Birth Right and The Secular Basis of Inheritance

[Kharakov]

Quite literally, your net worth is a numerical indicator of how much society is in debt to you - how much you have given, but not yet gotten back.

Society is deeply indebted to the liars, hustlers, and warlords of the world.


... and owes very little to the workers who made it possible.

 

[bigfield]

Quite literally, your net worth is a numerical indicator of how much society is in debt to you - how much you have given, but not yet gotten back.

Society is deeply indebted to the liars, hustlers, and warlords of the world.

... and owes very little to the workers who made it possible.

Or to put it another way, the liars, hustlers and warlords have all accrued a large amount of undeserved credit.

Money certainly isn't a foolproof system.

 

[rousseau]

It is BY DEFINITION. That's what money IS - a record of how much society owes to the person who holds that money.

When a person dies with an amount of money, they have put work into a system, and received output in return. As an autonomous person with their own property, I don't see why they shouldn't be able to do what they want with it?

Because they are dead, and dead people don't want things.

Scratch out humans and make an analogy to squirrels. If a squirrel collects a bunch of nuts, dies, and it's children are left to try and survive, in the perspective of the squirrel that's died why would they not want their storage to go to their children? Their children are their responsibility. It's no different from money.

Maybe in someone's version of an ideal world your logic makes sense, but if someone works their whole life, accumulates energy, and it's willed away from them when they die, that's theft.

You can't steal from a dead person. Dead people have neither possessions nor desires.

And squirrels don't leave anything to their heirs - their stash of nuts goes to whatever animal finds them first, or (more often) goes un-eaten.

What does society owe someone with a lot of money? Goods and services? That's not a debt, that's an exchange.

It's a debt. Money is worthless except as a placeholder for debt.

Money is debt and debt is money. That's what they are.

Ok, I'm going to try to better understand your viewpoint. This is how I see money:

1) Person A does work for material wealth in the form of money

Where does that money come from?

2) Person B provides goods or services in the form of work in exchange for person A's money

Where did person A get money from?

3) Now person A has goods or services, and person B has the money *he or she worked for*

But how did person A get money to begin with?

Maybe in some scenario calling someone's wealth a debt to society makes sense, I just don't understand how the word 'debt' applies here.

Because money makes debt transferable. If you go back along the chain, ultimately you find that money represents a debt.

A basic definition: debt - something, typically money, that is owed or due

I would say 'something, typically measured in dollars, that is owed or due'. Dollars are the unit of debt, just as Joules are the unit of energy.

So forgetting econ 101 for a second, if someone has money they can exchange it for something else. A person that provides a good or service in exchange for someone's money doesn't *owe* them something, they're providing them something in exchange for something else. In my head that's fundamentally different from borrowing from and then re-paying someone.

But the money still represents somebody's debt. It exists because (and only because) someone owes the holder of the money some goods or services - and it is useful because it makes that debt transferable

In my head, this is an important distinction because it's the work that someone does which provides output (wealth) for that person. Sure we've created a society where physical currency is the means of exchange, but in a materialistic sense this 'wealth' belongs to that person. In other words, if you acquire something, you by definition own it unless someone physically or legally takes it away from you. And in our world we are legally entitled to the wealth that we accumulate. I don't think this is a coincidence, it's because money is a physical representation of an individual's physical energy storage, not some vague concept defined by nation-states. So when we die, we currently have the legal right to distribute our own wealth how we like.

If that's not logically sound, please explain where I'm going wrong.

You seem to think that money is a good or a service; But it's not. The money in your wallet is a symbol of the fact that you have provided goods and services to someone, but have not yet received any goods or services in return.

When you think about where money comes from, it all becomes clear. Money appears from nothing when a debt is created. It vanishes when that debt is repaid. While the debt exists, the money acts as a way of transferring that debt to other people.

Consider a barter economy. I have a goat; You want a goat. You have ten chickens; I want ten chickens. We swap. No money is involved, no debts are created.

Now, what if I don't have a goat with me, but I still want your ten chickens? Well, I have a goat at home; So I will give you a piece of paper that says 'Bilby owes Rousseau one goat'. When you are ready, you come and see me, and I give you a goat, and destroy the paper. That paper is a token of the debt I owe you.

Now, perhaps you also want a pig. So you go to the pigman, and he says "I will give you a pig in exchange for a goat". You don't have a goat, yet. But you can cross out your name on the paper that says I owe you a goat, so now you have a paper that says 'Bilby owes the bearer one goat', and give that to the pigman, so that he can come and get a goat from me when he wants one. You have created money - in the form of a one goat bill, drawn on the bank of bilby. That paper is not intrinsically worth anything. But it represents a debt, that you are owed, and can transfer to another person. Whether the pigman will accept it depends only on whether he trusts that I will make good on my debt - whether the bank of bilby is a trusted institution.

