268 lines
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268 lines
12 KiB
Plaintext
From fork-admin@xent.com Tue Sep 24 10:48:44 2002
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From: "John Hall" <johnhall@evergo.net>
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To: "FoRK" <fork@spamassassin.taint.org>
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Subject: Pluck and Luck
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List-Archive: <http://xent.com/pipermail/fork/>
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Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 17:29:29 -0700
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Anyone who doesn't appreciate both PLUCK and LUCK is only looking at
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part of the equation.
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America has, in fact, moved hard toward Meritocracy. But -- and this is
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a huge one -- you don't necessarily find it on the Forbes list. There
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is an element of LUCK, even if only being in the right place at the
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right time, to go that high.
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Beyond the Forbes List, there are many ways in which almost pure LUCK is
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involved in significant wealth. Being a super-model, for example.
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Though I think most people would be surprised by a lot of super-models.
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Cindy Crawford was valedictorian of her high school.
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Most people, of course, aren't in those stratified realms. It is the
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rest of us who tend to sort.
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There is a huge philosophical problem with the concept of Merit in the
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first place. Rawls claims Merit doesn't exist. Sowell seems to agree
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at least in part, but I'm sure Sowell would also state that the benefits
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of pretending it exists for society at large are enormous.
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And if Merit does exist then exactly what is it measuring? IQ? Purity
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of heart? Or the ability to satisfy customers? Functionally most
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people seem to equate Merit with IQ though they say it would be better
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if it were purity of heart. Yet the type of Merit that lands you on the
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Forbes list, or even just being a garden variety 'millionaire next door'
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is more likely to be the 'serving customers' definition.
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Differences due to merit, when they are perceived as such, generate far
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more animosity than differences due to luck. Luck can be forgiven.
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Superior performance, often not.
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> -----Original Message-----
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> From: fork-admin@xent.com [mailto:fork-admin@xent.com] On Behalf Of
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Geege
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> Schuman
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> Sent: Monday, September 23, 2002 4:44 PM
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> To: R. A. Hettinga; Geege Schuman; Owen Byrne
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> Cc: Gary Lawrence Murphy; Mr. FoRK; fork@spamassassin.taint.org; Digital Bearer
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> Settlement List
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> Subject: RE: Comrade Communism (was Re: Crony Capitalism (was RE: sed
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> /s/United States/Roman Empire/g))
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>
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> First, misattribution. I did not write the blurb below. I made one
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> statement about VP Cheney only, to wit, that he has a short memory.
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>
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> I couldn't agree with you more on this: "in short, then, economics is
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not
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> a
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> zero sum game, property is not theft, the rich don't get rich off the
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> backs
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> of the poor, and redistributionist labor "theory" of value happy
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horseshit
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> is just that: horseshit, happy or otherwise," however, I resent being
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> lumped
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> in a zero-sum-zealot category for suggesting nothing more than that
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rich
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> and
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> successful at face value is apropos of nothing and I am beginning to
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> understand that people who immediately and so fiercely object to my ad
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> hominem (re Cheney) align themselves weird sylogisms like "if rich
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then
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> deservedly" or "if rich then smarter." Given that, I am also
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beginning to
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> understand why some people NEED to be rich.
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>
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> WRT to meritocracies - all hail, meritocracies! WRT Harvard: over 90%
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of
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> 2002 graduates were cum laude +. INTERESTING curve. Those eager to be
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> measured got their wish; those unwashed shy folk who just live it
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provide
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> the balast.
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>
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> Speaking of Forbes, was reading about Peter Norton just today in an
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old
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> issue while waiting for my doctor. Norton attributes his success to
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LUCK.
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> Imagine.
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>
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> Geege
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>
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> -----Original Message-----
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> From: R. A. Hettinga [mailto:rah@shipwright.com]
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> Sent: Sunday, September 22, 2002 10:01 PM
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> To: Geege Schuman; Owen Byrne
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> Cc: Gary Lawrence Murphy; Mr. FoRK; fork@spamassassin.taint.org; Digital Bearer
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> Settlement List
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> Subject: Comrade Communism (was Re: Crony Capitalism (was RE: sed
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> /s/United States/Roman Empire/g))
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>
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>
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> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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> Hash: SHA1
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>
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> At 11:15 AM -0400 on 9/22/02, Geege Schuman wrote:
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>
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>
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> > Most of them seem to have Ivy League educations, or are Ivy League
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> > dropouts suggesting to me that they weren't exactly poor to start
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> > with.
