Arguing "Capitalist Excesses"

[TheAllotrope]

I recently got into an argument with someone who asserted rather confidently that without heavy handed government regulation, we would have "another Gilded Age", complete with "robber barons" pillaging the Earth, feeding off a helpless underclass, etc. Of course, this person also asserted that rights are negotiable and dictated by the "consensus of society" rather than being objective conditions required for man's survival in social contexts (a point which I bring up only to show to his general disdain for the principle of rights and their political implementation, capitalism).

So, I responded by bringing up the nature of rights, why we need them, why they must be inalienable, the rationales of which I won't waste space describing here. I went on to describe that 1) the Gilded Age was not truly capitalism (due to governments' infringements of property rights, refusal to protect rights, government issue of land to railroads, and so forth), and 2) the poverty (relative to today) and tough conditions of the time were more inherited from pre-industrial times than themselves a consequence of industrialization, and that industrialized areas, compared to non-industrial areas of the same time period, had greater freedom and prosperity. This guy brings up a statistic (which I was not able to verify at the time and haven't cared much to look into) that 77% of the wealth was controlled by some small (say, 1) percent of the population.

This led him to introduce a hypothetical where one person, or a small group, controlled nearly all property, and banded together so that the poor could survive only by taking employment with these people at wages far lower than their economic value. He claimed that there is no difference between killing someone and willfully "withdrawing the rice bowl", and so the wealthy tyrants were initiating force, and therefore the poor could either kill them or use government to confiscate all/most of the property.

I would tend to answer such a hypothetical by introducing a few points:

1) The wealthy would have to obtain their wealth by trade - value for value. It's fundamentally impossible to control all resources by legal means, for the simple reason that something had to be given for them.

2) The human mind is really the fundamental resource. People can always use their minds to extract physical resources not controlled (figuratively), or create/improve methods and theories, or produce art. People ALWAYS have an alternative.

3) Not providing is not the same as taking.

4) If you wanted an example of a case where 1 person controlled everything, look no further than monarchies, where every person exists only by the grace of the royalty. Isn't something like the Gilded Age, for all its faults, preferable?

What is an appropriate way to address a hypothetical like this? Is it sufficient? How might I be more effective or convincing? Is there a better way to phrase, or otherwise argue it?

[softwareNerd]

This led him to introduce a hypothetical where one person, or a small group, controlled nearly all property, and banded together so that the poor could survive only by taking employment with these people at wages far lower than their economic value.

You're right that the hypothetical is more like monarchy than about Capitalism. It sounds like North Korea or Cuba. Closer to the Soviet Union than to any of the relatively free Western European countries.

Like you said, existing property is not the critical factor in the creation of new wealth (perhaps it was in some older times, I don't know). What is critical is: new ideas. By far the wealthy people in the U.S. got that way because they or their parent or grandparent had some new idea that made them a lot of money. Of course one has to have means to execute -- i.e. to act on ideas. There are always rich people who want to get richer and who are willing to invest in new ideas. Why would they try to freeze the size of the pie? They realize that the way to get richer comes with an attitude that the pie can be made larger.

[Zip]

You're right that the hypothetical is more like monarchy than about Capitalism. It sounds like North Korea or Cuba. Closer to the Soviet Union than to any of the relatively free Western European countries.

LOL. I was just going to add that your friend has just described communism exactly...

Come to think of it, his take on "rights" (that they are drawn from and only with the approval of the majority) would lead to exactly what he is arguing against, some people having more rights than others.

[2046]

Weren't there like 70 million Germans once upon a time, that came to a "consensus" that 600 thousand German Jews no longer had rights and decided to exterminate them and steal their property?

Does he honestly not know the difference between a world dictatorship and individual rights? Individual rights being inalienable, as in literally inalienable, not "inalienable, except when we decide they're not."

Ask him if he seriously believes one person can buy up the whole world and control it under capitalism, then you will know if you are wasting your time or not.