Money is the above process writ large. We invent a unit called the 'dollar', which allows us to float the price of anything else on the open market - a goat or a pig is worth $10 today, and a chicken $1 - but now, if the demand for pork goes up, we can increase the price of a pig without affecting the relative prices of chickens or goats, which makes business much more convenient. If the price of goats goes through the floor, you can still swap your $10 bill for 10 chickens, so you are less exposed to risk than you were when holding commodity based money.

Money arises when someone commits to owing someone something. I tell the bank that I will owe them a house; They give me money to represent that debt - bingo, I just got a mortgage. If I give the money back, the bank destroys it, and they no longer have a claim on my house. I give my time to my boss; He gives me money that he got from our customers, who got their money from their customers, who borrowed it on their credit cards - it didn't exist until they spent it, and as soon as they created the money by putting a purchase on their credit card, they created an exactly equal debt. My pay is the debt my boss's customers' customers' accrued.

Money is tokens representing debt. That's all money is. And we value it because it's backed by the government - the value of the money is entirely dependent on our trust that the government will ensure that everyone (including the government themselves) will make good on the debts that the money represents. Quite literally, your net worth is a numerical indicator of how much society is in debt to you - how much you have given, but not yet gotten back.

He who dies in net debt, wins.

Ok, fair enough, I'm clear on your definition.

Can we at least agree, then, that we seem to be talking about two different kinds of debt:

1) One in which one has money (credit) and is owed goods
2) One in which one has borrowed money and owes that money back

In the first case a person does work, earns credit from the system in which they do work, and then is able to use that credit to acquire things.

In the second case, a person doesn't work for, but instead takes credit from the system, in agreement that they will repay that credit back.

For the purposes of this thread the second case is irrelevant, but the fundamental difference between the two cases is that in the first a person earns the credit by doing work. In the second case they only borrow the credit. So we're talking about two different kinds of debt, if that's what we want to call it.

I'd think the fact that this credit is earned is where the legal right for it's owner to distribute it comes from. If you forget the notion of vague economic terms, economic systems are ultimately just frameworks in which people do work to acquire energy to survive. Money is the physical representation of this energy storage. When people acquire it, they are it's legal owner, and any attempt to take it against the owner's will is illegal.

The fact that the owner is going to die means they have an imperative to will their own property how they like, because they earned it during their lifetime. No one else did. They paid their legal share of taxes to support the economic system which made their work possible, and they withdrew a finite amount from the system due to what they inputted into it. At this point I can't think of any real coherent argument why a person shouldn't be able to will their property how they like, outside of it being 'good for society at large'.

This whole process can be put into very concrete evolutionary terms. People who are effective at extracting resources from their environment can better support their heirs, and ultimately reproduce more effectively. The fact that this has been embedded in legal systems is a sign that this type of evolutionary process has been normalized and accepted throughout society: 'if you do work and receive output, you have a right to do what you want with that output'. At this point I'd think we're starting to talk about social universals, wherein we can make headway away from and toward idealism, but the basic evolutionary dynamic will remain.

 

[ksen]

oh my sweet, sweet summer child.

 

[Bomb#20]

...
Money arises when someone commits to owing someone something. I tell the bank that I will owe them a house; They give me money to represent that debt - bingo, I just got a mortgage. If I give the money back, the bank destroys it, and they no longer have a claim on my house. I give my time to my boss; He gives me money that he got from our customers, who got their money from their customers, who borrowed it on their credit cards - it didn't exist until they spent it, and as soon as they created the money by putting a purchase on their credit card, they created an exactly equal debt. My pay is the debt my boss's customers' customers' accrued.

Money is tokens representing debt. That's all money is. And we value it because it's backed by the government - the value of the money is entirely dependent on our trust that the government will ensure that everyone (including the government themselves) will make good on the debts that the money represents. Quite literally, your net worth is a numerical indicator of how much society is in debt to you - how much you have given, but not yet gotten back.

He who dies in net debt, wins.

Ok, fair enough, I'm clear on your definition.

Can we at least agree, then, that we seem to be talking about two different kinds of debt:

1) One in which one has money (credit) and is owed goods
2) One in which one has borrowed money and owes that money back

In the first case a person does work, earns credit from the system in which they do work, and then is able to use that credit to acquire things.

In the second case, a person doesn't work for, but instead takes credit from the system, in agreement that they will repay that credit back.

For the purposes of this thread the second case is irrelevant, but the fundamental difference between the two cases is that in the first a person earns the credit by doing work. In the second case they only borrow the credit. So we're talking about two different kinds of debt, if that's what we want to call it.

Those are actually the same kind of debt; they're different perspectives. (1) is what a debt looks like to the creditor; (2) is what the same debt looks like to the debtor.

So I don't think the second case is irrelevant. When you earn the credit by doing work, the debtor owes you. Bilby says "society" is the debtor. Maybe he means that in some metaphysical sense; but whatever he means, it isn't the case some random member of society owes you and has an obligation to give you goods or services in return for your money. The debtor is the issuer of the IOU. That's not "society". In the U.S. it's Congress that owes you; in Canada I guess it's the Queen, what with the BoC being a Crown Corporation.

