
It's Time for the 99% to Give Back to the 1% - neo4sure
https://www.forbes.com/sites/harrybinswanger/2013/09/17/give-back-yes-its-time-for-the-99-to-give-back-to-the-1/#1d44403270c5
======
throw2016
The fantasists are back. If you can create so much value by yourself why even
remain in society and crib for decades on end. Go create the value and enjoy
it. Show us. No one will come to your wonderland to steal the fruits of your
genius.

If this anti-human ideology actually worked, these self appointed geniuses
would have long left society and created value all by themselves, but
currently its as petty as putting up a stall in a club and refusing to pay the
fees.

It takes a huge amount of time, generational effort and resources to build a
functioning civilized society in which everyone is vested and thus peaceful.
Nothing is free, and it appears its the 'makers' who want to be the takers
while feigning a childish self serving ignorance of how civilization works.

Even animal species that are social look out for one another in order to
survive and thrive, human social instincts are far more sophisticated. To deny
it altogether and seek to reduce human relations to economic interactions is
to regress to barbarism.

~~~
CryptoPunk
He didn't say people can create value by themselves. I recommend you read the
article more closely and truly understand what he's saying.

I would argue his argument is overly simplistic for two reasons:

* many of those who engage in nonremunerative work contribute just as much as those who have accumulated millions. Saying the 99% owe the 1% is just as much of an over-generalization as the reverse

* many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially harmful, like politicians turned corporate lobbyists who earn millions getting subsidies and regulatory barriers to competition for their employers, or like public sector bureaucrats who sway public opinion in support of useless government work just to ensure their department budget continues to grow.

~~~
jonhendry18
_many institutions allow people to earn wealth from activity that is socially
harmful_

Like SCL/Cambridge Analytica.

------
BLKNSLVR
Jesus. Hasn't the Randian philosophy been deconstructed enough?

No income tax for someone that earns $1m+, but taxes on those who earn less?
In what entirely silver-spoon-born-and-bred entitled mind does this possibly
make sense?

Taxes create the infrastructure that makes society possible and the bigger the
business / industry, the more it requires basic infrastructure in order to
grow or maintain itself.

What more do people earning $1m+ want? Can they not sustain themselves and
their families on $1m per year? Do they want to create enough value that their
children no longer need to work? If so, then what of their value of hard work?
What about the natural instinct of bequeathing their role as "boss" to one of
their children? That doesn't feel earnt to me?

What of the large financial institutions role in money laundering and sub-
prime mortgage disasters and where that has left the 99%?

Look at some of the findings of the banking royal commission in Australia to
see the kinds of things large financial institutions do as run-of-the-mill if
they're not regulated. These institutions are run by people earning
significant coin and take advantage of those who are already struggling
financially - the very reason they seek advice / help on financial matters.

I'm making assumptions above and targeting financial institutions above
others, but the article name-dropped Goldman Sachs, and the golden parachutes
and massive salaries that the kinds of people he's talking about already get
make it sound as if he's complaining about how the silver spoon tastes.

The author of the article is a member of the Ayn Rand Institute. Which likely
means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to question these
beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one ages.

Also: Harry Binswanger was born and raised in Richmond, Virginia. He is an
heir to the Binswanger Glass Company, founded in 1872 by Samuel Binswanger

In that context, this article sounds like "waaaaah, I'm hard-done-by, taxes
are holding me back, government help me - by intervening as a government that
doesn't believe in intervening"

~~~
mywittyname
> Which likely means he was converted as a teenager and hasn't been able to
> question these beliefs as that gets more difficult and depressing as one
> ages.

That explains why I'm having a hard time gauging whether or not this article
is satire.

~~~
peatmoss
A keen appreciation for satire and a strong BS meter means occasionally
assuming that crazy positions are satire rather than evidence of craziness. On
the other hand, this kind of bias can also be called charitable, so it’s not a
bad way to go through life.

------
peatmoss
I applaud this evidently self-made man. I only wish I could tell him that
there is a place in the world where his exceptionalism can soar and he can
live his laissez-faire dream:

Somalia.

Let’s help this man emigrate.

~~~
s_m_t
A failed socialist state that actually saw many improvements during its
collapse into anarchy doesn't seem to help your point.

~~~
peatmoss
Oh right, the author in the article isn’t advocating laissez-faire at all.
He’s advocating that the underclasses pay the taxes for the state services
(such as police) that would keep the state from descending into anarchy. He
wants socialism for the rich.

~~~
s_m_t
So what does that have to do with Somalia

~~~
peatmoss
I’m saying that laissez-faire is what Somalia actually is. The author says he
advocates laissez-faire, but I’d guess he wouldn’t be happy if he got it.

