Only Violence Creates Wealth Disparity

People are paid according to the value their talents and work ethic bring to society.

In a free market, this statement is necessarily true at all times. It can never be that a person is paid more than the value their talents and labor brings to society because all profits are ultimately derived from the value society places on the goods and services a firm produces. The wages of a firms employees are allocated according to value of each individual laborers skills in relation to the supply and demand of that particular skill set.

If someone has a highly productive talent that enables a firm to expand its production exponentially based on their particular skill set, they will be rewarded with a huge payday. If they aren’t, that person will take their talents elsewhere where they will be rewarded commensurate with their productive contribution.

It is ONLY through the violence of government that an individual actor could possibly make more than the value of the productive contribution they bring to society.

Let us go through a few case studies that highlight this fact.

Drug dealers are over-paid in accordance to the value they bring to society. The violence of government against innocent consumers and producers creates artificial shortages of a product that is in high demand. Because of the increased risk and artificial shortages created by government violence against drug dealers/consumers, drug dealers can afford to charge a large premium on their product. Without the war on drugs, drug dealers would make as much as any other unskilled retail clerk.

Wall Street financiers are over-paid in accordance to the value they bring to society. The violence of government imposed fiat currency laws and the violence of government imposed banking cartels allows private commercial banks to reap the profits of artificially suppressed interest rates, not to mention the fact that all losses are socialized on to the tax payers.

Without fiat currency laws, government mandated banking cartels, and artificially suppressed interest rates, financiers would earn as much as warehouse operators. For in effect, real money (gold and sliver) is nothing more than a commodity and banks should operate as nothing more than warehouses for these commodities. It is only through the violence of government that the Wall Street power-brokers can make as much as they do.

Politicians are over-paid in accordance with the value they bring to society. Since politicians produce nothing and provide no meaningful service, they necessarily bring no value at all to a society. Their pay is dependent upon either the violent theft of productive members of society through taxation or through the violence of fiat currency laws that enable them to pay themselves with money they printed themselves.

Educational bureaucrats are over-paid in accordance to the value they bring to society. It is only through the use of government created loan subsidies that the collegiate bureaucratic apparatus has been allowed to expand as much as it has. In a free society, educational bureaucrats would be limited in pay according to how much the public was willing pay voluntarily for a college education and on their performance as administrators. Only successful administrators who ran a profitable educational operation would be rewarded with high pay. The government created loans that are being pumped into the educational bureaucracy necessarily require violent theft or violently imposed fiat currency in order to exist in the first place.

War production contractors are over-paid in accordance to the value they bring to society. In a free society, people would be responsible for their own security and would necessarily buy what was required to maintain their own security on the open market. It is only through government regulation of arms and through government contracts that arms producers are able to make such obscene profits. In a free market, weapons would be cheap, abundant, and weapons manufacturers would not make any more than a company that produces shoes.

And on and on and so-forth.

Large imbalances in wealth distribution can ONLY be created through government violence. A free market necessarily limits the wealth any one individual has to the exact ratio of value their talents and work ethic brings to the society.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
People are paid according to the value their talents and work ethic bring to society.

In a free market, this statement is necessarily true at all times. It can never be that a person is paid more than the value their talents and labor brings to society because all profits are ultimately derived from the value society places on the goods and services a firm produces. The wages of a firms employees are allocated according to value of each individual laborers skills in relation to the supply and demand of that particular skill set.

If someone has a highly productive talent that enables a firm to expand its production exponentially based on their particular skill set, they will be rewarded with a huge payday. If they aren’t, that person will take their talents elsewhere where they will be rewarded commensurate with their productive contribution.

It's an interesting thought, and worthy of discussion, even if I disagree with your (*cough* derived from Ayn Rand's) theory. Either way, s&f.

Supply and demand being the only determining factors of the value of any particular skill set in a free market is an oversimplification. This simply doesn't work when placed within the complex framework that is human interaction. The 'perceived value' of an individuals skill set is just as important. That perceived value is often determined by the perceived value of the individual themselves. This is based on many, various social factors such as birth and your already established 'rank' within the system... In other words, if your daddy was important and a big player you have a greater chance of being treated like one. A powerful mentor could be another strategy to 'get ahead'. Sabotage through rumour mongering or other nefariousness is not unheard of either (although this could perhaps be qualified as 'violence'), but it's impossible to get away from 'politics' at least of a sort in any human interaction.

Something as simple as physical appearance (it has been proved that attractive people have an edge getting jobs, and being perceived positively), how you carry yourself and how you dress also send social signals that have weight in how you are valued. Also far less tangible social factors such as how one interacts with others, or how others perceive your confidence level can be huge factors in determining success in a competative field. Competency, and supply and demand alone do not determine value of a skill set. I'm sorry. You can have in-demand top dollar skills and be completely reliable and competen, but if you are not perceived as such (for whatever reason, and true or not), you may not be payed what you're worth.

reply to post by redhorse


"In other words, if your daddy was important and a big player you have a greater chance of being treated like one."

I disagree.

Unless your daddy taught you how to run his business, that money isn't going to stick around.

We see this with countless rockstars today.

They have no idea how to manage money, so they go from being ultra wealthy to ultra broke in the span of a few decades.

It is only those who know how to make their money work productively that retain inherited wealth for any long period of time.

It doesn't matter how rich you are, in a free society, if a person does not utilize resources wisely, the market will relieve them of their property rather quickly. In fact the market will relieve them of their property far more efficiently and quickly than any estate tax would ever do.

The ugliest person with a brilliant idea and the know-how to bring it to fruition will be richer than the most beautiful person with no value. Corporate CEOs are not selected on looks. While beautiful people have an edge, that's all they have.

Think of modern big name "Artists" like Fergie or Lady GaGa.

They have teams of 20-40 people that take this woman's voice, add a beat, autotune it so it doesn't sound like their real voice, because that would be unacceptable, and after this 45 minute recording session they go home with a $4 Million paycheck and the 20-40 people that were there before she came and staed after she left, working and making it perfect, are lucky to sum to $4 Million with their wages in the next 10 years!

There is no such thing as a free market. Which is why people who tout Western capitalism over Eastern socialism because of this so-called "free market" are nothing short of foolish and blind.

Originally posted by Brood
Think of modern big name "Artists" like Fergie or Lady GaGa.

They have teams of 20-40 people that take this woman's voice, add a beat, autotune it so it doesn't sound like their real voice, because that would be unacceptable, and after this 45 minute recording session they go home with a $4 Million paycheck and the 20-40 people that were there before she came and staed after she left, working and making it perfect, are lucky to sum to $4 Million with their wages in the next 10 years!

There is no such thing as a free market. Which is why people who tout Western capitalism over Eastern socialism because of this so-called "free market" are nothing short of foolish and blind.

edit on 16-11-2010 by Brood because: (no reason given)

I would argue they are getting paid commensurate with the value they bring to society.

If society did not value their music, they wouldn't buy it.

No one is out forcing anyone to buy Lady GaGa albums.

Lover her or hate her, she is getting paid based on how society values her talents. Children do not have the same value system as adults, so here we have society producing things that mainly kids like. Which is a good thing. It's also the reason you might not find any value in her work.

Oh, I forgot to mention that copyright is a violently imposed government creature. In a free market, ideas and are not "things" and therefore can not be claimed as property.

Without violently enforced copyright, singers like GaGa would probably not be making quite as much.

If I buy a song from iTunes, I own that property. Since the song bits are now mine, a free society would allow me to do with that as I please - including copying it and distributing it to my friends for free.