From: pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger)
Subject: Re: Which brand(s) of anarchy?
Organization: Lehman Brothers
Distribution: world,local
Date: Sat, 3 Oct 1992 21:21:30 GMT

galt%peruvian.utah.edu@cs.utah.edu writes:
>In article <1992Sep29.181321.1831@shearson.com>, pmetzger@snark.shearson.com (Perry E. Metzger) writes:
>>insist, take mine!". The idea that people should give away their goods
>>seems based on the false premise that the world has a fixed amount of
>>wealth and that the only way to make the poor better off is to
>>redistribute this wealth. This is not true. Every time someone builds
>>something, produces something, fixes something, or otherwise works,
>>the world becomes a richer place. The pool of things that we possess
>>increases. Wealth is not fixed. The economy is not a zero sum game.
>
>But who builds, fixes, and produces things?  I don't think Donald
>Trump has actually ever built, fixed, or produced anything in his
>life.

Lets ignore Donald Trump for the moment. He made a lot of his money
off of government subsidies. Lets just take builders in general.

Yes, many of them have never wielded a hammer in their lives. On the
other hand, many of them work far harder than the folks in the hard
hats. Its very hard to claim that intellectual work is any less
valuable than other sorts. The guys who wrote the operating system on
the computer you use probably did not require any heavy lifting in the
act.

Do you honestly think that all work is equally valuable? That the man
who creates a new drug treatment for a disease or who raises millions
to fund a project is less valuable than a person who dropped out of
school in the eighth grade and washes windows for a living? 

>The people that do this are not the people that get rich.

The richest person I know personally is a former stone mason. He was
born in Italy and migrated to the US in the late 1940s. The individual
in question is worth 120 million dollars.

He made his money by saving what he earned and investing his savings
in well selected construction projects and in land. He can barely read
and write but has an extraordinary amount of native business sense.

Most of the men that became rich before the country started regulating
entrepreurship to death started dirt poor. Andrew Carnegie was born to
a farming family in Scotland. Thomas Edison was also from a poor
family. He was self educated and worked from the time he was a child.
Wealth comes to those who are smart enough to provide other people
with the things they want. 

>And if someone gets to possess lots of things without creating
>things, they are a parasite.  If Donald Trump was removed from the
>earth, there would be the same amount of goods and wealth being
>produced, but all of his possessions would be distributed among the
>rest of the people, making everyone more wealthy.

Do you imagine that there is no value in designing things? That
understanding how to set up, finance and run a business is worthless?
You can find millions of people who can lift heavy objects. How many
people do you know who could do what Bill Gates has done?

--
Perry Metzger		pmetzger@shearson.com
--
		  Just say "NO!" to death and taxes.
			 Extropian and Proud.
Newsgroups: alt.society.anarchy