Instead, the author is a hypocrite who just wants rich people left alone, but
others very much not left alone. This worldview is typically accompanied by an
astonishingly naive accounting of the benefits that one must enjoy from
society to attain their position. Objectivism, as espoused by this article’s
author and Ayn Rand alike, is a childish and cruel ideology.

------
squarefoot
I'd be interested to read his opinions on top managers getting huge leaves
after bringing companies belly up, or those who happily decimate their
workforce without thinking of the consequences. In the old times one could
claim a piece of land then cultivate it, mine it or use it as he/she wanted;
surely not easy at all, but bureaucracy was next to not existent. Today one
needs to own a land, then get permits, etc. My point is that we shifted
towards a society where you have to own something even to start. People losing
their job today cannot count on the same opportunities jobless people had
centuries ago, so they have to work for someone; if they lose their job
they're essentially dead.

~~~
bendlas
If I had to guess, I'd say that he'd tell you, that those managers "managed"
(haha, get it?) to prevent the worst of bad losses to shareholders and got
paid accordingly, and/or that said payments were contractually agreed on.

I can't bring myself to categorically disagree with either of those positions,
because big business, fundamentally, is about setting common goals for
absurdly large groups of people and to operate within even (much) larger
groups of people in the real world. Complicated situations are bound to arise,
and even if a manager failed to save a company, their contract entitles them
to bonuses for whatever business goals they did achieve. If they managed to
get that agreement signed beforehand, it needs to be honored, because binding
contracts are a really fundamental building block of society, that needs to
stay intact.

It's legitimate, though, to question the payment amounts and business goals
they were bound on, as well as whether payments were made, that they were not
entitled to. That's where our taxes need to fund a strong justice system, that
can bring corruption suits to such cases.

Also, I'm sympathetic to situations and feelings of people being ground up in
corrupt systems and I think we really need to understand how capitalism-
apologists insulate themselves against those feelings by focussing on the
guilt of weak people for not taking care of themselves. It's a coping
mechanism, that helps when one has been of the receiving end of things before,
but on the way up. It also protects from the guilt of not being able to help
everybody, that one would like to.

------
squozzer
Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed some of Atlas Shrugged.

>It's not the Henry Fords and Steve Jobs who exploit people. Problem is not
all of the 1% is Steve Jobs, Henry Ford or Warren Buffett. It also includes,
for example, royal families whose contribution is not intellectual.

>When you work in a modern factory, you are paid, not only for your labor, but
for all the productive genius which has made that factory possible:

And something which Ms. Rand forgot to include in her statement, which is the
desire of customers to buy the product the factory produces.

>In proportion to the mental energy he spent, the man who creates a new
invention receives but a small percentage of his value in terms of material
payment, no matter what fortune he makes, no matter what millions he earns.

Paying someone less than the value they provide is what makes capitalism work.
Not even CEOs or founders are exempt from this law, though I'm sure more than
one skates awfully close.

>Instead, we live in a culture where Goldman Sachs is smeared as "a great
vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity."

Not sure how deep GS was involved but here goes -
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%932008)

>There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the
Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous
perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code
that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

Plus the need to finance the bodyguards for the New World Order (aka The War
Machine.)

~~~
jonhendry18
Plenty of CEOs are paid more than the value they provide.

~~~
squozzer
I'll go along with that as an opening for a later discussion. But consider the
value of a CEO is probably more than just profits generated - or to use a
Moneyball term - "wins above replacement."

------
bendlas
Let's dispell another popular myth: Demand and Supply isn't nessecarily an
indicator of value. It only follows value, if the power balance is close to
equilibrium. Otherwise, Power picks and shapes the demand it wants. How much
value has been lost to superior marketing?

~~~
beaconstudios
there are flaws in supply and demand sure, but it's mostly working. Is there a
more effective model? The labour theory of value is clearly inferior given
high levels of automation and serves much better as a yardstick in Marx'
analyses of capitalism than as a fundamental basis of value.

~~~
bendlas
I'm certain, that there is a more effective model. It might or might not be
known at this point in time and it might even be closer to social
constructivism than to mechanistic pragmatism. Can you tell for sure?

In any case, that's not the point I'm trying to litigate.

What I'm trying to get at: Given the obvious flaws in pure capitalism (as
there would be in any "pure" ideology), how can we reject the need for checks
and balances?

