What if There Were No Poor Among Us?

[_emilysmith]

Nazism is a corrupted form of fascism.

A dictatorship is the most efficient government in the world... it's just that you can never find a good dictator.

If you divided up all of the money in the world and gave it to everyone, how much would everyone have?

My guess is about $30,000.00

Edit: It turns out I was wrong. If the world population is 7 billion and the wealth in the world was 44 trillion, everyone would be worth

$44,000,000,000,000.00/7,000,000,000.00=$6285.71

If every piece of arable land in the world was divided up and given out, everyone would have more than an acre of land.

[_Droopy]

No poor implies no rich.

Why?

You cannot have an upper class without an underclass,

Why?

just as you cannot have a dominant predator species without a whole chain of organisms lower on the food chain to support them.

The dominant predators also support the lower organisms, the entire thing is symbiotic and interconnected. Your knowledge of biology is as abysmal as your knowledge of economics and history.

In any case, the upper classes are not predatory, but the servants of the consumers to decide through their individual valuations in the marketplace whether what businesses will exist and which will cease to exist, or exist at a lower economic level, than others. Government is predatory, and represents concentrated force, not a free offer to buy or to withhold one's property.

[_Droopy]

Nazism is a corrupted form of fascism.

Not really correct. German National Socialism is best understood as a heretical sect of socialism. Its fascist elements are primarily to be seen in its ultranationalism, ethnic obsessions, and some of its economic policies, but much traditional socialism exists in its party platform as well as its behavior during its existence from 1933 to the end of WWII.

A dictatorship is the most efficient government in the world... it's just that you can never find a good dictator.

Efficient at accomplishing what?

If you divided up all of the money in the world and gave it to everyone, how much would everyone have?

My guess is about $30,000.00

Edit: It turns out I was wrong. If the world population is 7 billion and the wealth in the world was 44 trillion, everyone would be worth

$44,000,000,000,000.00/7,000,000,000.00=$6285.71

If every piece of arable land in the world was divided up and given out, everyone would have more than an acre of land.

And?

[_Buffalo]

just as you cannot have a dominant predator species without a whole chain of organisms lower on the food chain to support them.

The dominant predators also support the lower organisms, the entire thing is symbiotic and interconnected. Your knowledge of biology is as abysmal as your knowledge of economics and history.

In any case, the upper classes are not predatory, but the servants of the consumers to decide through their individual valuations in the marketplace whether what businesses will exist and which will cease to exist, or exist at a lower economic level, than others. Government is predatory, and represents concentrated force, not a free offer to buy or to withhold one's property.

Droopy, it's an excellent analogy, as you yourself have helped to further it. The top predators contribute scraps of rotted flesh to the underclass, after having reaped the benefits of having a majority underclass their entire lives.

I didn't say anything about government, though. I'm simply saying that if there were no poor, there could also be no rich. Poor and rich are relative measures, and there is simply a limit to the amount of wealth in the world at any given time, given a finite amount of people and resources. If you could hold the entire Indian Ocean in your mouth, do you suppose you could do so without affecting the sea level worldwide?

[_emilysmith]

Efficient at accomplishing what, you ask?

EVERYTHING. Only one person has to make a decision. No panels, no committees, no voting.

And?

And nothing. It is just something to think about. How would you get from point A, being now, to point B, where we don't have to worry about the vagaries of poverty?

It also gives you an idea of what true equality means. If you think everyone can live with six thousand dollars, then it is a good plan. I'd be okay with everyone actually being equal, but the social darwinists are still plentiful and (ironically) they are the most terrified of letting everyone have their fair shot.

There is an interesting hierarchy of needs for individuals and for groups. If everyone had food, water and shelter, what is next? Well, we still haven't solved that first one yet, so why get ahead of ourselves?

Can we get everyone food, water and shelter? Yes. If energy and water were made to be as cheap as possible, it would be the first step to making sure everyone had access to the basic necessities. The truth is that no one is really interested in making this happen otherwise it would have a long time ago. Maybe it will all change if we manage to engineer a way to harness fusion power, but, even then, probably someone would own it and make sure everyone paid as much as the market would bare for it rather than give it to mankind so that everyone may benefit.

[_subgenius]

Consider the hypothetical situation.........

Now, here is the question: if poverty could be abolished in this manner, under these economic conditions, would this be preferable, or not preferable, to a socialist system in which the central focus was on, not necessarily making the poor that much less poor, but on making them equal in their claim on the available resources and wealth of the society?

In other words, is economic equality as an ideal and societal goal of more importance than the actual abolition of poverty? Is equality of income distribution of greater importance, in the overall scheme of things, than the creation of wealth by the poor themselves and the addition of that wealth to, not only their own temporal condition, but to the net wealth of the entire society?

If it were possible to abolish poverty from the human condition utilizing either a free market capitalist economic order, or a socialist economic order, which would be preferred, assuming, for all intents and purposes, the same outcome?

