James, I think you're empirically wrong that wealth creation is anything 
like a zero-sum game and I'm working on my response!

In the meantime, let's have another straw poll (you don't have to have 
followed along so far to answer this).	Answer first with a single number 
(fractional numbers allowed -- it's a continuum) to just me so I can 
compile the results and then write another message clarifying if you 
choose.

Do you think that Ingrid's Story below is:
   0. fundamentally wrong and confused about the nature of capitalism.
   1. totally idealized and not reflective of reality.
   2. true (minus the yachts part) for many everyday people, but rarely for
      the very rich.
   3. largely true but the caveats like inheritance are fundamental.
   4. true with caveats.
   5. gospel.


Ingrid's Story:

There is a tendency to view a disgustingly rich person as a greedy
parasite on society.  This view is fundamentally confused.  In a free
market, every dollar our rich friend Ingrid has was handed over by someone
for whom Ingrid did something that person valued.  Ingrid did something
valuable for tons of people and in return they gave her green paper.
That green paper, Ingrid's riches, represents favors we all owe Ingrid in
return.  She can redeem them for yachts and whatnot and that's quite fair
in the sense that the value she created for others is at least as much as
the goodies she buys for herself with that money. (If she's the most
ruthless possible capitalist [1] then she'll have extracted 100% of the
surplus and the value of her yachts-and-whatnot will equal the value she
created for others.  If she falls short of that ideal she'll have created
*more* wealth for others than she enjoys herself.)


   [1] Assuming she's not cheating/stealing/swindling.	I'm not commenting
       on how pervasive malfeasance is but you really have to be a
       hardcore socialist to feel that more progressive taxation is the
       solution to it.	That's doling out punishment indiscriminately, and
       can't possibly help deter malfeasance.


--- \/	 FROM James W Mickens AT 07.09.08 17:32 (Yesterday)   \/ ---

>> . . . in the real world, wealth I create in no way decreases your wealth, 
>> whether I'm turning my yarn into a sweater, turning my dirt and my seeds 
>> into food, learning how to remove a brain tumor, writing a book, etc.
>
> This is only true if the inputs to wealth generation processes are infinite. 
> If the precursors to wealth generation are scarce, then the action of 
> creating wealth can prevent someone else from maintaining their current 
> wealth level. Consider my corn example. There are multiple wealth generation 
> processes that require corn as input: livestock production, ethanol 
> generation, the creation of corn-based foodstuffs for humans, etc. Given a 
> finite supply of corn, the redistribution of corn inputs to the ethanol 
> sector (which leads to a subsequent boom in ethanol wealth) directly retards 
> the expansion of the livestock and foodstuff sectors, and makes it more 
> difficult for these sectors to maintain their current profit levels. This 
> hurts their prospects for wealth generation.
>
> Wealth generation might convert low valued inputs into high valued outputs, 
> but this does not mean that the inputs are limitless. Wealth creation is 
> often dependent on valuable resources that are highly contested. Thus, the 
> generation of a unit of wealth often implies a winner and a loser in a battle

> over raw input. A new unit of wealth may eventually produce dividends for 
> everyone, but that is not what we're debating. We're debating whether your 
> wealth generation can negatively impact my wealth generation, and the answer 
> is yes.
>
>
> ~j
>

-- 
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/dreeves  - -  search://"Daniel Reeves"

"Things are more like they are today than they have ever been
before." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower  (submitted 2003.08.31)