/liberty/ - Liberty

The rich people are those who have the ability to create money out of thin air: the government, by printing money; the banks, by lending out money they don't have; and stock market investors, by buying shares of the profits of unstable companies while avoiding those companies' liabilities, which disappear in bankruptcy.

The first and the last are the results of government meddling, but partial-reserve banking is a scourge that can't be remedied simply by the elimination of the government. A return to the gold standard might be enough to keep it in check, but the only real solution is for the industry to recognize it as fraud and eliminate the practice.

What happened incredibly regressive hidden tax measure went hardcore in 1971?

well, aside from indirect things like regulations, barriers to entry, etc those in the top 1% receive money directly from the fed in the form of incentives, loans, etc so, of course they end up having more money than the losers at the bottom, who can only see their few savings lose value.

>>85705

>Is this caused by central banking and big government or would this distribution of wealth be natural in a free market?

It could be natural or it could not. That depends on a lot of factors. Sometimes, the market favors accumulation of wealth, and sometimes it doesn't. Right now, we probably would have some extremely rich people even without government meddling, but government meddling makes this more extreme.

I don't see an inherent problem with wealth disparity, though. Rich people are neither better nor worse than the poor or the middle class, from all that I can tell, and if they have gotten their wealth through legitimate means, then why should I be bitter about that? Their wealth is no theft from me, just as the fact that I have a happy family doesn't make their family worse.

Wealth Inequality sis one thing. Income inequality has more to do with age inequality. As soon as one household sells their $300k house , they enter the top 10% income bracket. Over 60% of households will end up in the top 10% at least once, and >70% in the top 20% bracket.

>>85787

Anon, please try not to use the term "class" ar it directly reinforces the efforts of commies on this board in making class theory a default assumption and measure of wealth. Words like "less rich" "poor" "low/average income" that clearly state that the difference is only in quantity would work better. It is the second most accepted shilled term after "means of production" anyway, no use in making it worse.

>>85787

>if they have gotten their wealth through legitimate means, then why should I be bitter about that? Their wealth is no theft from me

They got their wealth through government programs that redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich. Why is wealth redistribution only a bad thing when it goes from rich to poor? Is it just because you think you'll be ultrawealthy at some point if you keep your head down and work hard enough, so you don't want to rock the boat? Protip: it's not going to happen, because the system is set up so that certain other people benefit more from your work than you do.

>>85705

Are you implying that there's something wrong with income inequality? The people are not equal and they do not perform equally in the market.

>>85798

The marxist meaning of 'class' is defined by the relation to the ownership of the means of production. If that is not implied, then the word has nothing to do with the 'class theory'.

>>85823

Take a look at that graph again. Rich people were already richer than poor people in the 1960s. The exploding red line has nothing to do with the natural tendency of success rising to the top.

>>85824

>The exploding red line has nothing to do with the natural tendency of success rising to the top.

True, it is not a natural tendency of success, but rather increased productivity of those who control capital.

>>85827

In this case, it has to do with the Fed printing money and then giving it to people they like.

Why the fuck ain't y'all mothafuckers talking about the Nixon shock?

>>85823

>>85813

Sure, but this generalization opens more space for speculation on classes being entities, and not just common name for certain wealth levels. Given that class theory is shilled everywhere by marxists, it only helps them to use similarly sounding terms.

How many stupid arguments could have been evaded if when a marxists says "means of production" he get shit on his imaginary term to swap "factors of production", instead of arguing for one proper definition?

>>85705

>Is this caused by central banking and big government

Some of it is, particularly in sectors like banking and real estate.

A lot of it though is natural growth, notice how it starts to diverge in the mid-80s? that's when the silicon valley type tech industry really started becoming more mainstream. In 1981 Microsoft released MSDOS and by the mid 80s computers were becoming common in big business thanks to things like the IBM PC (which came with MSDOS), Apple released the first generation Macintosh in the mid 80s, etc. The top of the IQ bell curve who founded and made up those tech companies became millionaires virtually overnight, when Microsoft went public many of the people who worked there had so much stock they became worth millions or tens of millions literally overnight simply because of how profitable MS was and still is (software is probably the most profitable business in the history of mankind). The people who founded those tech companies (and the ones who worked at them when they were small) are now in the 1%, the (competent) people who work in them today are in the top 10% (the 10% mark is somewhere around $130k for a household).

