, sociopathic ruling class and boy oh boy… fun times!

“economics doesn’t address ecology”

No, but they are linked. Psychological activity doesn’t cause brain cancer, economic activity can cause ecological collapse. Traditionally we just move on to fresh waters and non depleted land. The point is that can’t go one forever and a time of reckoning will come when the true costs of things we take for granted now will be revealed.

“So what you’re saying is that humans are intentionally and maliciously trying to commit violence against the earth. I just don’t buy it.”

My choice of words was hyperbole I suppose. Perhaps “There are some people who are pursuing self destructive strategies.” I am skeptical of the claim that we will just innovate our way out of every crisis. Maybe we won’t, or maybe we will but it will only be available to the few who will bravely shoulder on while 90% of humanity perishes.

“So it seems to me that the best way to solve some of these problems is to spread that wealth to all people, or as many as possible.”

Well I’m all for that, and really, I am at heart a pragmatist. So if the only difference between us is the means by which that end is achieved we aren’t that far apart. I want the best outcome for as many people as possible. We face enormous challenges and I’m skeptical that the current clowns in charge, Dems or Repubs, are capable of meeting them. So I express my skepticism because… that’s what you do on blogs I guess.

I hope we’re all clear that Obama is not actually saying this, right? Conservative extremists are fear based and project those fears onto a host of perceived enemies. They are also rigidly authoritarian and top-down. This video was out there long ago and discussed on third tier sites, but things do not percolate up among conservatives. They use blast faxes and mass e-mail lists to disseminate the latest talking points. The base sure as hell doesn’t decide what those talking points are. They dutifully cut ‘n paste them into as many blogs as they can. Most are barely even literate.

BTW, Marx was right, sooo… neener. :/

Well, you can’t just call it “crazy” and win the argument. There’s a lot of history and theory that suggests that it will just fall into tune on its own. Not perfectly, perhaps, but better than it’s doing now when we’re trying to force it.

And I’m troubled by your dismissal of property rights. I agree that there’s no inherent “trueness” about things we value, but it seems we have an instinctive valuation of property rights, based on views of theft in all societies (that I know of), along with views on the initiation of force. You wouldn’t say a thief who steals your wallet has any claim to it. You would say it’s yours, and you’d try to get it back. That’s instinctive, and it follows from the principle of self ownership.

But you’re presenting a false dichotomy, between property rights and welfare. Sure, if property rights resulted in mass destitution, then they should be dismissed despite what I may hold in principle. But all evidence suggests the opposite: strong enforcement of property rights increases the general welfare. So luckily we don’t have to make that choice.

I’m guessing it works that way because we evolved to best operate as a species. Our instincts, actions, and tendencies were selected for to promote our survival. I don’t have any evidence for that, but it’s my hunch.

The earth once belonged to itself. Now it’s owned by a tiny fraction of the members of a single species. Strong enforcement of property rights helps the strong to eat the weak. Yet the rich exploit the fears of the poor to deliver themselves to their own slaughter.

Be careful what you wish for.

Debating the legacies of racism and wealth with my legacy-student southern roommate, we reached an impasse. I argued that, while rights are much much closer to equal now than they have ever been, the historical legacy of wealth and inheritance has unfairly privileged whites to the detriment of everyone else (because, well, that’s how privilege works). He didn’t see things that way, and instead was of the opinion that laws like Affirmative Action grant non-whites more rights than whites, and that he (again, a legacy student) is disadvantaged because of his race, and penalized for his wealth.

The problem is not knowing that he’s wrong – he is, as any antiracist activist will tell you. The problem is convincing him that because he doesn’t have a legacy of disenfranchisement, he has a legacy of privilege, and that effects of that legacy remain and are harmful today. He won’t be convinced of this, because he doesn’t see reality that way. He sees redistribution of wealth as an affront to his rights, as the exploitation of democracy by the lazy, and as something very distantly connected to slavery. If there is an injustice that redistribution could have helped, it’s certainly now beyond the statue of limitations.

Oh, and why am I talking about race here? Because in the US, and especially when talking about the Warren Court, we are dealing with legacies of race, slavery, and economics that confuse and frustrate class consciousness. This video does a really good job of dismissing all those concerns as radical, greedy, and self-serving, and threatening to self-made (white) rugged individualists, and it’s really hard to come up with a liberal counter-argument.

On the other hand, this is one of the best things I’ve ever heard Obama say. Show it to democrats, and the impulse isn’t to argue against it – it’s to say “yeah, that was awesome. What’s your problem?”

