Bob would point out that a snake eating his own tail won't live long.

That link doesn't work for me, but I do remember my withholding going from 25% down to 20% during the beginning of the most prosperous economy in my memory.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaganomics#Impact

Fixed it.

Didn't you read the wikipedia article I posted?

1. If it's a dictatorship, then who's dictating? And if someone is, how is it still socialism (where everyone rules equally)?
2. Absence of personal property is not the definition of a dictatorship.
3. Denying people of personal property is not the same as having a society where the entire concept doesn't exist.

Marx isn't the only one who made this observation. Calling it Marxist is like saying that addition is Gödelian.

The Einstein essay is good reading though - as usual, he pretty much nailed it, but like most visionaries, he was a tad bit too hopeful (expecting actual Socialism to be just around the corner, in 1949...).

More good reading: Erich Fromm's work, especially 'To Have Or To Be' (which is also one of his more digestible books) explains a lot.

In case of the USSR, the dictator was the CPSU.

Everyone ruling equally is one of the types of socialism. There are other types (as per the wikipedia article).

Forcing everyone to not have personal property is a form of dictatorship.

Now, if a party was elected with over 50% votes, and this party wanted to bring absence of personal property, then it would be democracy (and it also would mean I would move to another country).

But if the entire concept existed before and now it does not, then people would be denied of personal property.

It is an Economics principle: value is produced through labor. It was Marx who first put this principle in context.

I agree with that essay. Einstein highlights what is wrong with capitalism. He tells us what needs to be fixed, which is what I said in previous post: capitalism needs to be fixed so as that we can all benefit from it. Which means, higher taxes, bigger salaries, better distribution of wealth.

EDIT:

I am still waiting for Tobias to share his company's project with us, so we can all benefit from it.

The difference between a king and a dictator is that all kings are close relatives.

A king doesn't necessarily have full power (unlike a dictator). He may even have no power at all, being just a ceremonial figure (like Japan's Emperor). In most (all?) modern European monarchies the King has very low power, mostly just symbolic.

i got 'cher dick tater right here

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@Arther Kalliokoski:

• I didn't say anything about forcing

• Forcing people to pursue personal property is just as restrictive as forcing them to abstain from doing so

• Neither of these qualifies as a dictatorship per se; the enforcement can be established in perfectly non-dictatorship-like situations - peer pressure, culture, outside circumstances, etc.

• Majority vote is not the same as democracy. People buy into this fallacy all the time, but democracy is about having the people (all of them!) rule a country. For this to work, compromises have to be made, and the participation of every individual needs to be ensured (or at least, the right to freely participate). Voting and elections are just one way of achieving this, and a pretty weak one at that. Without public discussion, a democratic culture, free education, protection of minorities, independent media, free speech, a guaranteed fulfilment of existential needs, and counter-measures against individuals who abuse their democratic freedoms, a democracy cannot exist in any meaningful way. Again, majority vote alone merely enforces the power of a consenting majority and excludes the remaining minorities from any participation.

There is an abundance. There's this famous figure that says the richest 20% of the world's population consume 80% of the available resources; which means that, theoretically speaking, if we could get rid of those 20% (which, unfortunately, includes me), we could easily quadruple the resource usage of the rest and still have plenty to spare. It's not a problem of scarcity. It's mostly a problem of distribution - but not one that is easy to solve. Capitalism solves the problem of average scarcity, at least as long as the required overall growth is sustainable; but it fails horribly at solving the distribution problem - as Einstein observes nicely, its core mechanisms have a tendency to bundle capital (and thus resources) in the hands of the lucky few.

But if the rotorooter van is parked outside someones house then its obvious their plumbing is bad yet they can fix it?

A percentage of income is not the same as absolutely no property. In the cause of giving up a percentage of your income, your basic rights are not taken away: they didn't take ALL your income.

Personally, I talked about the solution: raise taxes on the rich, bring back jobs.

It's funny that you say that, because these things are established through majority vote.

There is not.

Quadrupling the source usage of the rest will do nothing to raise those people's standard of living to acceptable levels.

According to wikipedia, the poverty line is $1 per day.

If you quadruple that, it's $4 per day.

According to wikipedia, the average income in America is $45000 per year.

The average dollars per day for an American is 45000 / 365 = $123.

So, in order to raise the standard of living of that 80% of the population to the 1/10 of the average American, i.e. to $12, you need to raise the income of those poor people from $1 to $12, i.e. 12 times, not 4.

The solution is easy, and it has been applied in the past in America. It was those prosperous times that people with more than $250k income payed 92% tax, and all jobs were in America.

Tobias Dammers, will you give us your project? I am still waiting. You said you wouldn't mind giving your work away for free.