译文/Translated：
我终于找到了一个既合理又有逻辑的财产权理论，它既能符合道义又有经济能力。我问我自己一个基本问题：“纵观历史，我们是怎么合理地分配全宇宙的自然资源的？”
哪怕对于自由主义者来说，这个问题也很棘手，毕竟它已经直逼财产权的核心了。我们怎么决定哪些是你的哪些是我的？这些权利哪里来的？自由主义者说，未经允许获取财产是侵占的一种，但要这么说的话，税收就是侵占。但是，要说这个行为是侵占，自由主义者首先得明确，他们说这话的基础是他们拥有这个东西。
月亮、海洋、大地、空气这些都是谁的？亚当和夏娃是不是各占全地球50%的永久财产权？换句话说，他们要想好等他们去世了哪个孩子继承他们的财产。他们的孩子要继续决定怎么分配这些财产。如此反复。
是不是要提供清洁物权就得需要从创世纪开始的所有的转账记录呢？毕竟，这就是加密财产的基础。所有的转账记录都被放在一个可公开验证的账本中，因为你能够在初始账本中找到所有权所以你拥有这些币。但我们必须明确，要证明任何东西的清洁物权是不可能的。此外，人们肯定会问一个问题：为什么亚当和夏娃有权定义永久的合法财产所有权？是不是每一代人都得承认上一代分配的财产权呢？
“先到先得”是不是一个分配无主财产的合理依据呢？这代人有权耗尽所有的石油和雨林吗？这代人是否有权力分配永久矿权？
这些问题促使我重新定义财产权。大多数人从小就有一种与生俱来的“公正感”。我们对我们认为是“我自己的”东西有自己的概念。一般这包括我们第一次接触的东西、我们做出来的东西、或者我们先看到的东西。其后有了我们从别人手中买到的东西。尽管这样分配财产权似乎自然而然，但是其公平性却不够。为了实现公平，我们引入了合同的概念，以代表人和人的相互协议。
虽然有些人会自然地尊重他人的财产和合同，还有人想靠拳头说话。这就是丛林法则，这也在很大程度上决定财产如何通过战争和法律分配。
实践中，大多数财产权是通过尊重现状推动的。昨天是你的今天还是你的。如果你控制财产的时间够长，那么人们就会忘记你怎么获得的，它也就成为你的了。
但我觉得上述所有的体系逻辑上都是说不通的。签订财产合同之前，人们首先得拥有它。暴力、欺诈、偷窃、勒索这些都不是获取财产的有效方法。一代人建立的系统不应该一直约束后代。只有在双方都有同意的能力并且是有以平等的身份进行协商的情况下，这些体系才是有效的。
显然，实际生活中，财产是由丛林法则分配的。弱肉强食。胜利者书写了历史，重新定义财产权。而后，该财产权又通过暴力或者威胁来巩固。任何新的财产权体系必须考虑人类的这种天性，从而逐步纠正错误而不是加剧错误。
分配和选择
两个孩子抢一块饼干的时候你要怎么做呢？假设你希望教会孩子如何在不使用暴力的情况下解决争端，你就不能简单地制定父母对孩子的规则而已。我会让一个孩子分了饼干，让另一个孩子决定他要哪一块。如果他们不能决定他们要扮演哪个角色（分的人还是选的人），我会让他们抛硬币决定。就这么简单的一步，你却会很惊讶地看到分的人会做得多公平，选的人又会多认真。
再假设人类要做出一个分配财产权的系统，这个系统要完全为我们的后代服务。假设你要做的事情就是决定每一代人要分得多大的馅饼，另一个人决定你获得哪一块，决定你是哪一代人。你会让第一代人拥有为后代决定的权力吗？你会把战利品留给胜利者吗？就是在思考这个问题的时候，我想到了普遍继承的概念。我认为每天都是新的一天，每代人都有权平均分得宇宙中所有的无主财产。
通过挖掘石油暴富的亿万富翁剥夺了后人拥有这些财产的权利，而他的财产则留给了他的孩子。所有的财产都来自过去几代人获取和交易的自然界的无主资源。
从这个角度来看，我建议每个人都应该在其人生中暂时拥有一部分地球资源。这么做的前提是：假设每一代人都有一个合格、公正的律师代理谈判的话，没有一代人会同意让上一代人享受更好的条款。
从这个角度来说，每年地球上的资源应该被重新分配给“当代人”，这样，一个人的一生中资源（财富）能被公平地从一代人传到下一代人手中。如果我们假设人均寿命不到100年，那么这样的遗产率大概是每年5%。也就是说，每100年世界上99.5%的初始财富将被重新分配。
全球的房地产价值大约是217万亿美元，分配到70亿人手中大概就是每年每人1500美元。全球的股市大概价值100万亿美元，即每年每人1200美元。如果我们把这些都给每个人，包括生活在非洲、印度和中国的忍饥挨饿的穷人身上，那么每个人每年会获得4000美元，即每月333美元。这已经大于全球人均家庭收入了。这是非洲平均收入的4倍了。想看看这会对全球的扶贫计划产生的影响。