I'd think the fact that this credit is earned is where the legal right for it's owner to distribute it comes from.

I don't think that's quite right. Legal systems mostly treat money as ordinary property. If you own a bicycle you have the legal right to give it away or sell it or scrap it for spare parts, regardless of whether you earned the bicycle or your mom gave it to you for your birthday.

You're drawing a valid distinction, though, between what you own and what you owe. But the legal distinction is based on whether the property is "fungible". That's a term-of-art that means individual items are all alike as far as the law is concerned. When you own a bicycle you can swap it for a radio; but when you borrow somebody's bike you can't swap it for a radio and then when the owner asks for his bike back say "Here's your radio." You can't even do it if you subsequently swap the radio for another bike and tell the owner "Here's your bike.", because bicycles are not "fungible". "That's not my bike -- I want my own bike back!"

But money isn't like that. If somebody lends you money it's perfectly okay for you to swap the money for a radio, swap the radio for completely different money, or even keep the radio and swap your bike or your labor for completely different money, and then give the new different money to the guy who lent you the original money. So it seems to me your legal right to distribute your money comes not from the fact that you earned it but from the fact that nobody else has a prior right to get those exact same dollars back from you. The circumstances under which no one has a prior right are "You earned it, or it was a gift, or you borrowed it and it's fungible.".

I once heard one of my coworkers explaining the concept of a "short sale" to another coworker, who was from Bulgaria and had grown up under communism. She was absolutely shocked by the concept. "You're selling stock that you borrowed, stock that you don't own?!?" She was thinking of stock as being like a bicycle rather than like money. And of course she was perfectly right to do so -- money is a debt, a bicycle isn't a debt, and stock isn't a debt. But stock is fungible, and that's what makes the difference. When you dispose of stock shares that aren't yours, you can still make good on your obligation by acquiring different shares and giving those back to the guy who lent you the shares you disposed of.

The fact that the owner is going to die means they have an imperative to will their own property how they like, because they earned it during their lifetime. No one else did. They paid their legal share of taxes to support the economic system which made their work possible, and they withdrew a finite amount from the system due to what they inputted into it. At this point I can't think of any real coherent argument why a person shouldn't be able to will their property how they like, outside of it being 'good for society at large'.

Well, there are a couple of arguments. Money is debt, and a debt is a contractual relationship; the issuer of the IOU can put whatever clauses she pleases into the contract. If the Queen decides she agrees with Bilby that there can be no debts to dead people, she's perfectly entitled to put a clause into her IOU that says her debt is canceled if you die before you collect. If you're not okay with that, you don't have to give anyone any goods or services when he offers you one of her IOUs in payment. You can insist on being paid in silver, or IOUs from the U.S. Congress, or whatever you prefer, and walk away from a deal if the buyer insists on paying in loonies. (Of course, if the Queen never mentioned that her IOUs die with their bearers, and she gave them out to people with the understanding that they could be willed to heirs, and then she retroactively declares that from now on outstanding loonies revert to the state when those holding them die, then she's committing breach-of-contract. If Parliament goes full-Bilby in the future, then it has to make the Queen issue new currency but keep honoring the old.)

But of course, the consequence of the Queen defining her debts to be unpayable after death is that Canadians will take up keeping their money in U.S. dollars or some other willable currency, or else take care to collect on all their debts while they're alive, converting their wealth into land or stock or tanks of oil or whatever. So ultimately, the fact that money is debt and the fact that some people have a philosophical problem with dead people being owed anything don't make any practical difference. The problems of birthright and the secular basis of inheritance remain; we just need to analyze them with respect to real physical stuff instead of with respect to money.

So what coherent argument is there for why a person shouldn't be able to will his tank of oil how he likes? Well, the obvious argument is that he wants to will it to his North Korean cousin, and we're at war with North Korea, and they'll commandeer his cousin's oil and use it to fuel their fighter planes.

 

[rousseau]

Ok, fair enough, I'm clear on your definition.

Can we at least agree, then, that we seem to be talking about two different kinds of debt:

1) One in which one has money (credit) and is owed goods
2) One in which one has borrowed money and owes that money back

In the first case a person does work, earns credit from the system in which they do work, and then is able to use that credit to acquire things.

In the second case, a person doesn't work for, but instead takes credit from the system, in agreement that they will repay that credit back.

For the purposes of this thread the second case is irrelevant, but the fundamental difference between the two cases is that in the first a person earns the credit by doing work. In the second case they only borrow the credit. So we're talking about two different kinds of debt, if that's what we want to call it.

Those are actually the same kind of debt; they're different perspectives. (1) is what a debt looks like to the creditor; (2) is what the same debt looks like to the debtor.

So I don't think the second case is irrelevant. When you earn the credit by doing work, the debtor owes you. Bilby says "society" is the debtor. Maybe he means that in some metaphysical sense; but whatever he means, it isn't the case some random member of society owes you and has an obligation to give you goods or services in return for your money. The debtor is the issuer of the IOU. That's not "society". In the U.S. it's Congress that owes you; in Canada I guess it's the Queen, what with the BoC being a Crown Corporation.

