The Meritocracy Challenge

[empyblessing]

"4) Meritocracy -  is a hybrid of communism and capitalism: most
people are paid roughly the same; the highest achievers get a healthy
amount extra, but their earnings are capped to prevent them from
becoming overly financially powerful and being able to use money as a
weapon, and all of their money is returned to the Commonwealth at
death.

In a meritocracy, the Commonwealth
replaces private wealth. All money in private hands is sooner or
later returned to the Commonwealth to be reinvested in the people.
Dynastic private wealth is eliminated. Greed is eliminated. Elite
families that can use their power and wealth to influence world
affairs are eliminated. They will simply no longer exist once
inheritance taxed is raised to 100%."

http://www.armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/

The idea of meritocracy is taken from the above site and it helps resolve a few key issues that I have with the free market. One is the problem of inherited wealth allowing the rich to secure their children's lineage ad infinitum.

Two is the free markets race to the bottom. 

"Capitalism relentlessly targets the
lowest common denominator. It's all about dumbing down and the race
to the bottom. It targets primal drives and instant gratification. We
need social capitalism that raises people up rather than casts them
down. We need a "higher common factor" doctrine, one of
quality rather than quantity."

 

"The capitalist world is one of objects.
People themselves are objectified. The acquisition of objects is the
highest good in our society and your status is dependent on how
highly others value the objects you own. This system is spiritually
dead. It creates soulless zombies in shopping malls, aimlessly
shuffling from one purchase to the next in a conveyer-belt process
that never ends. You can never have enough objects. You will always
need the latest upgrade, the latest fashion, the highest status
objects - and these are permanently changing. There is no endpoint,
but when your personal end comes (your death) all you have to show
for it is a lot of junk that your relatives then consign to the
garbage dump. And that metaphorically and even literally is what
became of your life on earth - it joined the rest of the garbage. Is
that how you want to live your life?"

http://armageddonconspiracy.co.uk/The-Last-Post(2535256).htm

 

[TruthahnDerRuin]

 

The idea of meritocracy is taken from the above site and it helps resolve a few key issues that I have with the free market. One is the problem of inherited wealth allowing the rich to secure their children's lineage ad infinitum.

Two is the free markets race to the bottom.

Your post strikes me as disingenuous. Is this really about the free market?

[MrCapitalism]

Quoting Rothbard

The receipt of gifts has often been considered simple
income. It should be obvious, however, that the recipient produced
nothing in exchange for the money received; in fact, it is
not an income from current production at all, but a transfer of
ownership of accumulated capital. Any tax on the receipt of
gifts, then, is a tax on capital. This is particularly true of inheritances,
where the aggregation of capital is shifted to an heir, and
the gift clearly does not come from current income. An inheritance
tax, therefore, is a pure tax on capital. Its impact is particularly
devastating because (a) large sums will be involved, since
at some point within a few generations every piece of property
must pass to heirs, and (b) the prospect of an inheritance tax
destroys the incentive and the power to save and build up a family
competence. The inheritance tax is perhaps the most devastating
example of a pure tax on capital.
A tax on gifts and bequests has the further effect of penalizing
charity and the preservation of family ties. It is ironic that
some of those most ardent in advocating taxation of gifts and
bequests are the first to assert that there would never be
“enough” charity were the free market left to its own devices.

The second criticism is that ultimately the problem is that captialism gives people what they want. If people desire satisfaction of their primal needs and instant gratification then the market will adjust to it. However, if people desire culture, then the market will adjust to that as well (actually it currently does both, high culture is easily obtainable if you one desires it. Everybody wants to tell everybody else what kind of person they should be, and doesn't consider what kind of people they want to be.

The two complaints also contradict the states solutions. IF people only desire instant gratification THEN there would be no problem of "inherited wealth" since nobody would look farther into the future than the end of their own lives. Likewise, as Rothbard discussed, if estates are taxed at 100% then this society towards instant consumption and gratification, since there is no point in saving for future generations. It also serves to break up capital accumulation, which hampers the rate at which society can create wealth.

 

[TheRobin]

 

...a few key issues that I have with the free market.

 

"free market" is just another way of saying, people shouldn't use violence against other people (NAP) or their stuff (acceptance of property). Which of those two principles do you have issues with? And why? If you don't mind me asking

[empyblessing]

 

 

...a few key issues that I have with the free market.

 

"free market" is just another way of saying, people shouldn't use violence against other people (NAP) or their stuff (acceptance of property). Which of those two principles do you have issues with? And why? If you don't mind me asking

 

I disagree with your definition of free market. Non violence is nonviolence. Free market is free market. I cannot see them as inclusive. 

[Ruppert9]

By all means, you are free to try your Meritocratic society. Just don't force others to join it.