显然，在全球范围内实行这样的分配方式是很困难的，对于发达国家的公民来说这也不是好事。话说回来，如果我们只把这个措施放在美国公民身上，我们会得到每年15000美元，这马上就会让每个人处于贫困线之上（在产生新的价格均衡之前）。
这个过程的关键是要体现使用源自第一原则的措施我们可以获得和提议相同的基本收入。此外，我们不是通过问“需要”多少钱来达成目的，而是通过问有多少财富可以以每年5%的速度“传递给下一代”达成的。
总之，每年5%的“财富税”能够让每个人都获得高于贫困线的收入，同时还不会违反每代人公平谈判中可以得到的财产权。美国的财产税意味着任何一个资产价值低于30万的人实际上都不需要缴税，因为税收和他们的收入一样。这意味着几乎75%的美国人实际上都不需要缴纳财产税，因为继承权大于他们的纳税义务。
此外，拥有超过30万美元的资产的人可能从这些资产中获得超过5%的被动收入。如果不能有效地利用他们的资产（获取5%以上的收益），他们就会逐渐失去他们的财产，留给下一代人。
又因为每个人都处于“贫困线以上”，社会就不需要其他的福利、经济状况调查等。学费也很容易从儿童的基本收入中支取。社会的儿童抚养费也就可以取消了。
经济效益
反对5%财富税的一个常见观点是它会导致资源浪费。人们会把钱花在毒品或者其它地方浪费掉。他们认为财富税会抑制储蓄、鼓励消费。
诚然，肯定有一些人会浪费他们的资源，哪怕是富人也会浪费资源。但是这种基于效果的观点本来就偏好其他某些产权制度。其假定是有人因为这样的偏好能够做出更好的决策。其假定是某些经济利益和经验比另一些更好。其假定是当今的富人是因为自己的才智“赚取”和更好地投资财富。其假定是这个钟形曲线浪费资源的一端超过利用资源的一端。其假定是相比企业家服务大众，从而让大众通过消费为自己想要的产品和服务投票，少数一些富有的中心化规划者（顶端的1%）可以比这些企业家做出更好的投资选择。
换言之，经济效益是一个带有偏见的观点，这个观点只是用来合理化现在社会存在的偏见。它假定有些目标比另一些更重要。他假设有些人没有权力参与影响市场上应该有哪些商品和服务。
讲到这里，争论产权制度现状的自由主义者好像成了中央计划经济中的统计学家，好像他们比别人更知道怎么运行经济一样。
需求不是产权的基础
几乎一半的美国人支持普遍基本收入（UBI），但是现在有关该话题的书籍都是从需求导向型的角度出发。这种方法自然会驳斥反对福利社会的人，尤其是自由主义者。现在支持UBI的自由主义者往往侧重点是放在道德上比较说得通的角度，而不是从第一原则中得出观点。
政治哲学家和经济学家已经提出了许多UBI的实施方法，但是它们几乎都会带来恶性通货膨胀。需求导向型的论证带来的是一个不可持续的经济事件链，因为UBI会带来价格上涨，继而，因为有需求，所以进一步引发UBI的增长。
结论
在兼顾逻辑、经济、自由的同时，由适当的财富税所支撑的普遍的继承制度是可行的。实际上，这是唯一一个能够被大众接受、并能自主纠错的逻辑完善的产权理论。
另一方面，不能理解自己继承权背后的原理的大众确实可能不支持这个微妙的观点。如果对此理解不够，只要他们继承的资源不能支撑他们想要的生活标准，大众就可能单纯地要求“更多”。因为他们的无知和自私的需求，大众可能很快就把一个稳定的经济体制（每年获得5%的收益）变成一个不稳定的共产主义体系，迫使每个人变成社会的一个最小公分母。
只有通过每代人不停地教育与和肯定，人们才有希望创造和维系这样的体系，而不至于成为道德败坏的牺牲品。
原文/Original：
I finally stumbled upon a rational, logically consistent, theory of property rights that provided both the moral authority and economic viability. I asked myself a fundamental question: “How do we allocate the natural resources of the universe fairly across all generations?”