I'd think the fact that this credit is earned is where the legal right for it's owner to distribute it comes from.

I don't think that's quite right. Legal systems mostly treat money as ordinary property. If you own a bicycle you have the legal right to give it away or sell it or scrap it for spare parts, regardless of whether you earned the bicycle or your mom gave it to you for your birthday.

You're drawing a valid distinction, though, between what you own and what you owe. But the legal distinction is based on whether the property is "fungible". That's a term-of-art that means individual items are all alike as far as the law is concerned. When you own a bicycle you can swap it for a radio; but when you borrow somebody's bike you can't swap it for a radio and then when the owner asks for his bike back say "Here's your radio." You can't even do it if you subsequently swap the radio for another bike and tell the owner "Here's your bike.", because bicycles are not "fungible". "That's not my bike -- I want my own bike back!"

But money isn't like that. If somebody lends you money it's perfectly okay for you to swap the money for a radio, swap the radio for completely different money, or even keep the radio and swap your bike or your labor for completely different money, and then give the new different money to the guy who lent you the original money. So it seems to me your legal right to distribute your money comes not from the fact that you earned it but from the fact that nobody else has a prior right to get those exact same dollars back from you. The circumstances under which no one has a prior right are "You earned it, or it was a gift, or you borrowed it and it's fungible.".

I once heard one of my coworkers explaining the concept of a "short sale" to another coworker, who was from Bulgaria and had grown up under communism. She was absolutely shocked by the concept. "You're selling stock that you borrowed, stock that you don't own?!?" She was thinking of stock as being like a bicycle rather than like money. And of course she was perfectly right to do so -- money is a debt, a bicycle isn't a debt, and stock isn't a debt. But stock is fungible, and that's what makes the difference. When you dispose of stock shares that aren't yours, you can still make good on your obligation by acquiring different shares and giving those back to the guy who lent you the shares you disposed of.

The fact that the owner is going to die means they have an imperative to will their own property how they like, because they earned it during their lifetime. No one else did. They paid their legal share of taxes to support the economic system which made their work possible, and they withdrew a finite amount from the system due to what they inputted into it. At this point I can't think of any real coherent argument why a person shouldn't be able to will their property how they like, outside of it being 'good for society at large'.

Well, there are a couple of arguments. Money is debt, and a debt is a contractual relationship; the issuer of the IOU can put whatever clauses she pleases into the contract. If the Queen decides she agrees with Bilby that there can be no debts to dead people, she's perfectly entitled to put a clause into her IOU that says her debt is canceled if you die before you collect. If you're not okay with that, you don't have to give anyone any goods or services when he offers you one of her IOUs in payment. You can insist on being paid in silver, or IOUs from the U.S. Congress, or whatever you prefer, and walk away from a deal if the buyer insists on paying in loonies. (Of course, if the Queen never mentioned that her IOUs die with their bearers, and she gave them out to people with the understanding that they could be willed to heirs, and then she retroactively declares that from now on outstanding loonies revert to the state when those holding them die, then she's committing breach-of-contract. If Parliament goes full-Bilby in the future, then it has to make the Queen issue new currency but keep honoring the old.)

But of course, the consequence of the Queen defining her debts to be unpayable after death is that Canadians will take up keeping their money in U.S. dollars or some other willable currency, or else take care to collect on all their debts while they're alive, converting their wealth into land or stock or tanks of oil or whatever. So ultimately, the fact that money is debt and the fact that some people have a philosophical problem with dead people being owed anything don't make any practical difference. The problems of birthright and the secular basis of inheritance remain; we just need to analyze them with respect to real physical stuff instead of with respect to money.

So what coherent argument is there for why a person shouldn't be able to will his tank of oil how he likes? Well, the obvious argument is that he wants to will it to his North Korean cousin, and we're at war with North Korea, and they'll commandeer his cousin's oil and use it to fuel their fighter planes.

What I'm taking out of this pertaining to the core of my argument is that human 'work' has become tied up with the society in which it takes place. So it is feasible that one's right to distribute their earnings could be taken away by those who set laws. In that way there's no natural right to confer one's inheritance, although historically things have tended that way (which I think speaks to my argument that some right to one's earnings is a cultural universal).

At this point we're talking about libertarianism vs collectivism. The idea that one has 'earned' something is rooted in the idea that inherent (genetic) ability confers natural born rights on someone. In other words, if I'm genetically more able to earn money, I have an inherent right to a better well-being and more offspring than you. The opposite side of the spectrum says something about lottery and privilege here, and that people's quality of life needs to be equalized despite inherent differences.

The former is quite literally how living things work, the latter represents an over-coming of that dynamic. So where do we end up falling if we have some arbitrary government setting the laws? Will there ever be a point that people lose complete rights over their earnings? I'm hesitant to say yes, but who knows.

 

[Bomb#20]

What I'm taking out of this pertaining to the core of my argument is that human 'work' has become tied up with the society in which it takes place. So it is feasible that one's right to distribute their earnings could be taken away by those who set laws.

