Let the rich keep their money

To what extent does someone else being extremely wealthy affect your wellbeing? Apart from the irritation (!) and assuming they accrued their wealth fairly... how has your life been affected? We already know that all wealth is relative, that money only has value to the extent that it is valued by other people so all financial wealth relies on other people being poor.

But are you poor, in comparison? Most people in the Developed world are far from poor in an absolute economic sense so: Would it be better for the State to appropriate the money and spend it on our behalf? Money spent by the State is generally wasted because it is spent less carefully than money spent on ourselves. To the extent that Government spending does benefit the recipient, it reduces the incentive to earn. Just as taxes reduce the incentive of the punished to collaborate.

To attack the person with money is to misdirect your efforts. It is only a consequence of the State that we have a need for money at all... If we removed taxes then a person with large quantities of fiat would be no more wealthy than the next person.

Once fiat is removed no person is any more wealthy than the next person because it becomes impossible to measure our wealth. The value of a good relationship with our neighbours and friends cannot be measured. Money is the lubricant of Society but it is a tool of oppression. It is the commodity which can buy our freedom, instead we should (could) all be free.

And if you are free what reason would you have to begrudge anyone their wealth? The best things in life are free but they are taken away from us by the State, which is jealous of our freedom. Once freedom is restored we have the best of life, without money.

If we can't be bought there is no reason to fear or dislike the rich. But taxes mean that we can be bought (everyone has a price) and are never fully liberated. Because of the State wealth represents power over each other. So then without money, to discover that someone is wealthy can only be to your advantage, but because of the State your relative poverty puts your freedom at risk.

In a free market, wealth can be shared or at worst isolated from use by others... Extra wealth does not alter the wealth of anyone else. Wealth can only increase, under a system of collective punishment you might find yourself being accused of not contributing sufficiently. Their wealth puts you in a subordinate position now that you must earn money whereas before your relationship had not been altered. The State introduces a hierarchy and "pecking order" which did not exist previously, governed by money.

Once the concept of a tribe has been removed, we care only about how something might be of use to us and so the wealth of others can only possibly be to our advantage. So, any resentment of the rich that we find stems directly from the actions of the State. The state makes us enemies of each other...

The assumption that we are obligated to one-another leads to questions of "fairness" but that is only because the State has the capacity to act on that attitude that it is discussed. Why wouldn't it be fair for someone to have something that you do not? If they have not committed a crime to acquire the goods then they have been provided by fair means.

Don't envy the rich: They have been lucky, or they have worked for it...


17th January 2009