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[sebastian_dangerfield]

No. You weren't talking about the rich. We all understand that the rich are well represented in government.

No. I just made the point that the "rich" have voted themselves unhealthy levels of wealth via control of legislators about ten times during this discussion. But never mind that. Let's move on to what you say I said, which is always more important...

(Indeed, your essential point about Trump's election victory has been that many of us don't understand the extent to which ordinary people are alienated by the fact that the government isn't doing anything for them.)

You don't. Neither do I. I don't think even the ordinary people understand their views, or have articulated them beyond vague anger and frustration, as most of them are uninformed, incurious, and narrow minded.

When I say we don't understand what Joe Sixpack desires, I'm not criticizing us. Why would anyone want to immerse himself in studying the frequently incoherent views of populists? I'm simply stating a fact.

Every government, democracy or otherwise, involves what you call transfers. Usually it's the rich exploiting everyone else. Libertarianism is a version of this, a (hypothetical) regime where government focuses on protecting private-property rights instead of more overtly serving the rich and powerful. Obviously, rich people are happy with a system that serves their interests and not other peoples.

What would the alternative be? A system which allowed one party to take property from another?

I think the present system is stagnant, and characterized best as rentier capitalism. It's predatory in many regards, and it is creating an old English class system, which ultimately stifles both culture and innovation. I think we both agree it should be turned upside down and some of the accumulated wealth spread to others who'd spend it more wisely. We just differ on how that should be done.

You seem to wish the state to administer transfers. I wish the state to mandate transfers in the form of universal income, and not engage in any administration beyond that. Everybody gets a check every month. After that, you're on your own.

"No exceptions" implied that it has actually happened.

You could read it that way. But I am quite comfortable stating the following: "If you allow people, rich or poor, to vote themselves transfers or benefits from the system, without vigilant restriction, you set a state on a course to bankruptcy, without exception."

Exactly. You have gone from arguing that it always happens to saying that it would happen if it were actually tried. In other words, the rich should continue to run government for their own interests, because if people were represented equally the government would collapse. The rich can be trusted to exploit everyone responsibly, but ordinary people cannot be. It's not a principled argument for libertarianism so much as a scare tactic.

Incorrect. The rich clearly cannot be trusted to manage our economic policies. Nor can the upper middle class, or even the middle class. They will almost always vote their own narrow self interests.

The cure for the rich making a mess of the economy is not allowing the poor to vote themselves a huge pile of new or enhanced transfers. The cure is to stop the rich from doing so.

Bankers got bailed out and middle-class homeowners did not. Coincidence, or a result of the clout that bankers have and middle-class homeowners do not?

I would have bailed out the lower and middle classes and put all the failing banks into receivership. The argument, "We had to save the banks with the bailout!" always struck me as bullshit. We could have saved them with the bailout while also taking them over directly, as we did AIG. We could have prioritized homeowners over investors.

Coincidence, or the predictable result of the government we have? Does it not seem that a government in which all interests were more equally represented would do more to advance public education than our current system? Thanks to libertarians and their fellow travelers, teacher pay has been suppressed by years of tax cuts.

You realize this is all much easier if the govt did 50% less than it currently does? Cut the govt services (including most notably defense) and administration and you'll lower people's taxes. If a guy sees a $5000 decrease in taxes because we cut a variety of items (state and fed), he's a hell of a lot less likely to whine about the tax that pays for schools.

So you say, but your answer is to reserve the power to those who already have it.

Inequality is like oil. We aren't going to stop burning oil until climate change becomes so severe we have no choice but to stop. We aren't going to do anything to fix this new gilded age in which we live until something like a French Revolution is afoot.

I actually am not against a more truly representative govt. I just don't think it's possible. Sure, we could see a progressive wave that causes the poor to have a greater say. But it'll be fixes at the margins. It'll do little more than placate and keep the poor under control. The system always reverts to the default setting: Doing what the moneyed want it to do.

When people who "already have the power" abuse it, they inevitably go too far and the system corrects. (Things often turn out badly for them, btw...) I'd love to see a sensible fix like universal income. But it's never going to happen. So I say, leave the Antoinettes to learn the difference between pigs and hogs.

You might say, there'll be no such upheaval. Maybe. Maybe not. But when that sort of stuff does happen, it's always a surprise. Like bankruptcy. Slow, slow, slow... then all of the sudden, fucked.