Quite so -- it's been taken away many times throughout history, by slavers, by conquerors, and by theocrats, fascists and communists.

In that way there's no natural right to confer one's inheritance, although historically things have tended that way (which I think speaks to my argument that some right to one's earnings is a cultural universal).

Well, just because a right has legally been systematically violated in some societies doesn't mean it isn't a natural right; all it means is those who set laws in those societies are scoundrels. But you're right that property and inheritance are human universals. Even societies that nominally abolish them don't abolish them for everybody.

At this point we're talking about libertarianism vs collectivism. The idea that one has 'earned' something is rooted in the idea that inherent (genetic) ability confers natural born rights on someone. In other words, if I'm genetically more able to earn money, I have an inherent right to a better well-being and more offspring than you.

Why do you think that's what the idea is rooted in? The idea of earning is far older than ideas about genetics and evolution.

Besides, who the heck thinks being more able to earn gives you a right to better well-being? What's generally considered to give you a right to better well-being is actually earning more, not merely having more ability to. Suppose Alice can load a thousand pounds of cargo onto a ship in an hour and and Bob can load two thousand pounds. Nobody is going to think that's enough to give Bob a right to twice Alice's pay -- if he expects double her pay he actually has to load the two thousand pounds of cargo, not just be able to. If he finishes a thousand pounds in half an hour, and then goes on break while Alice spends the next half an hour loading her second 500 pounds, people aren't going to think Bob deserves a penny more than Alice. There's no link between genetic ability and inherent rights.

I think the idea of earning is derived from the idea of property rather than vice versa -- after all, lots of animals act like they have property rights, whereas I don't know any evidence for non-humans making a distinction between earned and unearned property. It's easy for humans to derive the earning concept from the property concept -- once work became one of the primary ways humans got property, it became clear that when somebody does a service for you and you stiff him out of the property you agreed to give him, you're de facto robbing him.

"Now I protest against that counterfeit logic which concludes that, because I do not want a black woman for a slave I must necessarily want her for a wife. I need not have her for either, I can just leave her alone. In some respects she certainly is not my equal; but in her natural right to eat the bread she earns with her own hands without asking leave of any one else, she is my equal, and the equal of all others.." - Abraham Lincoln, two years before Darwin published "The Origin of Species"​

The opposite side of the spectrum says something about lottery and privilege here, and that people's quality of life needs to be equalized despite inherent differences.

The former is quite literally how living things work, the latter represents an over-coming of that dynamic. So where do we end up falling if we have some arbitrary government setting the laws? Will there ever be a point that people lose complete rights over their earnings? I'm hesitant to say yes, but who knows.

Who can guess? Whenever enough people feel that Alice has a natural right to eat the bread Bob earned when Bob works the full hour and loads two thousand pounds, they'll get their way. How Bob always feeding Alice and Alice never feeding Bob can be perceived as "equal", I don't quite follow; but apparently that works for collectivists' minds.

 

[Canard DuJour]

What I'm taking out of this pertaining to the core of my argument is that human 'work' has become tied up with the society in which it takes place. So it is feasible that one's right to distribute their earnings could be taken away by those who set laws. In that way there's no natural right to confer one's inheritance, although historically things have tended that way (which I think speaks to my argument that some right to one's earnings is a cultural universal).

At this point we're talking about libertarianism vs collectivism. The idea that one has 'earned' something is rooted in the idea that inherent (genetic) ability confers natural born rights on someone. In other words, if I'm genetically more able to earn money, I have an inherent right to a better well-being and more offspring than you. The opposite side of the spectrum says something about lottery and privilege here, and that people's quality of life needs to be equalized despite inherent differences.

The former is quite literally how living things work, the latter represents an over-coming of that dynamic.

Dunno about that. For most of human history, work consisted almost entirely of getting food, and getting enough was necessarily a social, cooperative activity. All extant hunter-gatherers thus share food. As a recent UCL study put it :

“Food sharing and cooperation are central for hunter-gatherers. Hunter-gatherers multi-level social structure exists in different groups, to help regulate these cooperative systems. Furthermore, multi-level social structures regulate social rules, friendship and kinship ties and the spread of social norms, promoting a more efficient sharing and cooperation. Sharing is a crucial adaptation to hunter-gatherers’ lifestyles, central to their resilience – and central to the evolution of mankind.”​

Moral aversion to the libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic isn't "an over-coming" of biological imperatives, it IS a biological imperative.

By extension, anyone's ability to earn - regardless of their inherent ability - depends first on there being civil society in which to earn. And civil society doesn't work if too many people have too little stake in it, or if its rewards are too inequitably distributed.

The Social Contract, as another Rousseau famously dubbed it.

 

[fromderinside]

A lot of discussion about power with little observation of structure and sources for such. Structure, men, women, children and older farts all with brains. Source of birthright, capability, size and strength. Inheritance derives primarily from strength. Now we are technological. Yet, things go through inheritance for benefit of the strong while innovation and brain produced talent are the current causers of wealth.