This question is a challenge even for libertarians because it gets to the very heart of property rights. How do we determine what is yours and what is mine? Where do these rights come from? Libertarian’s hold that taking property without permission is an act of aggression and from this conclude that taxation is an act of aggression; however, for it to be an act of aggression the libertarian must first establish the basis of their claim to the property.
Who owns the moon, the ocean, the land, and the air? Do Adam and Eve have eternal property right to 50% of the Earth each? What I mean by this is that they get to choose which of their children get their property when they die. Their children get to decide how to divide it among their children and so on until present day.
Does proving clean title to property require documenting all transfers back to genesis? This, after all, is the basis of cryptocurrency property. All transfers are logged in a publicly verifiable ledger and the coins are only yours by virtue of the ability to track ownership back to the genesis block.
It should be obvious that proving clear title to anything is impossible. Furthermore, one must ask the question, why do Adam and Eve have the right to control the definition of legitimate ownership of property for all eternity? Is each new generation bound to recognize the property rights allocated by the prior generation?
Is “first come, first serve” a proper basis for assigning initial ownership to unowned property? Does this generation have the right to consume all the oil and rainforests? Does this generation have the right to allocate all the mineral rights for all of eternity?
These are the questions that lead me to consider a alternative definition of property rights. Most people have an innate sense of justice that starts as a child. We have an idea of what we consider “ours”. This generally includes things we touched first, things we created, or things we saw first. From this it flows to things we bought from others. While this approach to property rights is natural, it doesn’t scale very well. In order to scale, we introduce contracts which represent mutual agreements between people.
While some people naturally respect other people’s property and contracts, other people choose the follow the might-makes-right approach to property. This is the law of the jungle and is what has largely governed how property is allocated via wars and taxation.
In practice, most property rights are driven by respecting the status quo. What was yours yesterday is yours today. If you can maintain control over property for long enough, then people forget how you obtained it and it becomes yours.
I find all of the above systems to be logically inconsistent. Before one can contract for property, one must own it. Force, fraud, theft, and extortion are not valid means to acquire property. Systems setup by one generation should not be binding on subsequent generations. Contracts are only valid if the parties have the ability to consent and are negotiating as equals.
It is clear that in practice property is allocated by the law of the jungle. The strongest parties conquer the weaker. The victors write the history books and redefine property rights. Property rights are enforced by violence or the threat thereof. Any new system of property rights must account for this natural tendency of mankind and should gradually correct for misconduct rather than compound it.
Divide & Choose
What do you do when you have two kids fighting over a single cookie? Assuming you actually want to teach your kids how to resolve disputes without violence, you cannot take the easy way out and make a parental decree. In my house I ask one kid divide the cookie and let the other choose which half they would like. If they cannot decide which role (divider or chooser) they want, I suggest a coin flip. With this simple process it is amazing to what extents the divider will go to be fair and how much scrutiny the chooser places to determine which piece is better.
Now imagine that mankind had to come up with a system for allocating property rights that fully accounts for all generations. Imagine you were tasked with the job of dividing the pie between individuals in all generations but that someone else got to decide which slice you get and which generation you are born into. Would you give the first generation the right to allocate to future generations? Would you give the victor the spoils of war?
It is through pondering this question that I came up with a process for universal inheritance. I assume that each day is a new day and each generation deserves an equal division of the unearned natural resources of the universe.
A billionaire who acquired his riches extracting oil from the ground, denies future generations those resources and the wealth earned is passed on to his kids. All wealth is derived from the natural, unearned, resources extracted in the past and traded amongst prior generations.
From this perspective I propose that each person should be lent a share of the earth’s resources for the duration of a long human life. This is based upon the premise that members in one generation would never agree to give the previous generation more favorable terms assuming all generations were represented by competent and unbiased lawyers.
