... zero-sum claims on existing production rather than on the process of creation ... that's more deeply embedded than leverage. As long as there is a decentralized system, there's an incentive to focus on extracting tolls from occupation of strategic intersections rather than on creation of new product.

Progressive income taxation swings the incentives in the favor of going productive concerns ...

... but then we have just seen five decades plus of gutting the intellectual basis of economics as a social science, just as a side play in the fight to undermine progressive income taxation and protective regulation in the finance sector.


I've been accused of being a Marxist, yet while Harpo's my favourite, it's Groucho I'm always quoting. Odd, that.