~~~
beaconstudios
one of the benefits of supply and demand is that it encourages innovation via
the creation of untapped demand for novel products. I don't know what your
idea of a constructivist model of value would be, but in my eyes that's an
important role that LToV is incapable of fulfilling.

Of course pure capitalism is a silly idea, assuming everyone is homo
economicus you'd end up looping back round to feudalistic stratification via
the Matthew effect
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matthew_effect)).
Of course everyone is not homo economicus so it'd likely be less bad than
that, but there are still plenty of sociopaths who would achieve much more
success when the restraints are lifted.

~~~
bendlas
I don't know as much about labour theory, as you seem to think I do. I'm not
trying to argue for any ideology and I find the reduction to a duality between
supply-demand and labor-entitle overly simplistic. Those are ideological
landmarks, for sure, but both are volatile in nature and both happen, whether
it's allowed or not (even though the decision to allow is a big one).

Since you asked me about a constructivist model of value, let me try at a
sketch (and put qualify with "in my mind" as necessary):

First and foremost, value is information, because it's a relation over facts,
so relates facts to one another, puts them in perspective. What I think many
people would call "true" or "real" values are those that can easily be
considered facts in and of themselves, because all their relatives are known
facts.

Those values, when considered closely, are few and far between and many
intellectual currents, including science, have been devoted to finding more of
them.

Social constructivism (a category, that includes capitalism as well as
marxism, basically every model talking about people doing things with their
lives), has the inherent problem that many of its facts are unknown. That's
because people keep them secret, because they are part of their private lives,
that they don't want other people to know about. Also, people change over time
and so do their private facts.

Hence, in social sciences, it's _even_ harder to find meaningful true values
and successful models have to account for large degrees of individual freedom.

Coming back to your argument, I categorically agree, that supply-demand
creates untapped demand. I don't categorically agree, that that's a good
thing. More concretely: Sure, free expression has promoted many good things,
still, everybody has their own line about what they want to be allowed to be
promoted and/or even sold.

In practice, I think for a functional state, it's much more common to defend
the free market against yet another asshole that just found out that
destructive behavior can give you a temporary advantage, but didn't quite
figure out the calculation of long-term costs and / or doesn't care.

------
dmfdmf
The vast majority of people who have opinions on Ayn Rand or her philosophy of
Objectivism haven't read a word of what she wrote and are repeating what they
heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her ideas. Whether such failure
is due to ability or dishonesty doesn't really matter.

Note the ad hom comments in this thread dismissing the content of this article
because Binswanger inherited his money. Nobody has "deconstructed" Rand's
ideas because they are true and because modern intellectuals are unable to
rebut her arguments they are reduced to smears and gross misrepresentations of
an important intellectual achievement.

My advice; read Rand's work firsthand and judge her ideas for yourself.

~~~
BLKNSLVR
"dismissing the content of this article because Binswanger inherited his
money"

That fact should pretty much exclude Binswanger from having a public opinion
on it because, whilst he may have worked hard for what he's got, the very fact
of his being an 'heir' means his opinions will always be coloured by the
likelihood of a life born into privilege.

Even if the ideas presented make sense in a highly-complex interwoven society,
having articles written by someone potentially starting with heavy assistance
will not help their cause. Get a genuine gutter-to-penthouse self-made person
to write up how the common worker should be more thankful to their upper
management and company-owners that they rarely see, much less have any
interaction with. I'd read that with interest.

(Disclaimer: I've not read Rand, so I'm knowingly squarely within dmfdmf's
crosshairs. I understand the basic concepts, but do need to actually read the
source material - and am planning to do so, in order that I can "deconstruct"
properly)

~~~
dmfdmf
The truth or falsehood of the content is independent of Binswanger's income
source and can be verified apart from that fact. This is the meaning of Ad
Hominem fallacy, to get people to dismiss an argument not because it is false
but because of some supposed flaw or fact about the person making the
argument. Moreover, this is the exact method by which the Communists dismissed
the objections to communism, accusing anyone who defended property rights as
"bourgeois" and biased because they owned property. They established multiple
brutal dictatorships last century that led to the death of millions and are
still active today.

I truly hope you follow through with your intent, ignore the smears and
misrepresentations, and read Rand firsthand and judge for yourself. As the
first book I recommend _Philosophy Who Needs It_ followed by _The Virtue of
Selfishness_ and leave the politics for later. Rand argued that politics
follows from ethics and that is where the debate needs to shift if you want to
understand the dire state of the world.

