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[mainiac]

Ironically the argument "dont divide capital" was the precise argument the Soviets made for land collectivization which was redistribution away from the kulaks.  Which just goes to show you how silly it is to argue by slogans in the face of a world that doesn't give a shit about your slogans.

The redistribution of wealth by democracies is their historical means of self-destruction. Athens is a case in point.

I fail to see what the failed invasion of Syracuse or the battle of Chaeronea have to do with wealth redistribution.

[Shazbot]

Because they voted to invade Syracuse in order to loot it and pay themselves after running out of people to vote to ostracize and pay themselves their money. While voting to pay themselves for voting, and voting to kill allies who resisted their tribute (which paid all those hard-voting voters). Incidentally this is what got them into the war in the first place.

The older men thought that they would either subdue the places against which they were to sail, or at all events, with so large a force, meet with no disaster; those in the prime of life felt a longing for foreign sights and spectacles, and had no doubt that they should come safe home again; while the idea of the common people and the soldiery was to earn wages at the moment, and make conquests that would supply a never-ending fund of pay for the future. With this enthusiasm of the majority, the few that liked it not, feared to appear unpatriotic by holding up their hands against it, and so kept quiet. - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War/Book_6

On that note, the National Socialists got a lot of votes from poor and unlanded farmers with promises of vast estates and serfs in the Russian steppes.

Congratulations, Wierd. You've attacked the analogy and not the argument. You've also broken a window to sell bits of glass.

And at the core of the rhetoric is naked theft, greed and envy of the aristocrats / kulaks / Jews / Chinese / burghers / clergy / bourgeois. You would think the river of blood flowing from Marx's pen would dry up after two centuries.

[wierd]

Personally, the repossession then redistribution of material wealth is not what I would suggest.

I would focus on hoarded liquidity instead. (say, all that money sitting in foreign bank accounts, where they don't even benefit the fractional reserve mechanism of inflation. Or, perhaps all that financial profit that many fortune 500s have, that they would "Love to spend, if ONLY the corporate tax rate wasnt so high! (crocodile tears)". )

Liquidity that is not being circulated, is liquidity that is not doing maximal economic work. I don't envy the hoarder, I just question his drive to acquire and hoard ever larger sums of liquid assets.

It isn't hard to outperform money stuffed into a mattress by giving it to a bum that wants a drink. At least the bum buying the drink with the money, ultimately puts that money into the hand of a business owner, who then pays it to a laborer who then uses it to buy food.... etc.. etc... etc...

The money in the mattress draws dust, and little else.

[Loud Whispers]

Because they voted to invade Syracuse in order to loot it and pay themselves after running out of people to vote to ostracize and pay themselves their money. While voting to pay themselves for voting, and voting to kill allies who resisted their tribute (which paid all those hard-voting voters). Incidentally this is what got them into the war in the first place.

The older men thought that they would either subdue the places against which they were to sail, or at all events, with so large a force, meet with no disaster; those in the prime of life felt a longing for foreign sights and spectacles, and had no doubt that they should come safe home again; while the idea of the common people and the soldiery was to earn wages at the moment, and make conquests that would supply a never-ending fund of pay for the future. With this enthusiasm of the majority, the few that liked it not, feared to appear unpatriotic by holding up their hands against it, and so kept quiet. - https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/History_of_the_Peloponnesian_War/Book_6

On that note, the National Socialists got a lot of votes from poor and unlanded farmers with promises of vast estates and serfs in the Russian steppes.

Congratulations, Wierd. You've attacked the analogy and not the argument. You've also broken a window to sell bits of glass.

And at the core of the rhetoric is naked theft, greed and envy of the aristocrats / kulaks / Jews / Chinese / burghers / clergy / bourgeois. You would think the river of blood flowing from Marx's pen would dry up after two centuries.

I love the irony of an ideology which warns of ideologies being used to control the masses designed to control the masses and make us demand it

[mainiac]

Because they voted to invade Syracuse in order to loot it and pay themselves after running out of people to vote to ostracize and pay themselves their money.

So looting at war is redistribution?

Does it perhaps strike you as a little bit insane that you have decided on a definition that regards the Mongolian burning of Bagdad and the Reagan Administration passage of the 1986 earned income tax credit to both be "redistribution" and essentially the same?

On that note, the National Socialists got a lot of votes from poor and unlanded farmers with promises of vast estates and serfs in the Russian steppes.

Yes, from the evil, land redistributing Bolsheviks...

While the Nazis had grandiose plans about an empire, they're actual agenda for farms was to institute something akin to primogeniture inheritance and ban the sale and mortgaging of farms.  Coupled with this were a series of price controls adopted years before WWII.  This agenda was overall not very popular in rural areas which is why the land reform plans didn't go very far in the couple years they tried them before the war.

Tooze's Wage's of Destruction has a chapter on the subject which lays things out very nicely if you are interested in learning the details.

[Shazbot]

Yes, looting abroad and looting at home are both looting, although you have to be rather clever to manage the latter.

How has the Jew subjugated the peoples?

With money. He lent them money and made them pay interest. Thousands and thousands of Germans have been made wretched by the Jews and been reduced to poverty. Farmers whose land had been in the family for more than 100 years were driven from their land because they could not pay the interest.

What happened to those farmers?

They had to move to the cities. Torn from the land to which they belonged, robbed of their labour that gave their lives purpose and meaning, they fell victim to poverty and misery. Worn down, their souls crushed, they accepted Jewish doctrines that denied the Fatherland and opposed all that was nationalistic. Their strength and ability faded. The Jew had reached his goal.

Raaah, those evil moneylending Jewish bankers and their efforts to keep the white farmer down! Why do I have this feeling of deja vu?

[wierd]

The better example would be modern nordic countries, and their basic incomes... Not a flagrant Godwin, IMHO.

[mainiac]

Yes, looting abroad and looting at home are both looting, although you have to be rather clever to manage the latter.

So what you've done is just label "redistribution" as synonymous with looting.  You can invent whatever definitions for terms you want but that doesn't give them validity to demonstrate anything.  All it does is turn a conversation about a topic into a conversation about semantics because someone just shoved their personal headcannon into the dictionary.

[TheBiggerFish]

... I am so tempted to drop the headcannon xkcd here...

[Shazbot]

Mainiac, if a group of people seize your private property and redistribute it amongst themselves, it makes no difference if they invite you to vote on it first. As you said, the world doesn't give a shit about your slogans. If you want to call theft "redistribution" and cloak it in some notion of democratic process, you are still advocating theft. Its just your delusional "headcannon" muddling the waters.

[mainiac]

So just to clarify, you are saying that the only difference to Ronald Reagan endorsing a lower tax rate on the poor in 1986 and the mongolians burning down the center of arabic culture is one is cloaked in some notion of democratic progress?

[TheBiggerFish]

So just to clarify, you are saying that the only difference to Ronald Reagan endorsing a lower tax rate on the poor in 1986 and the mongolians burning down the center of arabic culture is one is cloaked in some notion of democratic progress?

Well... Wouldn't that be... Who last raised taxes on the rich, again?