Well I’m all for that, and really, I am at heart a pragmatist. So if the only difference between us is the means by which that end is achieved we aren’t that far apart. I want the best outcome for as many people as possible.
This sums it all up. Indeed, this is the main difference between liberals and libertarians, in my view. I’ll make a caveat, though: my goal is not equality of wealth, or economic egalitarianism. That way lies madness.

My goal is to raise everyone’s standard of living as highly as possible, where everyone can get what they need and have something left over to entertain themselves with. There will always probably be about 5% of the population who can’t do that by themselves, but I think they’re most effectively helped through voluntarism, not government welfare.

There will always be a disparity of wealth. The two extremes (I believe) are a centrally planned economy with the oligarchy at the very top and everyone else falling to the very bottom; and a free market economy, with your stray billionaire, your stray homeless person, but with the vast bulk of people occupying a comfortable and varied middle ground.

Milton Friedman (not all bad, really) put it well, I thought, when he said, “if you put egalitarianism above freedom, you get neither. If you put freedom above egalitarianism, you get a large measure of both.” I think history has borne out that claim.

There is the moral debate, though, and I think we differ there. I don’t consider theft or assault to be any more justified when done by an elected official, or due to an elected law. But honestly these debates always come down to pragmatics. It doesn’t matter what I find moral; if it resulted in mass suffering no one would care.

We face enormous challenges and I’m skeptical that the current clowns in charge, Dems or Repubs, are capable of meeting them. So I express my skepticism because… that’s what you do on blogs I guess.
I agree with you there. Both parties are pretty damn similar. We don’t really have a good choice, or a very good democracy in this country. Of course, I don’t know if it would be much better if we did have a good democracy.

These days one need simply point to the smoldering ruins of our global economy. When an experiment fails real scientists adjust their theories in light of hard realism. Ideologues and libertarians do the opposite.

“it seems we have an instinctive valuation of property rights”

Ah no, that’s learned, and not very well at that. The concept of property is new and a very recent human creation. Nature knows of no such thing. If anything we humans are naturally communal and share everything. This recent experiment of ours with agriculture may come to an end one day. It’s inherently unsustainable.

How is it then that our “pie” in the U.S. is so huge, but only a small fraction own most of that pie? A totally free market of “honest trade”, implemented today would grotesquely favor the already rich and powerful. How do you ensure that everyone gets a fair start and a fair chance? Maybe in some fantasy world where there is no racism, nationalism, sexism, or class bigotry, along with equal opportunities of resources, education, etc., we could entertain the idea, but until then free market rhetoric is mainly used as apologetics to explain “legitimate wealth disparity”.

You say that wealth disparity can be explained by an the accelerating returns of “honest investments”, without defining what you mean by “honest”. It’s certainly possible to have a world of honest capitalists that let the world’s population starve, not to mention the externalities of resource depletion, pollution, and catastrophic, irreversible ecological destruction. Who’s going to pay for my emphysema treatments because the air I breathe has been polluted by countless honest capitalists previous to my existence? What about the water I drink? The sun that’s burning through a swiss cheese ozone layer? The world is not an infinite strip mine or garbage can.

Having said that, though, I agree with you to the extent that I believe that it’s exactly Friedman’s specific brand of economics, as carried out by Greenspan and Bernanke, that lead us to this mess – not by too little regulation, but by central planning of the money supply via the Federal Reserve. It’s one of the ways in which Friedman was not a libertarian.

I don’t really follow how Ayn Rand falls into that, though – she’s not an economist and therefore doesn’t advocate an economic policy. I’m not a Randian, because I dislike her almost militant love of corporations, but I bet me ‘n her are pretty similar from your perspective.

“I remember the 1980′s when Reagan promoted the ideas of another nutcase, Aurthur Laffer”
For a laugh, watch Peter Schiff vs Art Laffer from 2006.
I knew back then as I know now it was all just bullshit meant to pull the wool over people’s eyes while the rich and powerful rob us all blind.
That sounds a little conspiratorial to me. You’re suggesting that there’s a subversive set of people intentionally leading the mass of the population into poverty so that they can benefit. I don’t believe that, no matter how wrong-headed I think our policies are most of the time. It’s magical thinking. Show me some evidence.
More likely, this is a complicated topic with no clear right answer that requires massive amounts of data and theory to resolve. Therefore, very few people exactly agree. It’s the same with much of science, except this particular field has more implications on our day-to-day lives, so we pay attention to the controversies more.

“Human culture is socially constructed. Including gender which people normally assume is biologically determined. I think the word you’re looking for is territorial. That’s not quite the same as property. Back to the point… I reject the implied essentialism that humans “are” any one particular thing.”
Fair enough. Is there any data to back up either side of the issue? It seems to me right now that regardless of which of us is correct (if either), they’d be indistinguishable from a statistical perspective. I’d love to see some studies on this, if you have any. It sounds like you know more about this than me.

