[elp1stolero]

I certainly feel your sentiment, werner38 (Re: Paris Hilton - right?), but I disagree with your conclusions.

And I agree with you that it is not necessarily a positive outcome that a king's heir would assume the wealth of the king. However, I think the trade-off of using law to essentially plunder property (again, assuming the property was acquired through no act of injustice), undermines the purpose of law - to defend against injustice.

Property (acquired or created justly) is typically an outcome of liberty, and often fate (birth, luck, etc). I don't believe we can alter either of these conditions through tax law (force) without undermining the justice of law itself.

Furthermore, in my view, I don't believe an individual's property is something that anyone else has a claim to dispense with, especially a political organ such as the 'the state' (an entity which bears very little responsibility for the outcome of it's economic and financial actions).

That doesn't mean I necessarily like the idea of people amassing or acquiring resources without work. But the reason I work hard is to benefit the things which I choose to value: my family, my community, the erasing of Star Wars Ep. 1-3 from history, etc. I want to give my kids a better shot at life than myself. Property may be a component, but is far down the list from things like values, and work ethic. But these are my choices for my life. That to me, is the American Dream - to be free live how I choose - not wealth and things. Whether I am very rich at some point, or not - I don't believe force should be employed to negate or alter my choices, nor do I wish to use force to alter your's or someone else's.

Maybe I'm way out of my gourd, but the fact that Paris Hilton has a huge amount of wealth, and no values is a total failure of her parents - not the inheritance itself.

[vidarh]

The idea of property as legitimate is pretty much arbitrary - others have indeed come out on the other side of the fence: Considering the enforcement of property rights to land akin to theft (e.g. Proudhon) or illegitimate use of force, on the simple premise that it deprives others of use of a shared resource.

The libertarian fetish for accepting the use of force to protect one arbitrary artificial construct as somehow critical to liberty, while rejecting the use of force to protect other artificial constructs strikes me at the same time as deeply comical, and ridiculously hypocritical on the other.

[werner34]

Well, I believe that people should be left alone as often as possible and should only be interfered with when urgently needed.

But I also believe that commanding wealth comes with responsibilities, and if some people are not willing to act responsible, they might need someone(the public) to remember them and take some of that wealth to build schools, universities or the like.

I am not saying that Mr. Hiltons wealth should be seized and randomly given to people on the streets. I am certainly not of the opinion that todays western governments are super effective either. But if I have the choice of having Paris spend that massive fortune or the government, I would opt for the government I am afraid.

If Larry Ellison decides to build himself a big pink bouncy castle the size of Oklahoma with his Oracle money he is free to do so and thats fine by me. He earned that money, he is free to do with it what he likes, I don't have to like his choices, but I won't interfere(not that I could anyways).

If someone earns his money by being born and decides to spend it on the big bouncy castle I am not fine with it. If most of what he would have inherited was taken by the public and he still manages to amass a fortune that is enough to build himself that bouncy castle, he is free to do so, and I won't interfere. He made the money,its his choice, not mine.