How so?

Capital flight is a form of class warfare. Controls against it are the majority, workers who don’t own capital, enforcing a social contract against those who do.

Of course, that will only happen in states where workers are in power. In most countries that isn’t the case and, unsurprisingly, there are weak capital flight controls.

I guess I don't see the relevance. Are you saying any tactic or action is fair game in class warfare?

Voluntary association and participation of individuals should be a baseline understanding.

I’m saying that if one class is already engaging in warfare, it’s not unreasonable for the opposed class to attempt to respond. Of course that is only possible with state power, which in most countries is now in the hands of the owners of capitals. That’s their main tool for engaging in class warfare in the first place.

Individuals associating voluntarily is a liberal fiction. Such freedom only exists if you are already wealthy. Otherwise you have to work for an owner of capital or starve.

It sounds like we are coming from very different axioms.

I don't think being hungry negates voluntary association.

Being hungry should not compel another to association any more than being horny should.

Currently, the owners of capital further increase their capital by employing workers. The labour of those workers creates value, a part of which the owner of capital keeps despite having not laboured for it. Violence is used to keep workers from the entirety of the value their labour creates.

Is that voluntary association? Seems to me like the owners of capital exploit the labour of workers, because they have the ability to compel it.

What violence is used to keep workers laboring in their factories? Your position seems to hang on that point. I don't think refusing to intervene and letting someone starve to death is a violent act. To claim otherwise redefines violence as any actor action which does not meet your personal wants.

Try to imagine yourself as a worker with little to no asset ownership. One day you decide voluntarily to cut yourself off from your job. You no longer are able to pay rent/mortgage, and you are on the streets. You're hungry but have no money. You think of the best place to get some money for food.. Maybe that rich neighborhood would be generous to you. You start panhandling, but 5 minutes into it, some local rent-a-cop starts harassing you to get off the sidewalk that's "reserved for the business in front of it". You refuse, stating that the sidewalk is public property. A few minutes later, the police come over and force you to relocate. Where to? You pick another spot, and the cycle repeats until you pick a spot far enough away from everyone. Still no food though.

Now you want to sleep.. need I continue?

In short, the violence is not in "letting someone starve". Most people aren't out there trying to starve themselves. The violence is in preventing someone from saving themselves. Being homeless/penniless is an eyesore for those that aren't. The actions taken to fix the eyesore are the source of violence. What happens to a panhandler if they refuse to comply with police's arbitrarily justified order to "relocate"?

If workers were to seize the full value of their labour, or seize the means of production, capital armies (like the police) would attack them. Even when workers merely strike they commonly get attacked by police.

The laws (and even the liberal ideology you adhere to) exist to favour the ruling class. Why would the ruling class do anything else? When the ruling class are the owners of capital, the laws and culture disfavour workers.

Ultimately it’s not worth discussing this to death yet again, it has been done countless times in the last couple hundred years.

Nobody is using violence to stop workers from buying, renting, or building means of production. Buy your own example, violence only comes into play when they try to steal.

The only real violence you mentioned is if police attack striking workers, which is exceedingly rare in most developed countries with the rule of law. What percentage of striking workers do you think are physically harmed by police in the us? If you think that is a likely or common outcome, we are probably living in different realities. You say that laws just favor the workers, but I wouldn't want to be a worker in a society without property rights. There is no point in working if any value you create can be stolen with impunity.

Almost every country with significant capital controls are ones you likely wouldn't want to voluntarily move to.

You’re assuming I own capital. I don’t.

Maybe you wouldn’t want to move to a country where the working class is in charge, as opposed to your own class. I don’t dispute that.

I did not make that assumption, with the idea that in countries with free (or freer, at any rate) market-based economies with little to no capital controls, the rising tide lifts all boats, including those of the proletariat without capital, to a standard of living higher than countries with unfree economies and significant capital controls.

In fact, in two of the countries that presently have significant capital controls (China and Russia), even your human capital is controlled with internal passports that limit where in your own country you can move to.

Of course, I likewise don't dispute that I don't know what your preferences are. My original statement ("you likely wouldn't want to") was intended to be a general statement, not for you in particular as an individual.

"Rising tide lifts all boats" aka trickle-down economics does not work, and hasn't worked in the US for the last 50 years. It's the failure of both Reaganomics and Thatcher's economic policies.

(https://www.faireconomy.org/trickle_down_economics_four_reas...) (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/oct/09/why-is...)

According to your first source, "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to economic growth" but it does not lead to economic stagnation or shrinkage either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to income growth" but does not lead to income decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to wage growth" but does not lead to wage decrease either; "cutting the top tax rate does not lead to job creation" but does not lead to job destruction either. That is to say, cutting the top tax rate has no correlation with any of those four items.

So if taking more or less taxes from the rich results in no meaningful difference in ordinary American lives, shouldn't the government then default to taking less? The other way would be just wasteful. And if your argument is that no, in fact the additional tax revenue from the rich is helpful because it funds various redistributive social programs, then my counterargument is that what those programs seem to be most effective at is incentivizing creating an unemployable underclass at the taxpayer's expense[0] while enriching politically connected players.

[0]: See Thomas Sowell's extensive body of research on the general welfare of black Americans before and after the Great Society programs of the 60s.

So clearly you don't see the usefulness of government being able to spend money on programs that do make a difference, even going as far as to label it wasteful. I'd argue that letting people keep money that makes no significant difference in their life, other than sitting as a number on a bank account, is wasteful. If people can use money to better society, so can government, difference being government can spend money selflessly.

Government spending, in certain cases, can and is wasteful. To claim that all is, is clearly false.

I'd be wary of quoting Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault.

> government can spend money selflessly

"Selflessly" insofar as everyone involved has no incentives, internal or external, that direct their behavior one way or another; which is to say, not selflessly at all.

The government isn't a machine that takes action for the good of the citizens with no feeling. It's a messy organization composed of people who are all looking out for their salaries, what makes their boss look good or their rivals look bad, whether they win the next election, and maybe sometimes the stated mission of the organization or the good of the citizens. And moreover, it does all that with the might of the law, the monopoly on violence.

If it's a similar amount of money for a similar level of outcome, I'd much rather the people use the money to better society and not government, for those reasons.

> Thomas Sowell, he's basically the guy to victim blame minorities into saying that being poor is their fault

What a demeaning way to describe a human being with an incredible personal story and his life's work. And it's wrong, too: if you simplify into a sentence or two what he says about minorities (and his body of work extends far beyond that), it's that well-meaning government policies often incentivize minorities into entering cycles of poverty, and that minorities should depend on themselves first and foremost and not the government to improve their lot.