Attention leftists, socialists, communists, communitarians, and anarchists of all anti-property stripes! Do you want to destroy capitalism (and throw yourself and everyone else back into the poverty that is usual for mankind)? It's simple: extend the notion of liability for harm in a very small way. If I burn down your store, I am liable for the harm, of course. If I out-compete you and destroy your store that way, I am not liable. If you want to destroy capitalism, simply extend liability to the harm caused by competition. In short order, everyone who is better at anything will have to pay compensation to anybody who is worse at it. Soon, nobody will bother to become better at anything, 90% of the people in the world will die off, we'll be back to only 600 million people, we won't be putting pressure on the bugs and bunnies anymore, there will be plenty of resources for everyone, and Malthus will come back to life to direct us all in this Nirvana.
Does HTML have a <sarcasm> tag?
posted at: 13:20 | path: /economics | permanent link to this entry