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>
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> Actually, if I remember correctly from discussion of the list's
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> composition in Forbes about five or six years ago, the *best* way to
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> get on the Forbes 400 is to have *no* college at all. Can you say
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> "Bootstraps", boys and girls? I knew you could...
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>
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> [Given that an undergraduate liberal arts degree from a state school,
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> like, say, mine, :-), is nothing but stuff they should have taught
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> you in a government-run "high" school, you'll probably get more of
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> *those* on the Forbes 400 as well as time goes on. If we ever get
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> around to having a good old fashioned government-collapsing
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> transfer-payment depression (an economic version of this summer's
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> government-forest conflagration, caused by the same kind of
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> innumeracy that not clear-cutting enough forests did out west this
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> summer :-)) that should motivate more than a few erst-slackers out
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> there, including me, :-), to learn to actually feed themselves.]
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>
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>
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> The *next* category on the Forbes 400 list is someone with a
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> "terminal" professional degree, like an MBA, PhD, MD, etc., from the
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> best school possible.
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>
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> Why? Because, as of about 1950, the *best* way to get into Harvard,
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> for instance, is to be *smart*, not rich. Don't take my word for it,
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> ask their admissions office. Look at the admissions stats over the
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> years for proof.
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>
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> Meritocracy, American Style, was *invented* at the Ivy League after
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> World War II. Even Stanford got the hint, :-), and, of course,
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> Chicago taught them all how, right? :-). Practically *nobody* who
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> goes to a top-20 American institution of higher learning can actually
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> afford to go there these days. Unless, of course, their parents, who
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> couldn't afford to go there themselves, got terminal degrees in the
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> last 40 years or so. And their kids *still* had to get the grades,
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> and "biased" (by intelligence :-)), test scores, to get in.
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>
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>
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> The bizarre irony is that almost all of those people with "terminal"
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> degrees, until they actually *own* something and *hire* people, or
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> learn to *make* something for a living all day on a profit and loss
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> basis, persist in the practically insane belief, like life after
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> death, that economics is some kind of zero sum game, that dumb people
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> who don't work hard for it make all the money, and, if someone *is*
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> smart, works hard, and is rich, then they stole their wealth somehow.
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>
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> BTW, none of you guys out there holding the short end of this
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> rhetorical stick can blame *me* for the fact that I'm using it to
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> beat you severely all over your collective head and shoulders. You
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> were, apparently, too dumb to grab the right end. *I* went to
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> Missouri, and *I* don't have a degree in anything actually useful,
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> much less a "terminal" one, which means *I*'m broker than anyone on
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> this list -- it's just that *you*, of all people, lots with
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> educations far surpassing my own, should just plain know better. The
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> facts speak for themselves, if you just open your eyes and *look*.
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> There are no epicycles, the universe does not orbit the earth, and
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> economics is not a zero-sum game. The cost of anything, including
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> ignorance and destitution, is the forgone alternative, in this case,
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> intelligence and effort.
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>
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> [I will, however, admit to being educated *waay* past my level of
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> competence, and, by the way *you* discuss economics, so have you,
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> apparently.]
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>
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>
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>
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> BTW, if we ever actually *had* free markets in this country,
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> *including* the abolition of redistributive income and death taxes,
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> all those smart people in the Forbes 400 would have *more* money, and
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> there would be *more* self-made people on that list. In addition,
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> most of the people who *inherited* money on the list would have
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> *much* less of it, not even relatively speaking. Finally, practically
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> all of that "new" money would have come from economic efficiency and
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> not "stolen" from someone else, investment bubbles or not.
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>
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> That efficiency is called "progress", for those of you in The
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> People's Republics of Berkeley or Cambridge. It means more and better
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> stuff, cheaper, over time -- a terrible, petit-bourgeois concept
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> apparently not worthy of teaching by the educational elite, or you'd
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> know about it by now. In economic terms, it's also called an increase
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> in general welfare, and, no, Virginia, I'm not talking about
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> extorting money from someone who works, and giving it to someone who
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> doesn't in order to keep them from working and they can think of some
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> politician as Santa Claus come election time...
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>
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>
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> In short, then, economics is not a zero sum game, property is not
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> theft, the rich don't get rich off the backs of the poor, and
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> redistributionist labor "theory" of value happy horseshit is just
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> that: horseshit, happy or otherwise.
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>
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> To believe otherwise, is -- quite literally, given the time Marx
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> wrote Capital and the Manifesto -- romantic nonsense.
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>
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> Cheers,
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> RAH
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>
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>
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> --
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> -----------------
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> R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@ibuc.com>
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> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/>
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> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
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> "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
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> [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
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> experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
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>
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>
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