Guys, the times they are a'changing. Which should be more relevanttoday's genetic drivers or man's genetic legacy?

 

[Bomb#20]

Dunno about that. For most of human history, work consisted almost entirely of getting food, and getting enough was necessarily a social, cooperative activity. All extant hunter-gatherers thus share food.

As do chimpanzees.

Moral aversion to the libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic isn't "an over-coming" of biological imperatives, it IS a biological imperative.

There is no such thing as "the libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic". That's a misrepresentation, a caricature that hostile people made up for the purposes of poisoning the well and preaching to their own choir. The libertarian dynamic is about letting you decide for yourself whom to share what you kill with. A hunter who doesn't share can expect not to be shared with. The reason humans and other animals share is that food spoils. Sharing is a food storage technology. You convert some of what you kill into good will in the minds of others, others who may one day have a successful hunt when you don't and give you back the calories you invested.

Moral aversion to doing away with the reciprocity in sharing, via the collectivist From each according to his ability, to each according to his need dynamic, is a biological imperative.

The Social Contract, as another Rousseau famously dubbed it.

"Social contract" is a contradiction in terms.

 

[Canard DuJour]

Dunno about that. For most of human history, work consisted almost entirely of getting food, and getting enough was necessarily a social, cooperative activity. All extant hunter-gatherers thus share food.

As do chimpanzees.

Yep, our closest relatives and the only other primate to do so. However "altruism in the form of food-sharing is peculiarly human in that its frequency and pervasiveness among hunter-gatherers contrasts sharply with the pattern of sharing typical of our nearest primate relatives (Fossey 1979; Goodall 1986; Kuroda 1980 - Risky Transactions : Trust, Kinship and Ethnicity p88).

Moral aversion to the libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic isn't "an over-coming" of biological imperatives, it IS a biological imperative.

There is no such thing as "the libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic". That's a misrepresentation, a caricature that hostile people made up for the purposes of poisoning the well and preaching to their own choir. The libertarian dynamic is about letting you decide for yourself whom to share what you kill with. A hunter who doesn't share can expect not to be shared with. The reason humans and other animals share is that food spoils. Sharing is a food storage technology. You convert some of what you kill into good will in the minds of others, others who may one day have a successful hunt when you don't and give you back the calories you invested.

"Libertarian" here distinguishes sharing at individual whim - i.e. absolute freedom not to share - from institutionalised sharing. There is, in that sense, a libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic, if not in the sense you impute.

Moral aversion to doing away with the reciprocity in sharing, via the collectivist From each according to his ability, to each according to his need dynamic, is a biological imperative.

But that isn't "doing away with reciprocity in sharing." More like doing away with reciprocity in swapping, which crucially doesn't pertain among hunter-gatherers. Perhaps you intended an equal and opposite caricature from the one you imputed, but it doesn't quite work.

By extension, anyone's ability to earn - regardless of their inherent ability - depends first on there being civil society in which to earn. And civil society doesn't work if too many people have too little stake in it, or if its rewards are too inequitably distributed.

The Social Contract, as another Rousseau famously dubbed it.

(quote restored in full - CDJ)

"Social contract" is a contradiction in terms.

It's a slight metaphor.

 

[Bomb#20]

"Libertarian" here distinguishes sharing at individual whim - i.e. absolute freedom not to share - from institutionalised sharing. There is, in that sense, a libertarian eat-all-you-kill dynamic, if not in the sense you impute.

I.e., "eat-all-you-kill" is shorthand for "don't-eat-all-you-kill-unless-you-want-to-starve-when-your-hunt-fails-because-nobody-likes-you"? Hey, if that works for you...

Moral aversion to doing away with the reciprocity in sharing, via the collectivist From each according to his ability, to each according to his need dynamic, is a biological imperative.

But that isn't "doing away with reciprocity in sharing." More like doing away with reciprocity in swapping, which crucially doesn't pertain among hunter-gatherers. Perhaps you intended an equal and opposite caricature from the one you imputed, but it doesn't quite work.

I'm not following you. In the first place, it's not a caricature. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is something actually advocated by a rather important figure in the collectivist movement. Can you produce any libertarian who said "Eat all you kill"?

In the second place, what's your basis for claiming that that isn't "doing away with reciprocity in sharing"? Sharing more with others doesn't increase your allocation under the "to each" policy, since it doesn't cause you to need more. So how do you figure the reciprocal link between how much you do for others and how much you receive -- a link customary among hunter gatherers as it is among agriculturalists -- isn't severed if you implement "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"?

And in the third place, what's your basis for claiming reciprocity in swapping doesn't pertain among hunter-gatherers? Trade is one of the items on Donald Brown's famous list of "Human Universals" -- behaviors for which there is no known society that doesn't have them.

By extension, anyone's ability to earn - regardless of their inherent ability - depends first on there being civil society in which to earn. And civil society doesn't work if too many people have too little stake in it, or if its rewards are too inequitably distributed.