[empyblessing]

 

By all means, you are free to try your Meritocratic society. Just don't force others to join it.

 

I wouldn't try and I don't advocate this sites meritocratic society but it does address some problems that are not looked at today: LCD capitalism and inheirted wealth. It's capitalism which is responsible for the vanity markets today which have ruined the body image of men and women, provoked them into pursuing mindless materialism. It's capitalism that sponsors the millions of advertisements that people are inundated with endlessly. Capitalism which supports plutocrats and ogliarchs in the form of inheirited wealth, which even viewed as future capital used to create jobs does not address the problem of massive hoarding of resources. Nor does any of the proponents of capitalism address the social problems of inheirted wealth where the children of the rich are given greater access to the best schools, best business contacts, best doctors, all which ensure their supremacy over others.

Too many ancaps wave the magic wand of the free market and assume that anything which comes out of it must be good and anything which is bad is not the free market but the state. One could easily argue that the state does not exist but is in essence the natural extension of free market capitalism that exists today. Everything can be purchased, including politicians and their monopoly on violence. Removing the monopoly of violence from the system instills a power vacuum which is assumed by ancaps will be filled by beneficent and yet fiercely competitive businessmen who must, by nature of their own survival, struggle with all power in their ability against all competitors in their market to their eventual bankruptcy or form partnerships with those business and collude in a cartel.

[lyghtningrod]

 

 

All money in private hands is sooner or
later returned to the Commonwealth to be reinvested in the people

 

once back in the Commonwealth's hand, who gets to decide where the money is then allocated?

 

Dynastic private wealth is eliminated.

 

Wouldn't you just be creating a new dynasty, namely, the people who get to decide where the 'returned' money goes.

 

 Greed is eliminated.

 

lol, hardly. greed is a human emotion, nothing we can do to rid ourselves of it. What we can do is create a society that channels that greed, as Smith suggested happens in a true market economy.

 

 

[empyblessing]

 

 

 

All money in private hands is sooner or
later returned to the Commonwealth to be reinvested in the people

 

once back in the Commonwealth's hand, who gets to decide where the money is then allocated?

 

Dynastic private wealth is eliminated.

 

Wouldn't you just be creating a new dynasty, namely, the people who get to decide where the 'returned' money goes.

 

 Greed is eliminated.

 

lol, hardly. greed is a human emotion, nothing we can do to rid ourselves of it. What we can do is create a society that channels that greed, as Smith suggested happens in a true market economy.

 

Greed is a product of scarcity and contradicts all empircal date collected on emergent human nature. 

[TheRobin]

 

 

 

...a few key issues that I have with the free market.

 

"free market" is just another way of saying, people shouldn't use violence against other people (NAP) or their stuff (acceptance of property). Which of those two principles do you have issues with? And why? If you don't mind me asking

 

I disagree with your definition of free market. Non violence is nonviolence. Free market is free market. I cannot see them as inclusive. 

 

Then please give your definition or the term. Everyone here (or at least every AnCap/voluntarist) understand the free market as NAP & Property rights (correct me if I'm wrong, guys). So if you chose to use the term completely differently then at least provide a definition and make explicit what you're talking about on on what principles it is based. Else it's just purpesfully misleading and a straw man from the beginning, which doesn't really allow for a productive debate to take place.

[empyblessing]

 

 

 

 

...a few key issues that I have with the free market.

 

"free market" is just another way of saying, people shouldn't use violence against other people (NAP) or their stuff (acceptance of property). Which of those two principles do you have issues with? And why? If you don't mind me asking

 

 

I disagree with your definition of free market. Non violence is nonviolence. Free market is free market. I cannot see them as inclusive. 

 

Then please give your definition or the term. Everyone here (or at least every AnCap/voluntarist) understand the free market as NAP & Property rights (correct me if I'm wrong, guys). So if you chose to use the term completely differently then at least provide a definition and make explicit what you're talking about on on what principles it is based. Else it's just purpesfully misleading and a straw man from the beginning, which doesn't really allow for a productive debate to take place.

 

Just to clarify, I define myself as someone who wants to best help people while keeping an open mind to all possibilties with the belief that everything changes. I do my best to apply this constancy of change to everything I believe in with regards to the most current state of our collective knowledge. I am not a statist because statism does not recognize the need to continually revalue itself. If it did, it would realize that violence is ineffective in improving the means of production and expanding knowledge. I believe that evolution leads to a constant graduation to greater levels of complexity whose only "conclusion" is infinite knowledge and it's inevitable revaluing to the least finite form in our perputual state of non-stagnate existence and the process begins again, waxing and waning, from the novel to the mundane, from the greatest potential to the greatest actualization ad infinitum. My goal is not to follow any moral code but to become, on both a personal and universal level, the most complex being possible.

