Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by rmrfstar 2174 days ago
> There’s a lot of vitriol aimed at rich people right now, regardless of how they attained their wealth.

Part of the problem is that our current property regime does not distinguish between property acquired through accession [1] and property acquired through extraction.

There is this weird philosophy that all "market transactions" are equally legitimate and that market price is the correct (and only reliable) indicator of economic value. This view ignores the fact that market prices are as much a product of market structure as they are a reflection of people's preferences.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_(property_law)

1 comments

Our current property regime evolved that way for precisely that reason. Distinguishing the two and highlighting it would be a subversive, rather revolutionary act, which would attract a lot of hate.