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Comment by agent008t | Hacker News Reader

See my reply above.

By less free, I mean that anyone who wants to leave their children the fruits of their labour is now unable to do so. The more restrictions on individuals, the less free a society is. And it is a very big motivator for some people - many people value the standard of living of their children higher than their own.

But I do get your utilitarian argument. After all, every next dollar of our wealth we value less than the previous one. So in this sense, I can see why you would think that redistributing that wealth would make the society better off overall. But I think you misjudge the effects of consumption vs investment and of the incentives on the overall wealth of a society.

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> The more restrictions on individuals, the less free a society is.

I think this is a fallacy. Freedom, when defined this way (taken to its extreme), is not desirable for society as a whole. It only helps the wealthy and powerful and works against the poor.

If you are poor or indebted, you are not really free, even if there are no individual restrictions. People in need will probably be inclined to "freely" take out loans, giving up their freedom. Wealthy people may want to keep a good portion of society in need so they'll always be "freely" working for them.

Having to work full time for a salary to live a middle class life feels like unbounded indentured servitude sometimes. We have significant benefits over historical indentured servitude but the freedom is still lacking. 40+ hours of my week, including prime creative hours, for potentially 45+ years of my life are given to my employer so I can live in a decent house, buy healthy food, pay for my family's needs, travel once or twice a year, etc. I am giving up time/energy I'd rather give to my family and creating art/innovative technologies from the thousands visions and ideas I have every year. My situation, though far from unique, is one I've gotten myself into. Getting out now requires me to put my personal desires aside for many years, maybe decades, while working to become wealthy enough to hopefully enjoy true freedom while I am still young and energetic. Who knows if that will pan out. The alternatives are lower pay, more "free" time, or intermittent bursts of high pay/free time. Neither of those are freedom (fiscal autonomy) in my mind, only an illusion of it. I could talk about this all day but I'll stop there...

Have you heard of the FIRE movement? Basically, if you save 30-50% of your pay by reducing expenses, you can shorten that 45 years very considerably.

It generally involves becoming less materialistic than the average American, though.

Ah ok get you.

The fruits of your labour argument is a good one which is why I would advocate a 100% inheritance tax.

I'm less convinced by your freedom argument, taken to its logical conclusion, murder should be legal because you're removing the rights of the murderer to do what they want. So I guess it comes down to where you draw the line?

Consumption v investment. There are good arguments each way, I don't know if higher inheritance tax would lead to higher of either. I think they tend to form a balance though.

The line for personal freedom is always where it infringes on the rights of others. Keeping your own wealth or passing it on per your own wishes after your death does not infringe on anyone else's rights. Taking someone else's wealth away from them infringes on their rights.

That's an argument against all taxes.

And also the line that prevents you taking the freedom argument to it's logical conclusion that murder is acceptable.

It can be, yes.

And yet, there's a difference between, say, a 30% inheritance tax and a 100% inheritance tax. The 100% tax means that you cannot leave anything to your children. The 30% tax means that you cannot leave all of it to your children. One is more prohibitive (and therefore infringing) than the other.

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