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:
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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.
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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.
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Not providing is not the same as taking.
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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?