RE: Welfare and scientific ethics

[Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu>]

Sorry David but you are not good enough to make your thinking
understandable to myself.  But please remember that from Australia the
world looks upside down anyway!

Might you and/or Michael Harrington try and explain what your first very
long sentence in your paragraph below means?

>Well, drawing upon Kelso's arguments (since they were the first coherent
>argument that I had seen), redistribution is undesirable given other
>alternatives for the basic reason that it represents a concentration of
>economic power in the hands of the state, which is on all fours with
>concentration of economic power in the hands of individuals, compounded by
>the state's monopoly on force.

Does the word "distribution" mean distribution of income via taxes and/or
distribution of property rights?
What does the reference to "on all fours" mean?

Regards

Shann

At 07:03 AM 4/11/1999 , you wrote:
>Cool!  I guess I'm ok at this  :)
>
>>>> Michael Harrington <mharrington@milken-inst.org> 11/03/99 02:17PM >>>
>I was about to write a reply on this issue of redistribution and welfare
>policies but David beat me to it. I wholly concur with his statement below.
>Michael 
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: David Spitzley [mailto:dspitzle@gw.wash.k12.mi.us] 
>Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 11:28 AM
>To: ownership@cog.kent.edu 
>Subject: Re: Welfare and scientific ethics
>
>
>IPGmail@aol.com wrote:
>I don't want to flog the issue of redistribution to death, but if 
>economists' distaste for it is a significant problem in advancing proposals 
>to broaden capital ownership, I think we need not only to ask whether 
>proposals are redistributive, but whether this distaste for redistribution
>is 
>well-grounded.
>
>----------------------------------------
>
>Well, drawing upon Kelso's arguments (since they were the first coherent
>argument that I had seen), redistribution is undesirable given other
>alternatives for the basic reason that it represents a concentration of
>economic power in the hands of the state, which is on all fours with
>concentration of economic power in the hands of individuals, compounded by
>the state's monopoly on force.  Thus, any mechanism which can help broaden
>capital ownership without recourse to redistribution is preferable to one
>which accomplishes the same thing through redistribution.
>

Shann Turnbull
P.O. Box 266 Woollahra, Sydney, Australia, 1350
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