“Hunter gatherers have no concept of property whatsoever. Everyone shares, everyone benefits. I believe we evolved that survival strategy because it is superior to the alternatives.”
I’d especially like to see studies done on this – I believe there are some ethnographies on the !Kung, for example – because I suspect you’re romanticizing them. Although your point remains, if foragers don’t have a strong sense of property rights, then they’re probably not instinctual, which is fair.

“Economists don’t even consider externalities and naively treat the Earth’s resources as infinite. I guess that’s ok as long as you understand one needs to in order to do economics.”
That’s because economics doesn’t address ecology. It would be like criticizing psychology for not addressing what causes brain cancer.
What economics can tell us, however, is that as resources become more scarce, they’ll become more expensive, which will lead other people to invest in those resources, or in developing substitutes. I’m not saying that every environmental problem can be solved in this way, but if it’s possible to solve it, it’ll be solved as demand for a solution increases.
What I don’t believe is that central planning can solve those problems better than free people. If those problems aren’t solvable on the free market, then they’re not solvable.

“Western civilization is at war with traditional tribal cultures. That’s what this war against terror is really about. “Terrorism” is just a subterfuge. Free market capitalism is also at war with the Earth.”
I think you’re abusing language, here. Who’s at war with the earth? Free-market capitalism is a system, not capable of doing anything. It consists of people making free choices. War is an intentional and malicious act of extended and organized violence against another entity. So what you’re saying is that humans are intentionally and maliciously trying to commit violence against the earth. I just don’t buy it. Could there be unintended consequences and externalities to our actions? Certainly. But that’s not the same as war. Now the question is, what system is best suited to address those externalities as they arise? What system is best at innovation, such that it could solve these problems? Is it central planning? History doesn’t bear that out.

Guess who’s going to win that one? I mean, in forty years we won’t be able to grow wheat in the continental US. Let that sink in and ponder what it means for you and your children.”
To qualify, given modern agricultural technology and current population growth trends, we won’t be able to grow wheat in the continental U.S. But neither of those things are static. For one, as a society becomes wealthier its population growth slows. Almost all population growth in the U.S. today is through immigration. That’s because non-immigrant couples have an average of 1.5 children. That’s a shrinking population.
And if wheat production becomes difficult, we’ll have to find other ways of producing it, or seek substitutes. Again, central planning can’t do that as well as the free market.

So it seems to me that the best way to solve some of these problems is to spread that wealth to all people, or as many as possible. In my view, that means economic freedom, which I believe spreads wealth to the vast majority of people in a faster and more stable way than any other system. You disagree, I know.

BTW James, do I know you? I knew a James Joyce who was I believe a nephew of the famous author. You from Minnesota?
Heh, no, it’s not my real name. It’s just an internet handle I’ve picked up for whatever reason. I’m in NYC.

PS. Speculation bait for commenters: why do some videos generate almost all the traffic at a single YouTube version (e.g. Obama Girl) while others, such as this video, get reposted several different times to YouTube, even though the content is not altered? What makes one video have a canonical version and another not?

I consider these to be deeply interesting questions. In this case, several possible factors suggest themselves:

* The fact that one is a serious attempt at politics while the other is primarily entertainment.

* One is a music video while the other is spoken audio only.

* Timing (ie before the primaries vs before the presidential election).

* Media pickup, or lack thereof. (I’m not so sure about this one cos I don’t actually watch TV, but fwiw I’d heard about the Obama Girl video before now, whereas the wealth redistribution video was new to me.)

* Different social structure (and meme transmission) between ‘left’ and ‘right’ wing activists. This was discussed in Clay’s earlier post http://www.boingboing.net/2008/12/04/video-from-the-presi.html , which cited ‘homophilous forwarding along conservative channels’. Grimc’s comment (#20) invokes something similar with GOP ‘astroturfing’. Personally I’m not convinced that this mechanism is an exclusively right wing phenomenon. For instance I recall any number of EFF form letters for submission to your congressperson being linked to by this very site (eg go here http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/19/congress-set-to-vote.html and follow the links).

But here’s the kicker: if you look at the actual data, it seems there’s nothing to explain! *Both* of these videos have one major source (with 12,000,000+ vs 2,000,000+ hits) and dozens of imitators. The only real difference is that Obama Girl seems to have generated a lot more ‘noise’ (parodies etc), and one of its reposts (from barelypolitical) also attracts major traffic, with over 1,000,000 hits.

So if you want to address the question of what makes one video achieve canonical status and another not, then I’d suggest that a side-by-side comparison of these two videos probably isn’t the best place to start.