Robin Hood, the generous bandit of the old English ballads whose prestige has survived to this day, robbed the rich to help the poor as a consequence of his very precise idea of economic reality in his time. The wealth in the twelfth century consisted essentially of the possession of farmland and of minted gold and silver coins. Both were scarce and in few hands. The immense majority of the population was peasants incorporated into the land by feudal law, who led a miserable life and who, by consequence of any bad harvest, perished by the hundreds. The gold and silver coins were in the iron chests of the feudal lords or in the piggy banks of the usurers, and they were few, scarce and expensive.
It was a time of primitive and static agricultural economy, in which year after year the wealth increased very little and, practically, the only way to acquire it was taking it by violence to another, either by feudal war or by the exploit of the bandit.
Robin Hood could not remedy the terrible social problem of his time but managed to mitigate it transiently and locally in some cases, distributing to the poor part of the spoils of his robbery, thereby relieving, at least temporarily, the misery of some.
In the time since the XII century until today, not only the economic reality but the very concept of wealth has changed in such a radical and complete way that Robin Hood could not understand it with the notions of his time. Wealth ceased to be static and became dynamic and growing, it stopped being things and currencies and became the capacity to produce and the growing and complex forms of the market. The wealth of today's rich people rarely consists of land, and much less accumulated gold coins, but rather fluctuating rows of figures that computers manipulate and alter every second and correspond to a fluid and dynamic notion of continuous creation. of purchasing power through the activity of economic agents.
The first to observe this was a compatriot of Robin Hood: Adam Smith, in the late eighteenth century, in the changing economic landscape of England of his time, he realized that the wealth of a nation is the volume of goods and services that he produces annually with his work.
England today is very similar to that of the twelfth century and wealth is not in the hands of a few feudal lords but in a crowd of anonymous companies, in which millions of people participate as shareholders and workers. This makes today's problem not, as in the days of the legendary bandit, to take away the few that have to give something to some of the many who do not have but, on the contrary, to achieve that, with the work of all, the productivity of all, the cooperation of all, every day more goods and services are produced to increase the level of general welfare. This does not mean that those who have more should not contribute more, since everyone should contribute to public spending and social welfare in proportion to their economic level.
What is inadmissible, absurd and contrary to the general interest is that there are political sectors that continue to raise today the problem of wealth and poverty in the terms that Robin Hood did and come to believe that the only way to improve the level of The life of the less favored is taking away part of their wealth from the most favored and distributing it generously. This is a vision totally contrary to the economic reality of today's world, which is at the very base of the great economic and social failure that the countries of Eastern Europe and the Third World have incurred.
The real problem that is posing today's governments is not to find a better way to distribute an existing wealth, which is evidently often scandalously distributed, but to find, through education, preparation for work and the stimulus to creative activity, the way of distributing better among all social classes the ability to produce wealth.
The good Robin Hood did to the poor was necessarily limited and transitory. On the other hand, the incorporation of large social sectors into a productive economy is a real and permanent progress that benefits everyone.
An other new problem is the new aristocracy: politicians. They rarely add to the generation of wealth, but they do make sure that they eat well themselves!
Exactly. Politicians always take advantage of filling their pockets, either through state money or by accepting special contributions from rich men.
The idea that the lives of peasants incorporated into the land by feudal law were all miserable is not established - it is a theory. Measuring 'misery' from a different world is guesswork. We can guess that some may well have been miserable - but for many, their existence, compared to the horrors of early industrialisation as populations were sucked into soulless factories in increasing numbers, may well have been looked back on as a primal eden in comparison. Who might benefit from history recording the lives of medieval peasantry as 'miserable'? The robber barons who enclosed and stole their land, and drove them into their factories as effectively slave-labour perhaps? My feeling is that this whole piece you've written is inspired by an oligarchy-sanctioned and sanitised history that suits the modern robber barons very well.
Oh - and Adam Smith was Scottish, not English - and I promise you he would have been bloody furious with you suggesting otherwise (educated guess!).
So, if I'm reading you correctly, you suggest the answer to wealth inequality now is not to redistribute (implying some correspondence between Robin Hood thievery and modern taxation on the wealthy), but to improve everyone's ability to produce wealth - through education, etc. Sorry, this really does not parse: Robin Hood, myth or not, was not 'stealing' from the rich. He was repatriating the wealth that was stolen in the first place, back to those who really actually did the work. That is the point and power of the story - we all know he is a good guy, and thieves are not good guys. The issue here is whether the modern rich, and particularly - the uber-wealthy - have legitimate claim to their vast wealth, or whether, actually, they are cheats, thieves, criminals - controlling and playing a rigged system, and fundamentally parasiting off everyone else. All available evidence points to the latter - a rigged, criminal system, lorded over by some of the most ruthless and despicable human beings in recorded history.
