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Author Topic: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality  (Read 20523 times)
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #30 on: July 22, 2018, 08:19:53 pm »

So like I also said, many European countries have collectively adopted a more progressive attitude than the United States which only has 33 pop/km, like for instance how European countries tend to have universal healthcare.

What about Russia, which only has 8.3 People per km2. If communism had any correlation with population density, wouldn't you expect Russia to have been super capitalistic?
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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #31 on: July 22, 2018, 08:25:59 pm »

So like I also said, many European countries have collectively adopted a more progressive attitude than the United States which only has 33 pop/km, like for instance how European countries tend to have universal healthcare.

What about Russia, which only has 8.3 People per km2. If communism had any correlation with population density, wouldn't you expect Russia to have been super capitalistic?

So like I'm saying for the third time now, to have any accurate assessment as to whether your presumption is right or wrong, we would at the least have to look at what landmass the population is actually relevant to, because simply dividing population by surface area doesn't consider the fact that some parts of a country are completely uninhabited or uninhabitable, and that's not to mentioned the dynamics of each country's different ecosystem that supports a higher or lower population cap. I'm sure you know that the bulk of the population of Russia lives in the Western portion.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 08:29:29 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #32 on: July 22, 2018, 08:27:18 pm »

I'm sure you know that the bulk of the population of Russia lives in the Western portion.

So what? Some parts of the United States are also much more densely populated than other parts.

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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #33 on: July 22, 2018, 08:27:53 pm »

I'm sure you know that the bulk of the population of Russia lives in the Western portion.

So what? Some parts of the United States are also much more densely populated than other parts.

And I'm not disputing that that's true. However, that's still not to say that a particular state can't elect to make an irrational decision based on inaccurate claims anyway.
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Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #34 on: July 22, 2018, 08:31:04 pm »

And I'm not disputing that that's true. However, that's still not to say that a particular state can't elect to make an irrational decision based on inaccurate claims anyway.

Your claim is that it is more rational for dense populations to be more communistic, while it is more rational for less dense populations to be capitalistic?
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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #35 on: July 22, 2018, 08:36:07 pm »

And I'm not disputing that that's true. However, that's still not to say that a particular state can't elect to make an irrational decision based on inaccurate claims anyway.

Your claim is that it is more rational for dense populations to be more communistic, while it is more rational for less dense populations to be capitalistic?

My claim is that with a particular model of rational decision making, that I can make an argument that mathematically disputes one of your claims. That doesn't mean there aren't other variables though.

For instance, what if the choice isn't between 90% and 10%, but instead it's between 20% and 0.00001% with 10 people versus 100,000 people? Well, in that particular instance, it's more rational for the society to choose the flat 20%. The overall point I'm trying to make is that you shouldn't expect every country to conform to a single assumption about what's "best" for them (a dispute that has lead to genocide across the planet), because what's best will always vary on a case by case basis. I would say communist countries are as wrong to impose their system as capitalist countries are to impose their other system.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 08:47:30 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #36 on: July 22, 2018, 08:40:34 pm »

The overall point I'm trying to make is that you shouldn't exact every country to automatically conform to a single assumption about what's "best" for them, because what's best will always vary on a case by case basis.

Okay, but there are huge multinational corporations today, and if different countries have different levels of taxes for corporations, don't you think multinational corporations will have a tendency to migrate to the countries with the lowest taxes?

Also, don't you think that will incentivize other countries to lower their taxes for the corporations, to attract businesses to themselves?

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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #37 on: July 22, 2018, 08:43:41 pm »

Okay, but there are huge multinational corporations today, and if different countries have different levels of taxes for corporations, don't you think multinational corporations will have a tendency to migrate to the countries with the lowest taxes?

It's definitely "an" incentive, but it's not the only incentive and not for every industry. A company doesn't actually need to move to a whole other part of the planet just to get a tax break, they can filter through shell corporations to the Caiman islands. I think your point is that "if they're just going to shortcut the system, why fight them?" and the answer is because they can still be prosecuted for the money they think they've loopholed and there are policies many countries as a whole can enforce to mitigate that damage.
Money is just a facade, it's an illusion we agree to for the sake of conveniently deciding how to allocate resources, there still are physical limits to how many resources need to be allocated to actually sustain the civilization people want, you can't just keep perpetually lowering taxes more and more and expect nothing to go wrong, and obviously different countries recognize that. Different countries happen to specialize in particular industries, so China specializes in production, so they make production labor cheap. The United States specializes in media, so they make lots of songs and movies and games for a higher quality than what other countries could make, so the same rhetoric of outsourcing doesn't automatically apply to everything.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 09:02:52 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #38 on: July 22, 2018, 09:37:27 pm »

I think your point is that "if they're just going to shortcut the system, why fight them?" and the answer is because they can still be prosecuted for the money they think they've loopholed and there are policies many countries as a whole can enforce to mitigate that damage.

