What I love about this desert theory ethic is that it is anti-capitalist and anti-libertarian if you actually follow it to its conclusion, as I've explained before. At every single factor of production—nature, labor, capital, and total factory productivity—desert theory renders the conclusion that capitalism distributes things immorally....
If the "vital question" about distribution is "what gets produced and by whom," then we've got ourselves some serious problems. Nobody produced nature, but people receive the windfall value of it by excluding others from it. Around one-third of the national income each year flows to capital, the owners of which did not produce anything. Laborers do not get their personal productivity in compensation. Finally, the majority of what is produced each year comes from the marginal productivity of accumulated technology and knowledge that only dead people have some desert-based claim to.Bruenig drops a demolition bomb.
Demos Policy Shop
More Desert Theory Confusion
Matt Bruenig
1 comment:
"There is of course an "agency that oversees distribution" (it's not exogenous though). That agency is the state."
Well I would agree that 'the state' is not 'exogenous' in that it (the state) is surely IN the world...
BUT, the (source of) the authority from which is derived 'the state' IS exogenous...
And the state does NOT have to redistribute production, all it has to do is see to it that its currency is distributed justly and adequately...
Williamson here: "If the Good Samaritan had been the Poor Samaritan, with no resources to dedicate to the stranger’s care, then the poor waylaid traveler would have been out of luck."
Well libertarian moron Williamson should read the actual scripture:
30 Now taking him up, Jesus said, "A certain man descended from Jerusalem to Jericho. And he falls among robbers, who, stripping him as well as pounding him, came away, leaving him half dead.
31 Now it happens by a coincidence, that a certain priest descended by that road, and, perceiving him, passed by on the other side.
32 Now likewise, a Levite also, coming to the place and perceiving him, passed by on the other side.
33 "Now a certain Samaritan, being on his way, came by him, and perceiving him, he has compassion,
34 and coming to him, he bandages his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Now, mounting him on his own beast, he led him to a khan and had him cared for.
35 And, on the morrow, coming away, extracting two denarii, he gives them to the khan keeper and said to him, 'Care for him, and anything whatever you should be expending, at my coming back, I will be paying you.' Luke 10:30
Samaritans are NOT Israelites moron Williamson, they use state currency and they make sure there is plenty of it to go around... so there are NEVER any "poor" depicted in the Greek scriptures outside of Israel, that cohort of humans using mass measures of 'precious' metals...
In the scripture here the guy leaves 2 denarii that is like 2 days work (BIG DEAL!) There were no "poor Samaritans" .... BY DESIGN...
rsp,
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