Last week we
noted that, while we need a rich child, woman, or man as much as we need any
other human being — there is nothing specially good or exceptionally wicked
about being rich that makes any rich individual better or worse as a human
being — we can get along very easily without their money.
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| You don't preserve anything by destroying it. |
In fact, we’re
better off if we don’t rely on the rich to finance new capital formation. Once we do that, there’s no way to establish
and maintain a state of society in which most people can — and do — own
productive capital except by changing
what “ownership” means. And if you do that, you might as well stop where you
are.
You can’t
restore property for some by destroying it for others. Not only is it politically unfeasible to do
so, it’s irrational. It violates the
first principle of reason, the principle of (non) contradiction: nothing can
both “be” and “not be” at the same time under the same conditions; truth is an
“intellectual unity.” What is true for
you must be true for me in the same way at the same time.
Now, let’s not
be deliberately stupid. To take an
obvious example, if it’s true that I have red hair, it is not necessarily true
that your hair is red, too. That’s not
what the “unity of the intellect” means.
It means that if it is objectively determined that I have red hair, you
cannot insist that my hair is, on the contrary, at the same time and under the
same conditions, green.
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| Noah Webster: define something so you know what you're talking about. |
Thus, if “property”
means 1) the natural, unlimited right inherent in every child, woman, and man
to own, and 2) the socially determined and necessarily limited bundle of rights
that define how an owner may exercise that right under specified conditions,
you cannot at the same time insist that “property” really means the thing owned (the popular misconception), that the
natural right to own is limited to a few (capitalism), or that the natural
right to own is as socially determined as the rights of ownership (socialism). That is why we say that capitalism is mostly wrong because it mostly abolishes
private property, and socialism is totally
wrong because it completely abolishes private property.
That’s also why
it’s not up to us to punish the rich for the presumed crime of being rich. First of all, it’s not our place to accuse
others and act as judge, jury, and executioner, especially when we have no
evidence or even logical argument — an argument based on false premises is not
logical, by the way. It doesn’t prove
someone else is guilty. It only proves
you’re stupid.
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| Sound money creation for Capital Homesteading. |
Second, it’s not
even expedient to punish the rich for being rich. Given the established fact that it is
possible — even preferable — to finance new capital formation by using future
savings to which we all potentially have access, instead of past savings to
which only the rich have access, the rich are only hurting themselves by not
enjoying what they have, or using it (of their own volition) to help others.
The bottom line
is that being rich is their problem. We
don’t need to make it ours as well by insisting that they use their wealth to
benefit us when we have the potential to benefit ourselves without having to
take anything from them. The only
question that remains is how to do it.
Frankly, the
“how” ordinary people can become owners of productive capital is the easiest
part of the whole program; it’s child’s play compared to convincing people that
past savings are not essential to the financing of new capital formation. The necessary institutions are already in
place to do most of it, and whatever else is needed can be passed into law in a
matter of days. We’ll just give a bare
outline in tomorrow’s posting. (We’ll
also ignore, for the time being, reform of the tax system, although that has to
go along with reform of the monetary system.
One thing at a time, though.)
#30#