Comments by "James Adams" (@ExPwner) on "Thomas Piketty: New thoughts on capital in the twenty-first century" video.

TL;DW - this guy thinks that wealth is zero sum.
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It definitely is the case. The guy thinks that people having more wealth is harmful to growth, and he has no data to support that.
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Omer Fawad Rauf did you mistype or did you mean to put in a tautology there? "And if you want the well being of humans, there should be some sharing of wealth." First off, no, you don't need "sharing" of wealth in order to want the well being of humans. Second, it's not "sharing" at all, it's theft. This man is advocating for theft. Call it what it is. If you have the indecency of wanting to take money from others by force, at least own up to it.
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Al Su he has stated that he doesn't think that inequality is beneficial to growth and that in his opinion it could be bad for growth. That's why he's advocating for a wealth tax.
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Aaron Wolf you can't grow an economy through taxation because taxation isn't variable sum at all. It is strictly negative sum, and that holds true all of the time. His proposed solutions are ALWAYS negative sum. There is no scenario in which (all else equal) taxation of income or wealth brings about the scenario in your third paragraph.
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Aaron Wolf taxes eat up administrative costs, so they have deadweight loss regardless. And yes, most so-called "public goods" aren't public goods because people actually find a way to exclude others from using them. Wrong. Taxes are inherently destructive because they cost people money that they don't want to pay. It's the same concept as a broken window. If I can pay for roads, being taxed to pay for roads is a broken window. That's not dogma, it's common sense. What you want isn't relevant because you're not talking about just what you want but also what I want and what others want. The fact that I don't want to fund your parks means that taxes are a loss for me, and your gain cannot be netted against my loss. No, roads aren't public goods. You can exclude someone from your road, and you don't need a per-use toll. Further, who's to say that the toll isn't being collected BY the person building/maintaining the road? You make no sense. Governments pay construction companies to build/maintain. There is nothing preventing a private road from being maintained by the same company. Not an argument. You're getting owned. No appeals to authority are going to save you here.
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Aaron Wolf wrong. Just because SOME people want to pay them doesn't mean that all do. There is no such thing as a voluntary tax because it would cease to be a tax and simply become crowdfunding at that point. Consent is the differentiation. That's understandable. I didn't make that claim. However, for any given project, some person is NOT going to be willing to join in. It's not voluntary because someone will be forced against his/her will. Roads aren't an example of the freerider problem. Private roads are and have been capable of dealing with this. You're not providing any evidence to the contrary, nor are you making a case for taxes here. That's exactly my case. It IS fundamentally flawed because of the moral case. That by definition makes it net harmful. Right, when you can exclude it is no longer a public good. Most people just use a blanket statement and proclaim things as public goods even when one can exclude. That's my issue with that. There is no "society" because people have diverse interests. There is no collective here. "There's tons of evidence that funding roads publicly and letting everyone use them without gates and tolls and exclusions ends up strengthening the economy because the utility of the roads being open to everyone provides an infrastructure that supports economic development better than the case of limited pay-per-use toll-roads." No, there's not, and you're setting up a false dichotomy. There has been no empirical testing of this assertion, nor will there be. Appeal to moderation fallacy. Yes, you did, by referring to economists as a source in and of themselves. Fair enough. You're more knowledgeable than I originally projected. Most people who start with the "muh public goods!" statements don't actually know what public goods really are. You've proven that you're not like them.
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That would be a valid point if not for the fact that he's advocating for the same thing only with his ideals (political power used to steal for his ideas).
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Oh, and for anarchism in practice I would suggest Machinery of Freedom. It's much more sustainable than people let on. Interestingly enough, much of our problems have been due to having a state (namely war and democide).
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Aaron Wolf no problem! Not only is it a book, but bitbutter uploaded an illustrated summary on youtube. You're right that stateless societies are a threat to governments. However, they have successfully existed. I'd suggest looking at The Art of Not Being Governed's series titled "Anarchy: Never Been Tried?"
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I definitely agree with your assessment of the wealth and power connection. My beef with guys like Piketty and the crowd that he draws is that he makes absolutely no distinction between wealth and power, and that's important because although maybe MOST of the people who are rich today got that way because of government power, not all have. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rich by US standards. However, I'm working on FI/RE and something like a wealth tax is a threat to my way of life. Instead of attacking the real problem (political power), this guy is advocating for using it to attack one of the symptoms (wealth). I agree that it would be much different. Those of us who do advocate for such a system propose that wealth WOULD be self-justifying if our system were put in place (that wealth would be a signal of those who have served their fellow man rather than being well-connected).
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