[onetimeusename]

Why are they unjust? I don't see how wealth transferring from one person to another is the same as "inheriting the accumulated wealth of the whole society". Did the heirs also steal everyone else's things when the wealth was passed on? How does that happen?

[codyb]

If inequality is very high (say 1% own 40% of the resources), and a child inherits almost a percentage of the _entire society’s wealth_ just by birth then that select group of inheritances is receiving incredible portions of the accumulated wealth of society by birth becomes an aristocracy.

Thats how I read GP.

[onetimeusename]

Yes that's true, but the actual percentage of ownership hasn't changed, it stays the same. But the bigger issue is that the economy is not really a finite thing. Owning a certain amount of land, maybe by inheritance is not the same as owning a never changing percentage of all the resources. A good counter example might be something like inheriting shares of Google, or Amazon. Those people might never have owned any significant percentage of land but that did not stop them from owning something else that is more valuable than the land. So the resources change over time and I don't really see why land ownership is being used as a proxy for everything. Now, also, you may have not been making that point yourself but just clarifying. I just want to talk people down from the land confiscation movement because it seems destructive and pointless.

[FakeComments]

Yes, but that’s not being realistic.

1% of 1 million people is 10,000 people, who will be roughly half kids and young adults — the heirs.

So you’re talking 0.00008% of the wealth being passed down, roughly. That’s still pretty unequal in a society with a lot of people, but I’m also not sure smashing any granule of accumulated wealth leads to a vibrant society — the inter generational transfer of structures is essential for culture.

Capitalism is fundamentally just highly mobile aristocracy, though — and that may be the best we can do.

[robocat]

> So you’re talking 0.00008%

The ownership is probably a power law. If you did a simple "averaging" division, that makes no sense.

[raducu]

In a perfect world where the rich pay proper taxes, monopolies and corruption does not exist, it would not be unjust.

It used to be a principle in ancient times that one is not entitled to more land than one can deffend.

[onetimeusename]

So there are a couple issues here. Taxes(on the rich), economic opportunity(from monopolies and corruption), land ownership, and implicitly a notion of fairness and these all become merged in to one issue but I don't think they really are all the same at all.

Land ownership seems like a much more mundane part of the economy actually but it is being equated with the entire economy. So what does land ownership have to do with monopolies, corruption, and the rich paying proper taxes? What are proper taxes for the rich to pay?

To me the land ownership issue is being used as a wedge to reinforce a different idea that a tiny percentage of people have economically disenfranchised everyone else. I really don't think land ownership should be equated with that however. At this point, the argument is very different. It's gone from why we should confiscate people's land to what tax rates should be, or who the "rich" are, or why real estate prices are what they are. To me the land confiscation case seems like scapegoating of landowners for things like real estate prices or economic inequality.