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From: berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman)
Newsgroups: net.politics.theory
Subject: Re: Politics and Ethics--Socialism, Libertarianism, and Capitalism
Message-ID: <1944@psuvax1.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 28-Dec-85 16:47:17 EST
Article-I.D.: psuvax1.1944
Posted: Sat Dec 28 16:47:17 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 30-Dec-85 01:49:09 EST
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Organization: Pennsylvania State Univ.
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> >/* berman@psuvax1.UUCP (Piotr Berman) /  3:08 pm  Dec 18, 1985 */
> Michael Sykora
> 
> >It is not only messy, but totally defies the phrase "people who created
> >the means of production", which is emotionally charged and nice.
> 
> You asked how the contributions are split.  I indicated how.  What's the
> problem?
> 
Your split is the following: the owner pays cash the people for their
work, so he acquires the rights to fruits of labor.  The actual work
of the owner may be no larger than the work of any other person involved.

> >As we see, taxing profits is not taking away the fruits of hard labor,
> >but collecting a part of the return on the capital.
> 
> Where did you demonstrate this?
> 
See above - the profits in the last case are not due to expenditure
of labor, but due to expenditure of money.  Money in turn do not need
to reflect any past work of the owner.

You do not seem to share the latter opinion: the notion of the work
efficiency which may differ more than, say, 1000 times from individual
to individual may be natural, to me it is not.

> >Some people also point that people who provide labor are not always
> >"free to provide them at the agreed upon price/return or not".
> 
> In what situations are they not?  Remember, we are talking about a theoretical
> system here, not one that is currently implemented.
> 
Wait...
> >While capital may move freely, a laborer is greatly constrained.
> 
> While birds can fly unaided, humans cannot.  So???

However, the capital flies easily.  What I said is that the person
with large amount of money has much larger flexibility than the
one with small (why otherwise would he bother to have those money
to begin with?).  
What I am saying here is the following: the equality under the law
of two sides of a transaction does not provide equal opportunities 
to bargain.  Since this assymmetry is persistent, one cannot ignore
it as a statistical aberration.
> 
> >Unlike the capital owner, he must have a deal to survive.
> 
> What do you mean by a deal?
> 
Sell labor, instead of keeping to shop around for a better deal.

> >While the owner of capital may patiently shop around, the laborer
> >risks personal deprivations when he wants to shop around (move to 
> >other area, abandon a job to seek for another etc.).
> >While I am not against the privite enterprise, I am not satisfied
> >with the glib phrase
> >> they transfer the rights to the product of 
> >> this labor to the payer of the fee.
> 
> What is wrong with it?  Wherein lies your dissatisfaction?
> 
According to your approach, the owner of capital does not need anything
from the rest of the society than the services for which he pays, more-
over, whatever profits does he have, they are due to his work alone.
   In my approach, the profits of the owner of capital are at least
partially due to advantage of his position, and not exlusively due to
his skills, enterprenourship etc.  Thus it may be fair that he shares
his profits with the rest of the society.  In particular, your 'glib
phrase' is used to oppose taxation.  I claim that it contains so much
of systematic idealization of reality that it cannot be used to justify
any ethical conclusions.

> >Is human work worth only as much as it is paid?
> 
> How do you define "worth?"

I was asking a question!
> 
> >Is the value of a human equal to the sum of wages he/she collected?
> 
> "Value" to whom?  There is no such thing as objective value.

Then OK, we both agree: we are free to redefine the value of work
is such a way that the difference between compensation/profit
and the "actual" worth will be equal to a tax, this way taxing
does not take away any contribution from an individual.
In short, taxing is not an ethically wrong thing ('theft'),
but admissible semantic manipulation.

Piotr Berman