Samael wrote:
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Lorrey <mike@lorrey.com>
> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> Date: 11 December 1998 16:27
> Subject: Re: Final Challenge to Socialists
>
> >Samael wrote:
> >
> >> -----Original Message-----
> >> From: Terry Donaghe <tdonaghe@yahoo.com>
> >> To: extropians@extropy.com <extropians@extropy.com>
> >> Date: 11 December 1998 01:35
> >> Subject: Final Challenge to Socialists
> >>
> >> >In order for socialism to exist, the government must use violence to
> >> >force it's citizens to pay taxes.
> >>
> >> I would contend that individual citizens refusing to pay tax is an act of
> >> theft against all people. (the basic items from which all else is
> produced
> >> belonging to everyone). An act of theft can be reasonably met with the
> >> threat of violence to return that which has been stolen.
> >
> >There you go again. The basic items from which all else is produced are
> fairly
> >exchanged for an individuals labor
>
> Except that the basic ownership (of land or basic resources) are not fairly
> distributed to start off with (Texas ranchers that just happen to find oil
> wells - people who got land during the settlement phase of colonisation,
> etc.).
>
> The land does not belong to anyone. Some people have just grabbed it and
> denied others access to it.
Shows how little you know about history. All western lands were freely available for people to claim and pay a standard per acre fee for under the Homestead Act. Since the Homestead Act was passed by Congress and signed by the President, then under the laws of the US, the people granted the land to those individuals. What those people did with it is their business. Since most of that land was claimed before oil was a usable resource, then the people who had that land just got lucky, like anyone else can.
> The basic resources do not belong to anyone.
> Some people grabbed them and denied others access to them. All other
> property and wealth derives from those sources (except, possibly for things
> like software and other intellectual knowledge and even then a connection
> could be made). Therefore all wealth derives from communal property/unowned
> property.
Hardly. You obviously have never taken an economics course, except maybe at the University of Moscow pre 1990. Before we continue in this discussion you should read up on Micro and Macro economic theory first.
Raw materials are only a small part of the cost of any good or service. Labor is the largest part of the cost of any good or service. Since you cant dig labor out of the ground, then obviously it came from the individuals doing the work, so unless you beleive in slavery, then you must understand and accept that most wealth comes from the trading of labor, applying the labor to create a good or service which is more valuable than the sum of the costs of labor and raw materials. The person who takes the risk on investing in the purchase of the raw materials, and in buying the labor of the workers, and in buying the tools with which the raw materials are made into goods and services, is the entrepreneur, and is paid for assuming that risk in the margin between the value of a good or service and the sum of the costs to produce that good or service.
You are making such patently false and ignorant statements, that anyone who participates in a real economy knows is false, that you must either be a brainwashed victim of a communist party propaganda machine, or you are just trying to screw with people by refusing to understand the logic of our arguments.
Mike Lorrey