Orange County CA + Billy + Ayn Rand -- All Together Now!

Post #21,559 by Ashton 12/14/01 9:14:34 PM Reply	Orange County CA + Billy + Ayn Rand -- All Together Now! A small essay on the options of spending $50M for one's 'house'; and what a little imagination might have produced - [link\|http://www.lovolution.net/gatesarco.htm\|Of all sad words of tongue or pen; the saddest are these: it might have been..] [link\|http://microsoft.aynrand.org/hate.html\|Ayn Rand School of Social Darwinism chimes in on er limitless greed is AOK.] Since, per Ashleigh Brilliant, In the final analysis <> Everything is related <> To everything else - [maybe this belongs in metaphysics] How might the successor society to this one - arrange to limit personal 'wealth' to ~ just One billion 'dollars' (or whatever the successor specie is called)? Via exponential taxation with a sharp inflection point? Corollary (the usual argument for allowing personal Empire at all): Has homo-sap reached a stage of evolution whereby s/he can accept that there is no natural law which dictates that personal Empires ought to be passed-on to callow offspring? ie each generation must claw way to excess: solely via individual Rand-iness - thus limiting 'excess behavior' to the already obsessed. ie. Have we had nearly enough yet? Ashton Where do you wanna go today? Ltd. Extraterrestrial Help for a Troubled Species, frozen like a deer in the headlights..
Post #21,611 by boxley 12/15/01 11:35:44 PM Reply	Darwin's law works quite well, even for the rich 3rd generation wealth starts falling apart. Think Joe Kennedy 1st, then John and Bobby and Ted sorta, then John John nice kid but no brilliate mind (RIP) pat Smith, druggie rapist, next gen? down the crapper. Morton Downey and Jr also comes to mind. Prescott Bush? look at shrubs offspring. By the 4th gen the riches exponetionally get distributed to an ever growing pile of neerdowells who squander into the poorhouse. Classic example, Andy Jackson the SOB, the Hermatige was sold for taxes in 1908 and his heirs died penniless in CA durinf the depression. Riches are like the prosperous farmers of the 1700's. By the 1870's each farm was divided amongst 10 or more decendants making a hard scrabble barely living that resulted in the mass migration westward. thanx, bill ya think Billy G the 6th will have the acumen of the Big Daddy? My dreams arn't as empty as my concious seems to be
Post #21,628 by Ric Locke 12/16/01 10:23:27 AM Reply	Inheritance Laws Yeah, the generational losses work well, --if-- the people wanting the change have the patience to just let it work out. Even c*p like Microsoft is temporary; does anybody think the structure as it is will survive B&B? If so, dreamers. I would make one small change: inheritances should be spread around as much as possible. That allows entropy to work more efficiently. Don't know precisely which provisions would work best for that. Simple confiscation of inheritances doesn't do what you want. It simply means that the owner is going to piss it all away if possible before dying -- and remember that any significant wealth, in our society, means that many, many others are dependent on it; employees, investors, retirees, etc. etc., not just fatcats. Then, too, for practical reasons it also means the Government gets the money, and tosses it in the general pot for spending on junkets, buying votes, and all the other wonderful benefits. Regards, Ric
Post #21,730 by drewk 12/17/01 1:52:17 PM Reply	'Nother data point Ever been to the Herst Castle? Man built an entire damn Italian Villa on top of a hill with no roads, no utilities, miles from nowhere. Took each truck two days (with an overnight campout enroute) to get to the top with materials. Built an exotic animal preserve for his own private zoo. After he died, his wealth was split among enough offspring that no one of them could afford the upkeep on it, and now two of them got along well enough to do it together. The place fell into disrepair and was nearly a ruin when it was turned into a state park. After touring it, it's just amazing to think that someone got to that starting out from nothing. I guess hitting the largest copper mine in history didn't hurt. Nor did taking the profit from that and hitting the largest silver mine in history. We have to fight the terrorists as if there were no rules and preserve our open society as if there were no terrorists. -- [link\|http://www.nytimes.com/2001/04/05/opinion/BIO-FRIEDMAN.html\|Thomas Friedman]
Post #21,640 by marlowe 12/16/01 4:46:16 PM Reply	How to limit most peoples' personal wealth. Quit buying / putting up with their crap, and they won't get hyper-rich in the first place. These hucksters and gangsters are empowered by the ineffectuality of consumers and users. Plus, in Microsoft's case, a little dumb luck over twenty years ago. I've got no problem with the good getting rich. But the way Rand's disciples define "the good" is so self-serving I can't respect anyone who uses that definition in earnest. And with all due respect to the good Doctress, whose trolling technique I have long admired, free love is not the answer to the world's problems. There's no free lunch, free MSN, free CD's, or free love. [link\|http://www.angelfire.com/ca3/marlowe/index.html\|http://www.angelfir...e/index.html] Sometimes "tolerance" is just a word for not dealing with things.
Post #21,655 by Ashton 12/16/01 6:25:22 PM Reply	Love's not 'free', merely priceless A point overlooked in the puerile robotic accumulations of stuff - to 'buy' it? (or gov't officials wantin to be 'liked'). And so it goes. A.

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