That being said, I cannot see much value in debate as it currently exists in our language as its confrontational nature usually leads to excess emotional banter and belittling others in order to dispute their claims. Also, debate implies that I have a fixed position which I will rigidly adhere to, defend, and support, and that is simply not the case.  As Hereclitus said, "You cannot stand in the same river twice." The information is more complex as well and is explain in greater detail on the site I linked, and while I do not support their position on the majority of things, the information they provide on philosophy and metaphysics has changed my outlook. I would include more but I've digressed too much already. 

Which brings me to how I define free market capitalism. I would define free markets as the competitive exchange of resources and services based on a pricing mechanism. I'm confident that this definition could be improved on but unfortunately, I'm not smart enough to do it. 

I'm not going to insult your intelligence by defining what is and isn't violence as it will submerge the conversation in a vortex of minutia and insanity which will leave us as chimpanzees hurling feces at each other. 

 

 

 

[Ruppert9]

LEt me guess, Zeitgeister?

[DoubtingThomas]

The primary issue here is that there's no such thing as a commonwealth or collective good. There is only wealth accrued by individuals and there are only things which are good for given individuals. The moment one suggests that anything, wealth or otherwise, be distributed or redistributed by a collective means or measure; you've entered wonderland.

The results of such systems are always the same: a political class emerges to control the distribution. Graft, greed, corruption, and all the other vices associated with "free markets," follow from the power of that political class. They may not always be carried out directly by that political class, as in the case of corporations today; however, those corporations are virtually liability-free only because a political class official gave them that status or flatly refused to prosecute them.

I don't think that's any shame on the point of "merit," and in-fact I would propose that a free society would be the most rewarding to those who merit their rewards; however, if that is the definition of "meritocracy," then it is a new title for socialism.

[Arius]

Which brings me to how I define free market capitalism. I would define free markets as the competitive exchange of resources and services based on a pricing mechanism.

Now that is interesting.  I'm guessing that, as you don't include NAP as part of your definition, some of this competition could be through the exercise of force.

 

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. "

 -Leviathan

Even Hobbes understood that, in such a condition, there could be nothing like trade or commerce.  You see, markets and violence are in strict opposition.  I'd recommend you read (or listen to) the book Markets Not Capitalism.  It's free, and addresses many ideas about separating the state and property.  It may be able to help you communicate your argument.  Believe it or not, you can be pro-market and anti-capitalist.

[empyblessing]

 

The primary issue here is that there's no such thing as a commonwealth or collective good. There is only wealth accrued by individuals and there are only things which are good for given individuals. The moment one suggests that anything, wealth or otherwise, be
distributed or redistributed by a collective means or measure; you've
entered wonderland.

The results of such systems are always the same: a political class emerges to control the distribution. Graft, greed, corruption, and all the other vices associated with "free markets," follow from the power of that political class. They may not always be carried out directly by that political class, as in the case of corporations today; however, those corporations are virtually liability-free only because a political class official gave them that status or flatly refused to prosecute them.

I don't think that's any shame on the point of "merit," and in-fact I would propose that a free society would be the most rewarding to those who merit their rewards; however, if that is the definition of "meritocracy," then it is a new title for socialism.

 

The meritocrats consider themselves social-capitalists. Socialized medicine, health care, educaton, and inheiritance. 

[DoubtingThomas]

 

The meritocrats consider themselves social-capitalists. Socialized medicine, health care, educaton, and inheiritance. 

 

Fair enough; however, I don't see a pratical barrier between that which supposedly ought to be socialized and that which simply will be due to the inertia of the state.

[empyblessing]

 

Which brings me to how I define free market capitalism. I would define free markets as the competitive exchange of resources and services based on a pricing mechanism.

Now that is interesting.  I'm guessing that, as you don't include NAP as part of your definition, some of this competition could be through the exercise of force.

 

"Whatsoever therefore is consequent to a time of war, where every man is enemy to every man, the same consequent to the time wherein men live without other security than what their own strength and their own invention shall furnish them withal. In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently no culture of the earth; no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building; no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth; no account of time; no arts; no letters; no society; and which is worst of all, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. "

 -Leviathan

Even Hobbes understood that, in such a condition, there could be nothing like trade or commerce.  You see, markets and violence are in strict opposition.  I'd recommend you read (or listen to) the book Markets Not Capitalism.  It's free, and addresses many ideas about separating the state and property.  It may be able to help you communicate your argument.  Believe it or not, you can be pro-market and anti-capitalist

I will definately read what you posted. The web has turned me into an information junkie. 

 

[empyblessing]

 

 

The meritocrats consider themselves social-capitalists. Socialized medicine, health care, educaton, and inheiritance. 

