The Rich Get Richer While the Poor Get Poorer

[kib]

But again, not really how it works in the real world. Billionaires, in my experience, don't seem to act as you fear. They are, under the mountain of gold, human beings...

I'm really not sure if you honestly have no experience with being outbid and therefore losing through your own lack of ability to compete financially and therefore think it's a myth, or if you're just goofing on me.

Yes, they're human beings. And while once again I agree with you, the soulless corporation is a bigger problem, the fact that they're humans is less than reassuring. Just look at all those human beings in government - self-dealing, looting and immoral. Just look at all those human beings on Jerry Springer, self-dealing, looting and immoral. Have billionaires necessarily purchased a different class of soul, a Better class of soul, while they've been running around gathering their money like everyone else?

[bae]

Ok, yes. Mr. Soot Factor was a metaphor for the corporate coal industry. But one entity with a million times the resources of another is basically free to do whatever it pleases, because its underlying security is not the least bit threatened by a financial outlay that would entirely destroy the other.

But they aren't free to do things that significantly impact others, even with unlimited resources.

Assume for the sake of argument that my neighbor wants to mine coal on his half of the island. To do so, he'd have to get appropriate mining permits. He won't be issued them here until and unless he can demonstrate that his activities do not impair the values and functions of the local ecosystem - it's the law. Local, state, and federal. He'd be very unlikely to be issued permits for his project. If he proceeded to begin mining without the permits, within a few hours, a stop-work order would be issued. If he failed to honor the stop-work order, within a very short period of time, the Sheriff would arrive to enforce it. If he resisted, force would be used.

Now, say he bribed a local permitting official to do him a favor and issue a permit. Very shortly after the permit was issued, the independent hearings examiner would have the case in front of him, and issue an order to stop while it was being investigated, and if the claim was valid, go back to the previous Sheriff-with-guns case. If the hearings examiner was bribed, the Superior Court, then the state-level courts would have to be bought out. Then about half a dozen federal agencies and courts.

It's not going to happen, generally.

[bae]

I'm really not sure if you honestly have no experience with being outbid and therefore losing through your own lack of ability to compete financially and therefore think it's a myth, or if you're just goofing on me.

There's a difference between being outbid, and being forced. I get outbid on projects all the time. That doesn't mean the fellow who won is forcing me to do anything.

My mention of the humanity of billionaires was in response to your claim that they lacked vulnerability, and interdependence with the rest of us. It's simply not true. When the billionaire down the road has a heart attack in the middle of the night, it's his neighbors the volunteer fire/emt folks who respond.

[jp1]

Interesting analogy. But very flawed. The behaviour you describe is of course why we moved from "I'm an evil landowning noble" English-style water law to first-in-use water law here in much of the United States.

Water isn't a good analogy either, for much of it is a shared resource, and not "wealth".

When I write a cool book, and make a billion dollars from selling it in voluntary transactions, I haven't taken diverted water from your farm.

While I agree that getting wealthy doesn't HAVE to mean harming or making others poorer, there are certainly plenty of cases where that is exactly what does happen. The poorly managed deregulation of the electricity markets, successfully pushed for by Enron thanks to their political power and connections, certainly gave them, a powerful corporation at the time, the opportunity to make large sums of money on the backs of electricity consumers in states like CA, while providing these same customers crappy service at the same time.

And actually, water is only a shared resource until a government, at the pushing of elite organizations like the world bank, sells off the water company and water rights to a private company to control and distribute, as has happened in Bolivia and many other countries.

It wouldn't surprise me at all to see water companies in the US get privatized over the next several years as desperate municipalities attempt to bring in some quick cash. If it happens the result will likely be higher water rates and big profits for the rich people with the right connections to be able to take over the water companies.

[kib]

But they aren't free to do things that significantly impact others, even with unlimited resources.

Assume for the sake of argument that my neighbor wants to mine coal on his half of the island. To do so, he'd have to get appropriate mining permits. He won't be issued them here until and unless he can demonstrate that his activities do not impair the values and functions of the local ecosystem - it's the law. Local, state, and federal. He'd be very unlikely to be issued permits for his project. If he proceeded to begin mining without the permits, within a few hours, a stop-work order would be issued. If he failed to honor the stop-work order, within a very short period of time, the Sheriff would arrive to enforce it. If he resisted, force would be used.

Now, say he bribed a local permitting official to do him a favor and issue a permit. Very shortly after the permit was issued, the independent hearings examiner would have the case in front of him, and issue an order to stop while it was being investigated, and if the claim was valid, go back to the previous Sheriff-with-guns case. If the hearings examiner was bribed, the Superior Court, then the state-level courts would have to be bought out. Then about half a dozen federal agencies and courts.

It's not going to happen, generally.

Except in Appalachia, where the people apparently ... apparently what? Apparently don't count? Apparently aren't lawyers? Or ... apparently don't have the resources/power/money to stop it. They've been fighting tooth and nail against mountaintop removal for decades and only recently managed to tweak the EPA ruling to perhaps improve the situation. If not lack of power and money, what's the answer to this fill-in-the-blank?