From this perspective each year some percentage of the Earth’s resources should be redistributed to the “current generation” such that over one life-time the resources (wealth) is passed fairly from one generation to the next. If we assume most people live less than 100 years, then the resulting rate of inheritance should be around 5% per year. This would redistribute 99.5% of initial wealth over 100 years.
Total global real-estate is worth about $217T distributed among 7 billion people about $1500 per person per year. Total global stocks are about $100T or $1200 per person per year. Total world wide money supply is also about $100T. All told this would give everyone, including the billions of poor and starving individuals in Africa, India, and China a total income of about $4000 per year or $333 per month. This is greater than the global median per-capita household income. This is over 4x the median income in Africa. Talk about impacting world-wide poverty!
Obviously, implementing such a distribution process globally is difficult and not very interesting to citizens of wealthier industrialized countries. That said, if we applied the same process to only the assets and citizens of the USA we would arrive at a number of $15,000 per year which would instantly place everyone above the poverty line (until a new price equilibrium is reached).
The point of this process is to demonstrate that using a process derived from first principles we can derive a basic income that is in the same ballpark as what is proposed. Furthermore, we can do so by not asking how much money is “needed”, but by asking how much wealth is available to “pass on to the next generation” at 5% per year.
To summarize this, a “wealth tax” of 5%-per-year would give everyone an income above the poverty line without violating the fairly negotiated property rights of any generation. This wealth tax in the USA means anyone with assets less than $300K of value would in effect pay no tax as their tax is equal to their income. This means almost 75% of Americans would effectively pay no wealth tax because their inheritance is greater than their tax liability.
Furthermore, those with assets above $300K in value are likely earning more than 5% of passive income from those assets. Those who do not use their assets productively (by earning more than 5%) will slowly lose them to the next generation over the course of their life.
Given that everyone would be “above the poverty line”, there would no longer be any need for other welfare services, means-testing, etc. School tuition could easily be paid from the basic income of children. Child support orders could be eliminated.
Economic Efficiency
One of the most common arguments against a 5% wealth tax is that it would result in squandered resources. That people would spend it on drugs or otherwise waste it. They argue that a wealth tax would disincentives savings and encourage consumption.
While it is true that a certain percentage of the population will squander their resources, it is equally true that the wealthy also squander resources. But arguments based on efficiency are biased toward some other property right system. The presumption is that somebody, by virtue of their own biased values, knows how to allocate resources better than everyone else. The presumption is that certain economic goods and experiences are better than others. The presumption is that today’s rich have “earned it” by virtue of their own intelligence and can invest it better. The presumption is that one end of the bellcurve which wastes resources given to them outweighs the other end of the bellcurve which uses them in far more productive means. The presumption is that a few rich central planners (the 1%) can better invest resources than entrepreneurs serving the masses which vote on the products and services they desire by spending their inheritance.
In other words, economic efficiency is a biased argument used to justify a biased status quo. It presupposes certain goals are higher than other goals. It assumes that some people do not have a right to participate in influencing which goods and services are provided.
All of a sudden, the libertarians who are arguing for the status-quo property-rights system start sounding like central planning statists who know better how to run the economy.
Need is not a Basis for Property Rights
Almost half of Americans support a Universal Basic Income (UBI), but existing books on the topic approach the concept from a need-based approach. The need-based approach to UBI naturally repulses those who are against the welfare state, especially Libertarians. Existing libertarian arguments in support of a UBI tend to focus on a lesser-of-evils justification rather than deriving an argument from first-principles.
Political philosophers and economists have proposed many different implementations of UBI, almost all of which will end in hyperinflation. The need-based argument for UBI creates an unsustainable economic chain of events where UBI triggers prices increases which trigger additional need-based increases to UBI.
Conclusion
It is possible to support a universal inheritance supported by a modest wealth tax while being logically consistent, economically sound, libertarian. In fact, it may be the only logically consistent theory of property rights that could be broadly accepted by the masses while automatically correcting for past and injustices.
On the other hand, this nuanced position might be lost on the masses who would not understand the reason behind their inheritance. Without a proper understanding, the masses may simply call for “more” whenever their inheritance doesn’t support the standard of living they want. Through their own ignorance and selfish desires, the masses can quickly turn a stable economic system (5% per year) into an unstable communist system that forces everyone to the lowest common denominator.
Only through continous education and affirment from one generation to the next can a people hope to create and maintain such a system without falling victim to philosophical corruption.
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