Many in the top 10% have jobs which rely on high levels of intelligence (eg engineer) or decent levels of intelligence and good charisma skills (eg lawyer), Wealth inequality in the modern age, where basically everyone in the first world has a device which can access essentially the collective sum of human knowledge for the price of an internet connection, is mostly due to capabilities not being equally distributed by nature. Never before in human history has it been more possible to go from the bottom 1% to the top 1% in a single lifetime, yet we don't see it happen as much as people on the left would hope because doing so requires intelligence and hard work.

>>85815

Classic example of reading too much into a post because you want to hate someone on the internet.

>They got their wealth through government programs that redistribute wealth from the poor to the rich.

Did they? If they did, then they're scumbags. If they didn't, then they're not scumbags.

>Why is wealth redistribution only a bad thing when it goes from rich to poor?

Those are some heavy implications. No, wealth redistribution is not only bad when it goes from rich to poor. In fact, other things equal, the opposite tends to be worse, as you cannot even pretend to be moved to it by compassion, and as a few dollars less hurt a poor guy more than a rich guy. I acknowledge that, every ancap acknowledges that, Rothbard, too, acknowledged that. One reason why he hated subsidized higher education was because that was a de facto redistribution of money from the poor to the rich, as the poor are underrepresented in higher education but still pay taxes all the same.

>Is it just because you think you'll be ultrawealthy at some point if you keep your head down and work hard enough, so you don't want to rock the boat? Protip: it's not going to happen, because the system is set up so that certain other people benefit more from your work than you do.

If you go around assuming the worst of people you meet, you'll end up a very bitter person. No, I don't assume I'll ever become super rich. I'm training to be a criminal defense attorney, and while it's easy to become well off that way, it's not so easy to really become rich. It is possible if you keep working seventy hour weeks into your fifties, but I don't plan to do that, either. Believe it or not, I'm a normal guy who wants to build a family.

No idea where this cliché comes from that all libertarians just want to get rich. I mean, sure, the leftists will say whatever to slander us, but why are people buying it who aren't leftists? Why are we treated like we are in it for the money, while liberals can still pretend to be "compassionate" when they looked the other way while Soviet Russia killed millions of its citizens? Why are environmentalists treated as harmonious when some of them want to decimate the human population? Why are animal rights activists said to just love animals when some of them skinned animals alive for propaganda purposes, and when PETA kills scores of puppies daily? We have a lot less blood on our hands than other groups, and I'd appreciate if someone acknowledged that for a change.

>>85837

Again, I am not going to change the way I talk just so marxists feel less validated. If we all did that, they'd quickly appropriate every single word in the dictionary, just as they have appropriated "class", "justice", guerilla warfare, "solidarity", "fraternity" and many other terms.

>Sure, but this generalization opens more space for speculation on classes being entities, and not just common name for certain wealth levels.

It only opens this up because the marxists have made class one of their key concepts. Should we also stop talking about "privilege" and "oppression" because the feminists like to use these words? I'm not playing that game.

>>85843

"rich people are just smarter than everyone else"

https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610395/if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance/

>>85859

Neither intelligence or willingness to become rich are quantifiable.

>>85859

Yes, I'm sure the richest people in the world are all idiots. Keep posting commie propaganda, Lenin would be proud.

>>85861

>what is an iq test

>>85881

A measurement of ability to answer certain questions. May or may not be related to ability to solve other problems.

The experiment has another fundamental flaw: it sees opportunities and failures as things that present themselves to certain people. It uses the perspective of an individual to model society as a whole. There are certain things only a person can do for himself, but most opportunities that create wealth exist because of others' preferences and can be exploited by anyone.

>>85859

For the people who weren't born into the top 1% this is true almost all the time, however being intelligent isn't the only factor. IQ isn't a measure of success, there are plenty of high IQ people who end up amounting to nothing, just like there are plenty of average intelligence people who end up becoming moderately successful by most peoples standards. Instead, IQ is a representation of one potential, and most people don't live up to their potential.