The Social Contract, as another Rousseau famously dubbed it.

(quote restored in full - CDJ)

"Social contract" is a contradiction in terms.

It's a slight metaphor.

Certainly. But what it's a metaphor for is nonsense. The whole point of the "social contract" concept is to bypass the "is-to-ought" problem that has bedeviled philosophers from the moment "God says so" became an unconvincing argument. It proposes to derive a duty to obey the King (for it was Thomas Hobbes who invented it, as a justification for royal absolutism) without ever producing a good reason to believe one ought to obey the King, getting around that difficulty by means of an appeal to the generally shared feeling that people ought to keep their promises, even though we can't quite explain why we ought to keep our promises in an "is-to-ought"-clean way. So the basic underlying logic of "social contract" ideology is "Obey because you ought to keep your promise, even though it was somebody else who made the promise to obey the King."

 

[Canard DuJour]

I.e., "eat-all-you-kill" is shorthand for "don't-eat-all-you-kill-unless-you-want-to-starve-when-your-hunt-fails-because-nobody-likes-you"? Hey, if that works for you...

No, that wouldn't explain the moral aversion. Crucially, the hunt itself tends to be social because the per capita pay-off is higher that way. But not if the best hunter whose spear fells the game won't share, as rational selfish calculation might lead him not to. The moral aversion is an involuntary emotional reaction which gets the group round that prisoner's dilemma.

Moral aversion to doing away with the reciprocity in sharing, via the collectivist From each according to his ability, to each according to his need dynamic, is a biological imperative.

But that isn't "doing away with reciprocity in sharing." More like doing away with reciprocity in swapping, which crucially doesn't pertain among hunter-gatherers. Perhaps you intended an equal and opposite caricature from the one you imputed, but it doesn't quite work.

I'm not following you. In the first place, it's not a caricature. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" is something actually advocated by a rather important figure in the collectivist movement. Can you produce any libertarian who said "Eat all you kill"?

In the second place, what's your basis for claiming that that isn't "doing away with reciprocity in sharing"? Sharing more with others doesn't increase your allocation under the "to each" policy, since it doesn't cause you to need more. So how do you figure the reciprocal link between how much you do for others and how much you receive -- a link customary among hunter gatherers as it is among agriculturalists -- isn't severed if you implement "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"?

And in the third place, what's your basis for claiming reciprocity in swapping doesn't pertain among hunter-gatherers? Trade is one of the items on Donald Brown's famous list of "Human Universals" -- behaviors for which there is no known society that doesn't have them.

Trading isn't sharing. Reciprocity in sharing is mutual willingness to provide for others without guarantee of equivalent exchange. Hunter-gatherers tend to trade with other groups but will share with the old, the sick and the injured in their own group. A chimp that falls from a tree and breaks its arm will starve.

By extension, anyone's ability to earn - regardless of their inherent ability - depends first on there being civil society in which to earn. And civil society doesn't work if too many people have too little stake in it, or if its rewards are too inequitably distributed.

The Social Contract, as another Rousseau famously dubbed it.

(quote restored in full - CDJ)

"Social contract" is a contradiction in terms.

It's a slight metaphor.

Certainly. But what it's a metaphor for is nonsense. The whole point of the "social contract" concept is to bypass the "is-to-ought" problem that has bedeviled philosophers from the moment "God says so" became an unconvincing argument. It proposes to derive a duty to obey the King (for it was Thomas Hobbes who invented it, as a justification for royal absolutism) without ever producing a good reason to believe one ought to obey the King, getting around that difficulty by means of an appeal to the generally shared feeling that people ought to keep their promises, even though we can't quite explain why we ought to keep our promises in an "is-to-ought"-clean way. So the basic underlying logic of "social contract" ideology is "Obey because you ought to keep your promise, even though it was somebody else who made the promise to obey the King."

That isn't even the Hobbesian rationale, never mind Rousseau's.

 

[Malintent]

Most of us here live in societies where when we die, our stuff gets inherited by our children. This is so entrenched that medieval kingdoms were based on bloodlines. From a religious perspective, of people looking back from the afterlife and seeing their intentions carried out, this makes sense. But does this logic stand up from a purely atheist perspective, and if so, how so?

Should the rich kids of rich parents who die automatically inherit their wealth just because of happenstance of birth? Should this apply in the form of a birth right even if the parent did not wish it? Should it apply if the child is a bastard child, formed out of wedlock?

Could an argument not be made that it is better to distribute the property of the deceased via the state rather than (or to alleviate) the taxation on the person while they were alive. The former would not take any hard earned asset away from the deceased, and society may be less split between rich and poor.

An argument against this would be that people may then give everything to their children while alive, leaving them little to live on if they live beyond their expected age. Could this be accounted for? If so, how?

I feel like this is over-thought. People have the right to control the property they own. If they choose to give their property to their children as they die, then so be it. The reason inheritance defaults to the children is due to it being the most common thing people choose to do. One can override that default simply by having a will drawn up that specifies how to handle their property, if not through the default means.