~~~
Semirhage
You opened with this: _The vast majority of people who have opinions on Ayn
Rand or her philosophy of Objectivism haven 't read a word of what she wrote
and are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her
ideas._

That is ad hominem against a straw man, so I’m applying grains of salt heavily
to your commitment to logical and rhetorical integrity.

~~~
dmfdmf
My logical and rhetorical integrity is intact, you don't really know what ad
hominem means.

It means to raise some irrelevant fact about the person making the argument as
a reason to dismiss what the person is claiming. E.g. don't listen to
Binswanger because he is rich.

The vast majority of people who attack or dismiss or smear Ayn Rand have not
(or superficially) read what she wrote but this is a fact that IS relevant to
whether their opinion on Ayn Rand has any merit so its not ad hom.

~~~
Semirhage
Reassertion of your unsupported claim about who has and hasn’t read something
still isn’t an argument, it’s stil a straw man. Do you have any substance to
offer?

~~~
dmfdmf
Before we move on to your new Straw Man accusation, let's close out your old
accusation that my argument is Ad Hom. Do you concede that point, if not why?

~~~
Semirhage
There’s nothing new here.

 _That is ad hominem against a straw man, so I’m applying grains of salt
heavily to your commitment to logical and rhetorical integrity._

Is the first thing I said. Meanwhile I stand by it, but it seemed prudent to
break it down point by point until you had nowhere left to go. “All of these
people I must invented haven’t even read the books!” Is still just what I said
it was.

~~~
dmfdmf
The implication of your position (i.e., that my argument is Ad Hom) is that
the validity or merit of someone's opinion of Ayn Rand's work is independent
of whether they have read her work or not is absurd on the face of it. It
implies that people can have valid or valuable opinions on subjects of which
they are completely ignorant. These implications are independent of whether my
claim is true or false (which, I agree, is a disputable point or at least one
that must be validated).

> Meanwhile I stand by it...

You can stand all you want but your position is not defensible in logic. I
will repeat what I previously stated: You do not know what Ad Hom means. I
know this for a fact because you fail to see an obvious implication of your
position. We can address the validity of my claim but only if you see that my
argument is not Ad Hom. If not then there is not much else to discuss.

~~~
Semirhage
_...are repeating what they heard or have read it and failed to comprehend her
ideas._

Remember saying that? I’m getting tired of having to “remind” you of what has
been said, so yes, we’re done.

------
carlsborg
The people of North Korea are encouraged to be grateful to their dear leader.
He is a man of many superior talents talents clearly - it’s in a North Korean
newspaper and many posters too - and is responsible for improving the life of
his citizens who have not created anything of value like Steve jobs or Henry
Ford.

Of course western civilisation is not a dictatorship. For example we would
never tolerate a leaders son or wife taking control of a countries executive
powers.

------
sharemywin
Most of the 1% is built on my penny is shinier than yours but I'll go ahead
let you have it for 2 of your ugly pennies. Not sure I'd call that a win-win.

~~~
beaconstudios
your metaphor was lost on me. Do you mind clarifying?

~~~
sli
The metaphor there is trying to gouge/scam someone by pretending like the
shininess of a penny is tied to its value. I can't read the article because of
the paywall, but I'm a

~~~
craftyguy
> but I'm a

Did you intentionally leave that to the HN comment reader to finish?

~~~
mywittyname
His comment is also behind a paywall.

------
nitwit005
Same old story. People rail against taxes, but want the things taxes pay for.

I'm sure you could find someone making the same rant 150 years ago.

~~~
mywittyname
This is way worse than that -- he's literally saying that paying laborers is
an "inhuman draining of the productive."

> But the man who works as a janitor in the factory producing that invention,
> receives an enormous payment in proportion to the mental effort that his job
> requires of him.

> The man at the bottom who, left to himself, would starve in his hopeless
> ineptitude, contributes nothing to those above him, but receives the bonus
> of all of their brains.

That's an enormously toxic view of the bulk of humanity.

Maybe he should head out to Trump Country and say to all those blue collar
types that he feels they are hopelessly inept and contribute nothing to
society and would starve without men like himself.

------
danzig13
Solyndra was not some one off government boondoggle. It was the recipient of
government loan guarantees from the Department of Energy intended to inject
investment into the monopoly run, risk averse energy sector. The same program
financed and incubated fracking.

Despite this comment, I’m not sure if this is satire or not.

------
asiognionio
I've always enjoyed reading Objectivist writing. There's something gleefully
iconoclastic about it that I appreciate.

I would find it much more appealing if I didn't find the ideas so repulsive.

------
a-fried-egg
Lip service

------
ddingus
Okie Dokie

