RE: Welfare and scientific ethics

["David Spitzley" <dspitzle@gw.wash.k12.mi.us>]

Two reasonable questions:
> Does the word "distribution" mean distribution of income via taxes and/or
> distribution of property rights?
     The first definition is correct.  The term is "redistribution" because the 
income is assumed to have already been "distributed" by market forces when the 
tax system and government programs take some of that money and put it into 
different hands.  For those keeping score, the thrust of the original e-mail 
had been that "redistribution" is considered undesirable in the Kelsonian 
framework, but that one may still view it as necessary or justified in an 
economy characterized by highly concentrated capital ownership both before and 
during conversion to a more Kelsonian model.

> What does the reference to "on all fours" mean?
Sorry, I was getting cute there.  It is a figure of speech, roughly meaning 
"about as bad as", or alternatively "morally equivalent to" with an implicit 
negative connotation.


>>> Shann Turnbull <sturnbull@mba1963.hbs.edu> 11/03/99 06:25PM >>>
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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