Why?

I am not convinced that poverty can be abolished by any manner, thanks to that pesky free-will.
And no economic system, alone, can reasonably (or by imagination) bring about any sort of Utopia where we would find that all people share in the same sense of material and spiritual satisfaction as to have no "poverty".

Other than that, i am not sure what you are asking...your scenario is hardly a "end justifies the means" issue, but rather an issue so hypothetical it borders on being an exercise of "what if we all had the same powers as Spider-Man?"

[_Analytics]

It's hard to figure out how to engage this. For many reasons, I just don't believe that the libertarian economy you envision would produce the results you expect it would.

Then I'm sure you can adduce a coherent argument showing why I should believe this to be the case.

I'd first point out that the burden of proof is on your side. Has there ever been a society where people behaved the way you want them to with the results you think would follow?

Given the very real history of the 20th century, we have a substantial record of what leftist ideas have actually wrought whenever they are applied, to the degree they are applied, which allows us a clear glimpse into the realm you mention - what leftists actually believe and why they believe them, as they have, as a body, never taken responsibility for the terrible failures of their ideas....

Judging from the OP, it appears that the economic policy of the United States during the 20th century was a decidedly leftist system that you bemoan. After all, it had centralized banking, high and progressive income tax structures, high inflation at times, high government deficits at times, a government that encouraged its citizens to extensively borrow, crony capitalism, strong social safety nets, and unionized labor. It even had free primary and secondary education that included federally subsidized lunch.

Do you think America during the 20th century was a terrible failure of the left's ideas?

[_Analytics]

I am not convinced that poverty can be abolished by any manner, thanks to that pesky free-will.
And no economic system, alone, can reasonably (or by imagination) bring about any sort of Utopia where we would find that all people share in the same sense of material and spiritual satisfaction as to have no "poverty".

Other than that, i am not sure what you are asking...your scenario is hardly a "end justifies the means" issue, but rather an issue so hypothetical it borders on being an exercise of "what if we all had the same powers as Spider-Man?"

Well said. I found it incredibly irnoic that underneath his own OP, Droopy juxtaposes himself with "the kind of mind that reposes in utopian dreaming and romantic, idealistic academic theorizing."

[_Analytics]

I’ll go ahead and play ball and address the actual questions:

Now, here is the question: if poverty could be abolished in this manner, under these economic conditions, would this be preferable, or not preferable, to a socialist system in which the central focus was on, not necessarily making the poor that much less poor, but on making them equal in their claim on the available resources and wealth of the society?

It depends upon how attractive the hypothetical socialist system was. If the hypothetical socialist system was assumed to work great and produce a GDP even greater than that of your hypothetical laissez faire system, then I might go with that one. But on the other hand, I’m pretty good at competing in the free market, so perhaps I’d be better served by being rich in the well-functioning laissez faire system than merely average in the socialist one. After all, I can’t live a life of luxury off of the work of others unless I’m winning at the game of capitalism.

In other words, is economic equality as an ideal and societal goal of more importance than the actual abolition of poverty? Is equality of income distribution of greater importance, in the overall scheme of things, than the creation of wealth by the poor themselves and the addition of that wealth to, not only their own temporal condition, but to the net wealth of the entire society?

I don’t think anybody would say that “economic equality” is more important than the abolition of poverty. Even Karl Marx argued that as society progressed towards Communism, they first needed to pass through the status of Capitalism where the poor themselves created wealth. Marx’s revolution wasn’t about the unproductive poor stealing wealth from the productive rich, but rather, about the workers claiming the right to the wealth that they themselves created.

If it were possible to abolish poverty from the human condition utilizing either a free market capitalist economic order, or a socialist economic order, which would be preferred, assuming, for all intents and purposes, the same outcome?

Paul Krugman recently addressed this question when he said,

My vision of economic morality is more or less Rawlsian: we should try to create the society each of us would want if we didn’t know in advance who we’d be. And I believe that this vision leads, in practice, to something like the kind of society Western democracies have constructed since World War II — societies in which the hard-working, talented and/or lucky can get rich, but in which some of their wealth is taxed away to pay for a social safety net, because you could have been one of those who strikes out.

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/0 ... portunity/
I agree with that.

[_subgenius]

Nazism is a corrupted form of fascism.

A dictatorship is the most efficient government in the world... it's just that you can never find a good dictator.

If you divided up all of the money in the world and gave it to everyone, how much would everyone have?

My guess is about $30,000.00

Edit: It turns out I was wrong. If the world population is 7 billion and the wealth in the world was 44 trillion, everyone would be worth

$44,000,000,000,000.00/7,000,000,000.00=$6285.71

If every piece of arable land in the world was divided up and given out, everyone would have more than an acre of land.

yes, but some acres are nicer than others....