[ahomescu1]

They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain.

Except this actually used to happen a lot in European countries in the Middle Ages. Farmers would still pay taxes to the king, and they'd have to pay in goods if not in gold.

[burntsushi]

> Except

Pretty sure the OP was talking about the present times...

[ameister14]

Have people changed significantly since then?

Plus, he was saying that prior to banks being how they are now, things were different. That prior period encompasses the middle ages.

[burntsushi]

> Have people changed significantly since then?

I don't know. Your question is sufficiently general that a plausible answer could be given to support either "yes" or "no" answers. It is very dependent on what you mean by "change". And therein lay my answer: I don't know what you mean by "change".

The poster in this case was touching on a point that going out and taking a farmer's property (or generally anyone for that matter) explicitly was very unlikely to happen, but taking it from a bank is considered something else entirely. I think that's fairly reasonable in the first world. Could a scenario arise in the future where that isn't reasonable? Sure. But, that's kind of beside the point here I think.

If you extend your reasoning to the extreme, you could pretty much say to anything, "Well, humans have done it before so what's stopping them from doing it again?" The answer is nothing, but it's a red herring: it ignores the possibility that the chance of some Event X has gone down with the passage of time. Perhaps it has gone down so much, that it is no longer reasonable to address it if one want to maintain a modicum of concision.

[ameister14]

Yeah, except you don't need to take the reasoning to the extreme. Physical property redistribution happens in countries all around the world all the time. Why do you think the founders of the US decided only property owners could vote?

I don't think of the government taking people's savings out of a bank and the government taking people's land as very different. It's a small and easy step to take from one to the other, and it's a step that has been taken many, many times before.

As to your last paragraph; it is foolish to assume social changes or governmental behaviors are more or less likely because of technological advances.

[burntsushi]

> Physical property redistribution happens in countries all around the world all the time.

We're not talking about the entire world.

> I don't think of the government taking people's savings out of a bank and the government taking people's land as very different.

Yes. I don't either, and neither does the top parent. That's the point.

> As to your last paragraph; it is foolish to assume social changes or governmental behaviors are more or less likely because of technological advances.

If you say so.

[ameister14]

You're only talking about Western European and North American governments? They're not all that different from governments elsewhere.

See the interesting thing for me is that the taking of physical property is actually just as likely as taking savings from banks. You and the op seemed to disagree with this, but I don't know what you could use to back that opinion up.

If you believe that the discovery of electricity makes me a better person, or even a different one, I don't know what to say to you.

[belorn]

The middle ages had merchant banks, which is quite a step away from the bank that ordinary citizens use to place their earned wages.

Instead, the 17th and 18th centuries are a good milestone in the the history of banking where its function is similar to the one we expect today. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_banking)

[InclinedPlane]

In present times without mandatory taxation. Right, where is this then?

[burntsushi]

In my interpretation, taxation parallels "banks" in the comparison drawn by the top parent. From the parent,

> but they could only do this because banks and government has stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there. They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain. They would have never gone and taken physical property in peoples home.

Now instead of "stopped seeing money in the bank as belonging to the person who put it there," simply think of "stopped seeing labor/goods/(taxable things) as belonging to the person who performed/has it/them."

IMO, the top parent was a commentary on cognitive dissonance. It's implied that the parent believes taking stuff from the bank is morally equivalent to taking 10% of the grain from a farmer. The parent could have been more explicit, but alas, this was how I interpreted it.

[ameister14]

It's not about moral equivalence, it's about likelihood of action.

He's saying because the banks are structured a certain way, the government behaves differently than they would otherwise. Namely that the government feels it has a right to the goods/property of the citizenry that they did not have before. I disagree, because governments did things like this without the banks.

[burntsushi]

> It's not about moral equivalence, it's about likelihood of action.

It's about both. The top parent can't make this statement

> They would have never gone to a farmer and taken 10% of their grain.

without an assumption of moral equivalence.

[yuhong]

I think that is just a normal tax in a different form.