something you said within the last couple of days spurred me to try to tie together my thoughts about wealth. here's the work-in-progress (from my biopage)
comments, critique, and suggestions welcome/solicited:
Economics, as a subject, isn't my bag. If I fail to use the jargon of that occult field, please forgive me (or, perhaps, applaud).
It seems to me that -in a Free society- all laws and understandings of trade, work, property, and economics must be based on a fundamental understanding of and respect for the value of TIME.
We trade our time (and effort, and skill, yes... but TIME most of all) in various ways to earn, maintain, utilize, and magnify our wealth. The old corporate mantra "Time Is Money" is, while crassly put, quite true. Put more broadly, time is the fund of wealth with which every human is born.
This fund is unique to each human being. Once spent, it cannot be replenished. Barring some miracle of medical technology, it cannot be usefully extended. It can, however, be very easily reduced. Slavery and murder are crimes of THEFT more than anything else: They rob a person of his most unique and precious resource - his time here on Earth - either by negating his will to use his time as he sees fit or by ending his time outright.
Both forms of theft rob a human being of his humanity.
As noted, we trade our time for other forms of wealth - resources, money, power, property, offspring. Many forms of wealth, each representing a substantial investment of irreplaceable time. In this way, the axiom "time equals wealth" can be inverted as "wealth equals time" - though it should be noted that while many forms of wealth can be traded for one another, none can be traded for more time (though surplus wealth can afford more freedom to utilise what time one has to better advantage - to capitalize on one's time). In this way: Money equals time; Property equals time; Resources equal time; Power equals time; Even (especially?) children equal time.
And TIME equals (portions of) a person's LIFE.
Again: Unique and non-refundable.
From this, it must be clear that property rights grow directly from the right to life: One owns that for which one has traded some of that most precious and irreplaceable of all resources - life.
In this light, it is certain that mandatory collectivism of all sorts have no respect for human life. Collectivism is built on a faulty premise: A commonality of all resources, from which individuals can collect at need and to which all surplus is given. This is nonsensical when dealing with the fundamental resource of time. Without this fundamental resource, all the other forms of wealth are impossible. Mandatory collectivism can be seen as a house of cards, pure bullshit -if you'll pardon the term- fobbed off upon the gullible by the idealist and the power-hungry. Collectivism's utter lack of regard for human life can, of course, be seen more directly in the domestic body-counts of collectivist regimes throughout the 20th Century. Over 100 million citizens murdered by their own governments in the name of "the common good."
Mandatory collectivism is, quite simply, theft-by-slavery behind a rouged smiley-face.
One who squanders another's time commits an act like in kind (if not degree) to homicide. One who steals another's property in fact steals a part of another's life, and is likewise akin to a murderer.
(to be expanded/continued)