[FRIAM] Nautilus: Investing Is More Luck Than Talent

[Roger Critchlow]

I started an answer about what Chomsky meant, I think he means that if you
choose to align your interests with the property owners, there is no way
you can redeem yourself, you are on the side of government protecting the
property holders' rights against everyone else, that first, and whatever
positive benefits of government only after the property holders are taken
care of.  Nobody is going to ask you if you think it is socially
responsible to send in the national guard with orders to shoot to kill,
they're just going to do it.

-- rec --

On Thu, Jan 26, 2017 at 5:38 PM, Steven A Smith <sasmyth at swcp.com> wrote:

>
> "I *did* enjoy hearing Chomsky answer this question at a NAFTA talk in ABQ
>> 15 years ago with the simple statement "Socially Responsible
>> Investing is a contradiction in terms".   There was a loud titter among
>> the roughly 50% students and a deafening silence among the other 50%
>> Yuppie/Academic/Retireds."
>>
>
>
>> What exactly is the claim?
>>
> I've been contemplating that question myself.  Here's my closest thing to
> answers:
>
>>    That property is theft?
>>
> I wouldn't have said so at that time, but in some extreme, I believe this
> to be true.   Or is always true by some increments.   At some point,
> private property becomes hoarding.  Those whose rhetoric is against the
> 1%'s or promote graduated income tax, etc. are saying that *at some point*,
> accumulation of private property is wrong/disallowed by the collective.
>  As a private property owner (of many kinds) I have the habit of imagining
> that *my* level isn't hoarding and *my* ownership doesn't undermine the
> quality of anyone else's life, *even* if I judge that to be the case in
> others.   That doesn't make it true... just my habit and apprehension!
>
> That all investments ought to be public investments?
>>
> If there is no private hoards of wealth, then there is no other mode of
> investment than "public".   This of course, begs other issues such as WHO
> is the collective?  What is it's scope?  A family, a clan, a tribe, a
> region, a culture, a nation, a "world"?
>
>>    Or is it a weaker claim that, say, people or organizations should not
>> be able to float along living off `earnings' from interest?
>>
> I have heard a lot of rhetoric to this effect of late.   "Unearned
> Income".   I'm not a deep scholar of Socialism or Communism, but I think
> all of this has been explored and documented.
>
> I have developed gedankenexperiments for my own edification and I *do*
> think there is a fundamental concept of private investment. If, for
> example, I invest my time in building a really good lever, then when I
> *use* that lever, I can do twice or ten times the work of anyone else... I
> now *own* an investment that gives me leverage, literally and
> figuratively.  In principle I can loan it out for others to use, or use my
> arcane knowledge to make more and trade them to others for things *they*
> have acquired through skill or luck or might?    For some, this game falls
> down with people like Trump and his new Cabinet of multi-millionaires, for
> others, it falls down much earlier.
>
> My mythology about the Australian Indigenous (formerly know as Aboriginal)
> peoples is that they have always chosen to "own" only what they could carry
> in their hands, or in their "dilly bag". But most of us don't want to live
> in the primitive conditions they chose, accepted, or found themselves in.
>  Most of us want one or two (or more) cars we can drive across the
> continent at the drop of a hat, a house big enough for 4 or 5 refugee
> families,  a pile of consumer electronics and other items that are as much
> fetish objects as they are actually the "tools" we claim them to be!
>
> I think the more interesting question is the question of "the commons".
>  In our new economy based significantly on non-physical assets, on
> intellectual property, how do we manage a "commons" to the benefit of all,
> not just the *already wealthy and powerful*?. Most of my own "intellectual
> property" is nothing more than secret sauce, tricks of the trade that I
> have one or another angle on (or not), but if I *did* own some trademarks,
> patents, copyrights of value, I would be a bit conflicted.  *I* sure hate
> it when other's IP claims limit my own ability to do interesting work.  I
> have even spent time in the devils camp helping clients defend their IP.
> Fortunately it felt a little like Robin Hood since they were defending
> against the likes of Google and Disney.   But if I asked the collective
> (clan, tribe) to enforce my *ownership* of the design of the lever I
> invented (discovered) to prevent anyone else in the group to use my design
> without compensating me to my  satisfaction, I somehow think that is not
> good for anyone (except vaguely me?).
>
>    I think it is good if candidates just come right out with that as part
>> of their platform.   Likewise, salary caps for doctors, lawyers, and so
>> on.    It would take decades for it to gain much support, I think -- people
>> have too much investment in American Dream type fantasies -- but it is
>> worth proposing.
>>
> Along with neoConservatives and neoLiberals, are you suggesting it is time
> to coin neoSocialists or neoCommunists?
>
> My extreme view is that *anarchy* is the natural state but that with
> enough careful thought and practice an idealized *community* is possible.
> The latter would be an effective full up communistic society (and would
> need "government" as much as *anarchy* needs government, it would be
> self-organizing based on principles not unlike the golden rule or the ten
> commandments) but then that IS very utopian and inside every utopia is a
> dystopia (recursively) hiding a utopia... etc.
>
> - Steve
>
>
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