🚀 go-pugleaf

On 11 Oct 2004 16:48:24 -0700, fbonsignore@beethoven.com (Fabrizio J.
Bonsignore) wrote:

>royls@telus.net wrote in message news:<4169a3b7.20177640@news.telus.net>...
>> On 9 Oct 2004 19:20:20 -0700, fbonsignore@beethoven.com (Fabrizio J.
>> Bonsignore) wrote:
>> 
>> >It looks like America was from the
>> >beginning a rich country (population against available land)
>> 
>> Population per land area is almost irrelevant to development or
>> prosperity, as the contrasting situations in Singapore, HK, etc.
>> compared to Brazil, Mozambique, Sudan, etc. prove.  What matters is
>> freedom to produce, and to keep the value one's productive efforts
>> yield.
>> 
>There was plenty of fertile land available and then gold.

The fact that you think the amount of gold was even relevant proves
you understand nothing of the matter.

>Singapore,
>HK, etc are industrial economies.

<sigh>  They weren't always.  That's kinda the point.

>I am referring to a mostly rural
>economy as the US was at the beginning.

Couldn't matter less.

>I don`t think countries like
>Brazil or Sudan have much adequate land available;

I know you don't.  But you are wrong.

>Brazil has to fight
>the jungle and Sudan the desert.

But mostly, they have to fight their own corrupt and incompetent
governments.

>> >and so
>> >its initial conditions were such that even under the existence of
>> >predatory competition the momentum of development promoted either pure
>> >self-interested behavior or cooperative competition, reinforcing
>> >development, even without taxing away Ricardian rent.
>> 
>> Wrong.  Until WW I, most government revenue in the USA was from land.
>> 
>Now that you say so it must have been so, there was not yet all the
>infrastructure to control income tax revenues.

It was a matter of policy, not infrastructure.  Other countries --
countries that stayed poor, like Mexico -- taxed production instead of
land.

>Yet there were other
>conditions that helped development, like the new rairoad
>infrastructure,

???  Do you think it fell from the sky?

>income derramas after slaves were liberated,

The war that liberated them was one of the costliest in history up to
that time.

>increasing industrialization,

You confuse cause and effect.

>oil fever, etc. Too many factors to
>distinguish the effect of the tax scheme,

Not if you understand some economics.

>though maybe somebody can
>gather the data and perform amore thorough analysis.

<sigh>  Whenever you're proved wrong, it's always more data and more
analysis that are needed.

Maybe what's needed is for you to realize that you are just _wrong_
and I am just _right_.

>> >So either the
>> >tax schemes used were adequate for development or there was o
>> >relationship between tax scheme and developmet. And if the tax schemes
>> >used were not ricardian, ten the argument to discuss is whether
>> >ricardian taxes would bring (much) more development.
>> 
>> They always have.
>> 
>A model?

When the unamimous verdict of historical fact won't convince you, what
use would a model be?

>> >In any case
>> >America`s development was independent of the applicatio of ricardian
>> >taxes.
>> 
>> That claim is false, as proved above.
>> 
>Was not proved, was stated, though the tax scheme might have helped.

No, actually I proved that you were wrong.  You will never learn
anything as long as you insist that you are never wrong, because then
the facts that prove you wrong cannot get into your brain.

>> >It is known that it had much more to do with basic moral
>> >aspects as exhibited by groups like the mormons and quakers or the
>> >protestant ethic of the particularly American brand of christianity.
>> 
>> Then how do you explain the prosperity of non-Christian societies like
>> Singapore, HK, Taiwan, and Japan?  How explain the poverty of
>> Christian Poland under socialism?
>> 
>The tigers have different ideologies that seem to favor cooperation
>and joint effort.

<sigh>  So did the PRC, and it stayed poor until it began allowing
markets to function, and private interests to own capital.

<heavier sigh>  Japan was poor and backward in 1870, despite its
long-standing ideology of cooperation and joint effort.  Then its
_tax_ system was changed to obtain almost all government revenue from
_land_rents_, and in _one_generation_ it caught up to Europe
economically and militarily.

_One_generation_.

Taiwan had its "ideology of cooperation and joint effort" for
centuries, but it only became rich when it started taxing land after
WW II.

Why do you refuse to know the facts?

>Wasn`t that the Z theory or something similar? And
>of course ideology is not production, but Poland was already a
>populated state when the US was being born;

So was Japan.  But once it started taxing land, it became rich.

>plenty of constraints
>already in place,

???  ROTFL!!  You think the "constraints" in Poland could even _begin_
to compare to the constraints in Singapore and HK??

>and socialism is known to generate local and nt
>global maxima.

More garbage.  Socialism is not "known" to "generate" any "maxima" at
all.

>> >As for Europe`s development it was a _steady_ affair since the
>> >breaking down of the Roman Empire,
>> 
>> False.
>>
>Nothing changed much for 1000 years,

Wrong.  The end of Roman power in the West created the anarchist
utopia otherwise known as feudalism.  This system gradually evolved
over the centuries into the monarchical nation-states of the early
modern era.

>only after the Renaissance things
>started moving and there were no more back steps, only some
>stagnations due to wars.

Also wrong.  The stagnations were often due to destructive tax and
regulatory policies.
 
>> >Again development was rather independent
>> >from the tax schemes used and more dependent on the non predatory
>> >sharing of ideas and technologies.
>> 
>> Nope.  France taxed capital and trade in the 17-18th C and stayed
>> poor, England taxed land and grew prosperous.
>> 
>During that period England was preparing/experimenting the Industrial
>Revolution...

Right.  France could have, too, but its tax system was too destructive
of production, trade and capital.

>How many times has England been invaded?

<sigh>  There's always some sort of reason for you to ignore the
facts, isn't there?

>> >Japan and the Eastern (developed) countries also exhibit cooperative
>> >comptition and their develompent was more sudden and fast. [It must be
>> >taken into account that after WWII the USA helped ith huge financing
>> >both world zones.]
>> 
>> Wrong again.  Japan has experienced two eras of rapid growth: the
>> Meiji period and the post WW II period.  In both cases, that rapid
>> growth resulted from taxation of land rents; when the burden of
>> taxation was shifted off land rents and onto production, growth slowed
>> or stopped.
>> 
>Was that the only factor?

It was the _decisive_ factor, the one that _changed_.

>> >Apparently whatever benefits people other than the rich is called
>> >socialism.
>> 
>> It is important to identify such lies, and the liars who tell them.
>> 
>You mean socialism as a lie?

The claim that whatever benefits people other than the rich is
socialism is a lie, in two ways.  Socialism doesn't benefit anyone but
a handful of the politically powerful, and arrangements other than
socialism can benefit people other than the rich.

-- Roy L