Now, I am perfectly happy to improve education and training for everyone - god knows it is needed. But current education and training are also part of this rigged system - a system that produces people, like you here, who will not even address the fact that it is fundamentally rigged, by criminals. Yup - don't look over there, keep looking here. This system is just the way it is - improve yourself and your children at our mandated schools, you'll do great... I enjoyed reading this, thanks for putting it out here - but boy, as you can tell, I think it needs a rather less question-begging wide-eyed philosophy behind it. I hope you have a good day too. Db
First, thank you very much for taking the time to read and comment properly. In part, what you say is right, in another part, I think you have not understood me well, or I have not been able to explain good. Scotland belongs to the United Kingdom, because obviously I know that Adam Smith is Scottish. When I speak of the miserable life of the campesionos, I do it from the material point of view, because it is undeniable in my opinion, that in those times there is no material abundance that exists today. In the same way, the comparison I make is with the objective of discrediting the economic policies that are aimed at redistributing wealth from an obviously socialist perspective, taking money away from the rich to give to the poor, as if that would be the solution, obviously it is not.
Totally agree with you, that is exactly the subject of the post. While I agree with you that there is currently a class of rich or multimillionaires living in society in the closest way to parasitism, it is also important to note that in any case, the alienation of property and redistribution is not the most effective mechanism to eliminate poverty.
When I speak of education, I do not speak of indoctrination, but of true education, a subject that I believe I have already discussed in previous posts.
https://steemit.com/discussion/@vieira/why-public-education-does-not-work-discussion
When I talk about education, I try to talk about the new forms of knowledge that allow the development of a nation, a nation lagging behind in technical and technological aspects, for example, it has greater difficulties to develop new markets and produce more wealth. That was partly what marked a difference between industrial power in the past, and that continues to make a difference in the present. Anyway, I think the problem is poverty rather than inequality.
https://steemit.com/economics/@vieira/how-did-capitalism-return-to-sweden-an-economically-prosperous-nation
https://steemit.com/anarchism/@vieira/the-equality-of-socialism-and-the-equality-of-capitalism
Finally, to give an example that the redistribution of wealth does not work, especially by removing wealth or property from some to give to others, there is Venezuela, my country, where the companies were expropriated from the big businessmen, the wealth was redistributed incredibly, and it was not invested in education at all, because we are going, if they built schools, but nothing of education, and later they ended up collapsing the country, then, you have a nation that does not produce anything, having an immense amount of resources, why? because very few people have the knowledge to extract and develop any industry.
https://steemit.com/politics/@vieira/how-socialism-made-venezuela-a-poor-country
OK, Adam Smith – you describe him as a compatriot of Hood, and then go on to discuss England and the English economy. Technically Scotland was not in the UK at the time you describe – medieval, because UK didn’t exist, and anyway UK is not England. Anyone who didn’t know Smith’s nationality would take away the impression that he was English from your presentation, I was simply redressing that. This is a minor quibble, which is why I didn’t dwell on it in my response.
You say your comparison of ‘misery’ was from a material point of view. My point of course is that misery is not an objective measure of material existence – it is a subjective judgement of quality of life. This can be measured in ways of course, but not by simply referring to the material, economic environment.
On education – well, in a given article I can only judge the presentation. If there is something significantly distinct regarding your treatment of the subject because of prior arguments you’ve made, well and good. The problem, as I see it (before checking out your other pieces, because I will) is that any effort to change education, training, etc, will always be downstream from the fundamental control of social resources. That includes the accepted norms, theories, science, histories, even stories reported in media. If all of the above is controlled by a tiny clique of self-feeding parasites, whose only aim is to maintain their advantage, you can absolutely guarantee that the only education and training permitted by them will be that which does not challenge their supremacy, in any way. And, surprise surprise, that is exactly what we see. Current global attempts to rein in free expression, on the internet, in mass media, in social media, here on steemit, are a living testament to this. Their monopoly on money/resources flows underlines it.
So that is my point. We have to get upstream – or, in another metaphor, to the root of the problem. That, indeed, is a redistribution of wealth issue – from the criminal oligarchy to the rest of humanity. Until that happens, everything else is moot. Now how this is done is of course another question.
Yes, I picked up that your beef was with socialist redistribution – and yes, it is invariably calamitous. One reason, I hazard, is because it is top-down and authoritarian, always – rather than ground-up and organic as a result of free interaction between sovereign individuals. So I totally agree with you here, and yes, your home country is a salutary lesson for us all. However, until the global oligarchy is wrenched from its perch, little ‘education’ is going to help redress the imbalances that currently exist – because the current controllers won’t let it. If they do let it, it leads right to their destruction, and they know it.
Happy to read your article friend, these are important subjects; I enjoyed your presentation and style, and will catch up with the pieces you linked to here. Db
Well, I think that in general terms we are quite in agreement. The issue in which we disagree is probably because I did not explain the subject clearly enough. The education to which I referred exactly in this Post, is mainly technical education, which allows people to exploit natural resources and convert them into consumable and usable goods and products, as well as allowing specialized activities such as for example medicine, engineering, architecture, among many others, that without them, a society obviously can not produce wealth. Now, I believe that the education you are referring to is the mass indoctrination of people, through the alteration and distortion of history and other important factors so that people can have a clear understanding of social, political and economic life . Obviously, that happens because the dynasty elite that governs at the moment does not allow it.
Thank you for participating in the post, for discussions like this is primarily the reason for writing.
My pleasure V, and you are quite right, these discussions are what gives this place any value, and fleshing this out with you has been well worthwhile. I suspect we'll be doing this again. Db
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