 

Fair enough; however, I don't see a pratical barrier between that which supposedly ought to be socialized and that which simply will be due to the inertia of the state.

 

They define their enemy as the rich, among other things. 

[empyblessing]

 

LEt me guess, Zeitgeister? He said with a sneer. 

 

[DoubtingThomas]

 

 

 

The meritocrats consider themselves social-capitalists. Socialized medicine, health care, educaton, and inheiritance. 

 

Fair enough; however, I don't see a pratical barrier between that which supposedly ought to be socialized and that which simply will be due to the inertia of the state.

 

They define their enemy as the rich, among other things. 

 

I can understand resentment of a rich person in the political class; however, I can't understand making an enemy of someone who became wealthy through voluntary interaction. I mean, if a doctor is good at saving people's lives, he's going to be well compensated one way or another. What sense does it make to define that doctor as the enemy, simply because he is good at what he does and many people want his service? That seems to be the polar opposite of anything ado of "merit."

[Arius]

I mean, if a doctor is good at saving people's lives, he's going to be well compensated one way or another.

Doctors...who enjoy a state-run license system.  Who have the most powerful state-affiliated union.  Who have all their competition jailed.  Don't believe the hype.  Doctors are more involved with the state than welfare moms.

[DoubtingThomas]

 

I mean, if a doctor is good at saving people's lives, he's going to be well compensated one way or another.

Doctors...who enjoy a state-run license system.  Who have the most powerful state-affiliated union.  Who have all their competition jailed.  Don't believe the hype.  Doctors are more involved with the state than welfare moms.

 

I didnt' mean to imply the doctor is a model of voluntarism, but rather a doctor in a free society would still be well compensated for their work if they were good at the job and it would certainly be possible for someone to be "rich," in the absence of a political class siphoning money to their associates.

[Arius]

I've got a lot of beef with the AMA. I'm sorry if it leaks out as hostility.

I don't know.  "Rich" is very relative.  It's true that most people could make a satisfactory living, but I don't know what the upper limit on property holdings would be.  What many people forget is that, in or current society, the carrying costs of property are involuntarily socialized.  That is, people enjoy property protection disproportionately...  regressive property protection costs, in fact.  If individuals were responsible for the costs associated with protecting their own property, there would be an upper limit on how much stuff it made economic sense to own.  Simply, the more dollars you have, the more you must spend per-dollar to defend that wealth (if the carrying costs of wealth are paid by the individual).  Being obscenely wealthy would be impossible in a society without involuntarily socialized carrying costs of property. 

In those costs I'd include defense from the elements, protection from theft (employee compensation, capital equipment, etc), dispute resolution, a legal system of titles, infrastructure, national defense, and all sorts of state-provided goodies which are enjoyed on a regressive basis.  It makes no sense that I pay taxes so Mitt Romney doesn't need to pay for private security.  I am made to pay for his use of cops and courts.  See what I mean?

[empyblessing]

 

I've got a lot of beef with the AMA. I'm sorry if it leaks out as hostility.

I don't know.  "Rich" is very relative.  It's true that most people could make a satisfactory living, but I don't know what the upper limit on property holdings would be.  What many people forget is that, in or current society, the carrying costs of property are involuntarily socialized.  That is, people enjoy property protection disproportionately...  regressive property protection costs, in fact.  If individuals were responsible for the costs associated with protecting their own property, there would be an upper limit on how much stuff it made economic sense to own.  Simply, the more dollars you have, the more you must spend per-dollar to defend that wealth (if the carrying costs of wealth are paid by the individual).  Being obscenely wealthy would be impossible in a society without involuntarily socialized carrying costs of property. 

In those costs I'd include defense from the elements, protection from theft (employee compensation, capital equipment, etc), dispute resolution, a legal system of titles, infrastructure, national defense, and all sorts of state-provided goodies which are enjoyed on a regressive basis.  It makes no sense that I pay taxes so Mitt Romney doesn't need to pay for private security.  I am made to pay for his use of cops and courts.  See what I mean?

 

I believe you're imagining the current system today where people prey on one another's person and property. In the idealized stateless society there would be far less predation.  Infrastructure also becomes cheaper to construct, maintain, and more resistent to elements. Technology decreases in price as its efficency increases.  Based on that I disagree that the rich could not consume an inordinate amount of land because it assumes the price of property maintenence today will not decrease. 

I'm still in the proces of reading that link.

[Arius]

Perhaps someone could own a bunch of land.  I think "to what purpose" is more important  than "how much do you have".  That is, if someone own thousands of acres, but uses them to feed the world, that seems like a good thing.  Alternatively, if someone owns a single house, but uses it as a vehicle for tyranny, that seems like a bad thing.