[kib]

There's a difference between being outbid, and being forced. I get outbid on projects all the time. That doesn't mean the fellow who won is forcing me to do anything.

There is always free will. Was it Elie Wiezel who implied the only thing he owned in Auschwitz was the dignity of his soul, which no man could take from him? Even there, expression of free will over circumstance.

Nevertheless ... I doubt he'd argue that a little more ability to express free will would have been appreciated. That's a pretty straightforward definition of forced, but the question of when someone's life is debased by another and when they are simply outbid might not be as simple as it seems. If the bidding in question is on the property next to mine and the bidder wins by a landslide, I'm not forced to do anything. But ... what if he decides that the very thing for that property is a CAFO dairy farm? Let's say I live where I do because I'm poor and this place is not expensive, and part of that means it's not very regulated. So there's no law in place that says he can't. And there's no money in my bank account to hire a lawyer to change the law. Once Land O Lakes is installed in my back yard, the value of the property I have goes to hell. So I do have free will, no force, I can leave. And do what, go where, with my $3,000 house check? Or I can stay, no force, and live in a cesspool. Someone else has - with no force, mind you - horribly degraded the quality of my life and I had no control over it, because he had more money.

[bae]

There is always free will. Was it Elie Wiezel who implied the only thing he owned in Auschwitz was the dignity of his soul, which no man could take from him? Even there, expression of free will over circumstance.

Nevertheless ... I doubt he'd argue that a little more ability to express free will would have been appreciated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_Hitlerum

[kib]

Mentioning Elie Wiezel does not ipso facto make an argument reductio ad hitlerum. The point is that even in the most constrained of circumstances free will is still an option for the human spirit, but that doesn't mean the surrounding situation is ethical.

[mm1970]

I'm all for the rich people spending their money at Tiffany's. Woo! Spend it.

Some people get rich by starting businesses and taking huge risks. Some people get rich by cheating others. Some companies take government bailouts and then give their executives big bonuses (really?) I guess my biggest problem with the "rich" is when they do stuff like that.

But I also don't like it when our senators vote themselves raises. Or they fill bills with pork for their own state's particular military coffers.

I spend my money on things that I think are important. Supporting the local farmers, rather than Monsanto. Hiring someone to clean my house, rather than buy a big SUV. When "business" does things like give out million or billion dollar bonuses, then cancel health insurance for their employees, it bugs.

If you rely on a company for a job, your risks are just much higher now than they used to be. Companies, if publicly traded, are now in business to make their stockholders happy. They are less likely to worry about their employees. This is not true across the board, of course.

[Gregg]

If the bidding in question is on the property next to mine and the bidder wins by a landslide, I'm not forced to do anything. But ... what if he decides that the very thing for that property is a CAFO dairy farm? Let's say I live where I do because I'm poor and this place is not expensive, and part of that means it's not very regulated. So there's no law in place that says he can't. And there's no money in my bank account to hire a lawyer to change the law. Once Land O Lakes is installed in my back yard, the value of the property I have goes to hell. So I do have free will, no force, I can leave. And do what, go where, with my $3,000 house check? Or I can stay, no force, and live in a cesspool. Someone else has - with no force, mind you - horribly degraded the quality of my life and I had no control over it, because he had more money.

While there are certainly cases where an individual has been screwed because of the interpretation of laws, and it is always disappointing to see that happen, the entire system does function fairly well for the vast majority of participants. Throwing the baby out with the bathwater would only make things worse. Do we need to consider individual cases rather than broader guidelines at societal levels when making laws? I would argue no because, IMO, the purpose of most laws should be to lead the society in the direction of the most benefit for the greatest number of people. Having needs or desires that are in opposition to the laws does not inherently devalue any individual within the society, but it does place the responsibility of proving their case on that citizen. What makes that acceptable is when the individual does have a way to be heard. Versions of the hierarchy bae described in an earlier post is in place throughout the US so that an individual might have a voice, but laws are in place (theoretically) as the voice of the masses. As a purely practical matter it has to be that way to function.

Kib, the literal situation you described above is not unheard of in my part of the country. People around here are generally pretty pragmatic. The consensus here is usually that if zoning laws allow something to be built and it then gets built it should not come as much of a surprise. In the thread's water analogy, if you build your house in a flood plain and it floods it shouldn't leave you wondering how that happened. The flaw in the analogy there is that water doesn't have free will and developers do. Pragmatism leads you to the belief that how and where that free will can be exercised has already been taken into account. The developer of the feedlot might be able to build it next to your land because the zoning allowed, but they probably would not have the option to build it next to a subdivision or an elementary school or a mall. For now our society accepts those types of operations and so zoning laws developed within the society dictate where they can be built to have the least significant impact on the smallest number of people. Whether that type of confinement dairy operation should be built at all is a completely different argument. To end the practice will obviously entail convincing a large number of people that it does more harm than good and that will likely start with an individual on the short end of the stick moving through the system. Until then I would just as soon keep our legislators out of the morality business.