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Re: Nerf ball, I think
Tom Brosz — (archived)

<How do you define a producer? Adam Smith's definition was straightforward: A laborer. He believed that labor directly produces wealth, and capital produces wealth only indirectly, by enhancing labor.

This may have been more true in the agrarian society Smith lived in. Today, a vast majority of our wealth is produced by intellectual activity. As one example, a man who invents a tractor adds a lot more to an economy than fifty men pushing a plow by hand. If you can expand the term "laborer" to include someone pushing a computer mouse around, then it might hold up. Capital doesn't just enhance labor, it makes it possible.

I think you missed my point entirely on the whole taxes/votes thing (not wealth/votes). Like Heinlein, I was trying to connect authority and responsibility. Today the parasites--at all levels of society--are gaining power every day at the expense of the producers, and I fear we haven't seen the worst of it.

And, in case you hadn't noticed, the people with money pull the strings now anyway.

Maybe the real answer is to decrease the power of the government over people's lives so that political power is not essential to keep others from destroying you.

P.S. Do you and Buck tag off, or are you planning on ganging up on me? ;)

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