You really think your countries are winning against the multinational corporations? I think the sharks are eating your countries for dinner.


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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #39 on: July 22, 2018, 09:52:22 pm »

You really think your countries are winning against the multinational corporations? I think the sharks are eating your countries for dinner.
And what exactly makes you think corporations have that kind of power when Google temporarily lost its own domain name due to a single policy that says they're obligated to renew it? Countries aren't just going to take corporate abuse lying down, they're the ones who actually control the resources companies need to make any money in the first place and have actual armed forces that can be deployed.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 09:59:19 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #40 on: July 22, 2018, 10:00:20 pm »

Countries aren't just going to get take corporate abuse lying down, they're the ones who actually control the resources companies need to make any money in the first place and have actual armed forces that can be deployed.

So what? Lots of your government officials are "owned" by corporations. Your democracy is a joke. Donald Trump is a joke.
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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #41 on: July 22, 2018, 10:03:14 pm »

Countries aren't just going to get take corporate abuse lying down, they're the ones who actually control the resources companies need to make any money in the first place and have actual armed forces that can be deployed.

So what? Lots of your government officials are "owned" by corporations.

So aside from the fact that you keep changing the subject to avoid the logical holes I point out in your rhetoic and aside from the fact that corrupt individuals can be either voted out of office in a democracy or dismissed/executed in a dictatorship, let's say that you're right that all companies automatically want to move to any country that has the lowest taxes and that they would have zero negative consequences as a result. If that actually happens, then that country now becomes flooded in every industry which devalues all those industries in that country, which then gives the corporations an incentive to move back to their original countries.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 10:05:41 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #42 on: July 22, 2018, 10:09:02 pm »

If that actually happens, then that country now becomes flooded in every industry which devalues all those industries in that country, which then gives the corporations an incentive to move back to their original countries.

The industries don't necessarily need to be devalued, especially not if they are mainly exporting whatever they are making. But of course, the entire global economic system is going to collapse sooner or later, probably because of the US dollar going into hyperinflation. But then the Chinese economy will also collapse since they are mainly exporting to the U.S. And of course EU isn't safe either. The entire world is interconnected today.
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CommanderShepard
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #43 on: July 22, 2018, 10:17:00 pm »

The industries don't necessarily need to be devalued,
Except that supply and demand is literally the entire basis for your argument that lower taxes will attract more corporations and those same exact mechanics show that a flooded industry must necessarily be devalued. What you're failing to consider is that this back and forth isn't perpetual, there are physical constraints that would prevent it from running amok and that's why companies settle on an intermediate solution at economic equilibrium, you can't take something that isn't there and frankly it's just irrational for corporations to expect they can. It's not in a corporation's best interest for civilization to collapse, they want people to attain a higher human capital who they can then hire, they want people to be able to buy their products and they want a legal force that can protect them from getting ransacked in anarchy that they don't have to waste money on themselves.

But of course, the entire global economic system is going to collapse sooner or later, probably because of the US dollar going into hyperinflation.
Inflation is always a natural consequence of countries experiencing economic growth, on its own it isn't an indication of anything wrong.

But then the Chinese economy will also collapse since they are mainly exporting to the U.S. And of course EU isn't safe either. The entire world is interconnected today.
Different countries specialize in different industries which is why they trade, they want it that way specifically because it's more rational for all parties involved than every country trying to do every single little thing itself.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 10:34:08 pm by CommanderShepard » Logged
Zanthius
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Re: Why we should not strive for complete economic equality
« Reply #44 on: July 22, 2018, 10:40:28 pm »

It's not in a corporation's best interest for civilization to collapse, they want people to attain a higher human capital who they can then hire, they want people to be able to buy their products and they want a legal force that can protect them from getting ransacked in anarchy that they don't have to waste money on themselves.

Sure, but what makes you think that people or corporations are acting in their own long-term best interest? People and corporations are stupid. Humans have lots of cognitive biases and are horrible at long-term thinking. You might be able to think a few years into the future. Not much more.


Inflation is always a natural consequence of countries experiencing economic growth, on its own it isn't an indication of anything wrong.

Well, I didn't say inflation, I said hyperinflation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation

Different countries specialize in different industries which is why they trade, they want it that way specifically because it's more rational for all parties involved than every country trying to do every single little thing itself.

Maybe, but if whatever you are giving to China is worth less than whatever China is giving to you, you will get a trade deficit, and that will eventually cause your currency to go into hyperinflation. This will happen as soon as the international investors realize how much trouble you are in. Donald Trump is working very hard to make this happen sooner rather than later, but investors aren't so clever so you might still have some time.
« Last Edit: July 22, 2018, 10:46:43 pm by Zanthius » Logged
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