Do you want to know what the difference between Bill Gates and any one of the software developers with similar IQ who work at Microsoft today is? a combination of work ethic and a willingness to take risks and make sacrifices. The people who climbed their way to the top got there by working their asses off in their early carrier at a company they founded, who staked everything they had on their own ability, who sacrificed having a comfortable 9-5 job with a steady pay check for 80 hours a week and living week to week. Its the same difference between Larry Page‎ and ‎Sergey Brin and random Microsoft employee #20,000 who was hired at the same time Larry and Sergey founded Google, instead of taking that comfortable software developer job at Microsoft for the rest of their careers they instead decided to risk everything they had on an idea they believed in, they cobbled together manky computers out of whatever they could get their hands on (the original Google servers are on display at the Computer Science History Museum) and set up in their garage, today Google is one of the largest companies on earth.

Its not just people with high IQs though that can become successful though, even people of average intelligence levels can become successful by western standards. Just doing some back of the envelope math for how much plumbers make in my country if someone was to start working independently at age 21 (having just finished an apprenticeship or trade school) then if they saved/invested the majority of their income and lived on only the bare minimum they would have enough wealth momentum by the age of about 30 that they could start saving less and still have enough by the time they are in their mid 40's to retire very comfortably.

>>85886

An IQ test is a measure of a persons pattern recondition and cognitive reasoning abilities, it is a very good indicator of ones ability to perform at tasks which involve critical reasoning and constantly having to learn and process new information (eg, software engineer, lawyer, finance, etc). IQ has little bearing on performance of tasks which involve a large amount of repetition since you only learn the task once.

A free market is when everything is free.

>>85887

>Do you want to know what the difference between Bill Gates and any one of the software developers with similar IQ who work at Microsoft today is?

Time. The market is saturated now in a way it wasn't 30 years ago.

You're also distracting from the topic at hand by talking about new money tech gurus, who are a comparative minority in the 1%. Most are financiers who made and/or expanded their fortunes from state-endorsed fraud.

>>85886

t. average IQ, people who sucked at IQ tests are usually the only ones who complain about them.

>May or may not be related to ability to solve other problems

You're confusing fluid-intelligence with crystal-intelligence, the IQ test specifically exists to test your ability to solve problems (fluid intelligence). If the questions were about something really specific like the history of the Han Dynasty or the mating behaviour of the White Rhino or some other obscure trivia, then it wouldn't be an IQ test but just a test for general knowledge that can be passed by anyone who read a lot of books.

At worst, if an IQ test can't accurately predict who is a genius, it can still tell you who isn't one and serve as a good filter for retards, since you probably wouldn't want to put people with a <80 IQ in positions where they bear a lot of responsibility.

>>85892

It's the specific knowledge and skills that matter. No one cares that you got a million points, they care if you can do what they want and at what price. You're basically saying someone who fucks up at IQ test sucks at responsibility, but what matters is if they suck at it, not for what reason.

>>85897

Who is they? Ok, fuck the points, but not being able to solve 1 + 1 is a pretty good indicator that you won't be a rocket scientist, a banker, or even a cashier at a supermarket. Unless there is a very specific disability that only affects your ability to do simple math, not being able to solve 1 + 1 is also a pretty good indicator that you suck at pretty much everything else that you do.

Also, I didn't say people that who suck at IQ tests are irresponsible (although that is true too), I said you wouldn't trust them with responsibilities, for example, you wouldn't let a drooling retard operate a crane or drive bus, ie. they're unreliable people who're prone to fucking up.

>>85904

The IQ test was not designed to find those who can't do 1 + 1, it was designed to measure intelligence. The existence of disabilities do not prove a quantitative measure of intelligence, except perhaps in the sense that some cases are more severe than other similar ones.

>>85905

You totally ignored my post. The inability to solve 1 + 1 (and many such tests) says a lot about your intelligence. Blame your parents for being stupid, don't blame the IQ test.

>>85909

The ability to solve simple problems says that there are no disabilities, but this is not a quantitative statement.

>>85911

t. 80 IQ

Also worth noting the fact that the high-IQ economic elites have been marrying amongst themselves breeding high-IQ children for generations now, and the fact that the high amount of taxes and regulations (regulatory capture) makes it hard for the non-smart/non-rich/non-connected to start companies to compete with established businesses. The welfare state incentivizing poverty doesn't help either (that which is subsidized grows, that which is taxed shrinks).

The gini coefficient is something that needs to be kept an eye on, but with the tremendous demand for labor that would come from a truly free market it's not clear that government intervention would help more than it would hurt overall.