 

[Business]

Most of us here live in societies where when we die, our stuff gets inherited by our children. This is so entrenched that medieval kingdoms were based on bloodlines. From a religious perspective, of people looking back from the afterlife and seeing their intentions carried out, this makes sense. But does this logic stand up from a purely atheist perspective, and if so, how so?

Should the rich kids of rich parents who die automatically inherit their wealth just because of happenstance of birth? Should this apply in the form of a birth right even if the parent did not wish it? Should it apply if the child is a bastard child, formed out of wedlock?

Could an argument not be made that it is better to distribute the property of the deceased via the state rather than (or to alleviate) the taxation on the person while they were alive. The former would not take any hard earned asset away from the deceased, and society may be less split between rich and poor.

An argument against this would be that people may then give everything to their children while alive, leaving them little to live on if they live beyond their expected age. Could this be accounted for? If so, how?

Inheritance is humanly natural. The way I would make it is that when someone passes away, before their will is obeyed, there must be seen what debt they have and then that debt should be deducted off their assets. Then, if there is a will, it should be obeyed. No will, leave it to the children to decide. I don't think that taxation for inheritance should be very high.

money is a measure of how much society owes you. By passing that debt-holding on to a child who did nothing to justify society's being indebted to him, inheritance undermines the usefulness of that measure.

That is totally wrong.
Money is the circulating medium of exchange as defined by a government.

The inheritance matter is too fundamental to really question it. I would argue that those who are in favor of state liquidation of all assets upon death is either a comcom or grew up without parents.

I am a capitalist and enjoy freedom.

 

[Business]

The result of this would be the wealth being spent on living large rather than being passed to anyone. That would be worse for society than the current system.

That's a good point. I would take that further and say that this sort of life path would lead to other short sighted choices beyond what you've done with your money.

 

[bilby]

Inheritance is humanly natural. The way I would make it is that when someone passes away, before their will is obeyed, there must be seen what debt they have and then that debt should be deducted off their assets. Then, if there is a will, it should be obeyed. No will, leave it to the children to decide. I don't think that taxation for inheritance should be very high.

money is a measure of how much society owes you. By passing that debt-holding on to a child who did nothing to justify society's being indebted to him, inheritance undermines the usefulness of that measure.

That is totally wrong.
Money is the circulating medium of exchange as defined by a government.

It's often that too. But it's most assuredly also a measure of how much society owes you.

Money is a medium for the exchange of debt.

It can be regulated by a government; or not. But it remains a measure of how much it's holders are owed.

If you don't grasp this simple fact, then you will reach any number of incorrect conclusions.

Conclusions that remain wrong even if you deny your error in red text.

 

[Business]

That is certainly a step, but why not take it all the way as bilby has suggested? Distribute to it to the whole of society via added government services or reduced taxes on everyone. What is the moral or ethical argument against that?

If all governments do what you suggest then people like the Koch brothers, Donald Trump and Paris Hilton would be 1% as powerful and wealthy as they are today. Everyone would be poor. To give you a visual idea of what you suggest that would be like tearing down any building over 30 meters tall and forbidding any house higher than two stories. Society would crumble into a menial mess like a sprawling city in a third world country.

 

[Business]

Inheritance is humanly natural. The way I would make it is that when someone passes away, before their will is obeyed, there must be seen what debt they have and then that debt should be deducted off their assets. Then, if there is a will, it should be obeyed. No will, leave it to the children to decide. I don't think that taxation for inheritance should be very high.



That is totally wrong.
Money is the circulating medium of exchange as defined by a government.

It's often that too. But it's most assuredly also a measure of how much society owes you.

Money is a medium for the exchange of debt.

It can be regulated by a government; or not. But it remains a measure of how much it's holders are owed.

If you don't grasp this simple fact, then you will reach any number of incorrect conclusions.

Conclusions that remain wrong even if you deny your error in red text.

I quoted that directly off a highly reputable financial institution's website.

 

[bilby]

That is certainly a step, but why not take it all the way as bilby has suggested? Distribute to it to the whole of society via added government services or reduced taxes on everyone. What is the moral or ethical argument against that?

If all governments do what you suggest then people like the Koch brothers, Donald Trump and Paris Hilton would be 1% as powerful and wealthy as they are today. Everyone would be poor. To give you a visual idea of what you suggest ot would be like tearing down any building over 30 meters tall and forbidding any house higher than two stories. Society would crumble into a menial mess like a sprawling city in a third world country.

LOL.

I wish I was so poor and powerless as to have only 1% of the wealth and influence of the Koch brothers.

I am also pretty sure that it wouldn't be a bad thing for society if the Koch brothers lost 99% of their wealth and power.

There's no justification for wealth through inheritance as an incentive for anything. And scrapping inheritance as a source of wealth does NOT imply the abandonment of inequality or of capitalism.

Just because communism sucks, that doesn't excuse your mischaracterising any idea that stops wealthy people from getting something for nothing as 'communism'.