Taxation and the Church

[JB_Dugan]

Note the claim that laissez-faire capitalism does not entail force or coercion is not entirely true.

Example: Suppose I own a drug company. I have spent years developing a wonderous drug that will greatly benefit sick people. Naturally I deserve to reap the profits of that development, so I price my drug accordingly. However another drug company comes along and analyzes the drug and learns how to duplicate it. They try to sell it at half the price that I charge, which they can easily do since they did not have to pay for all those years of development. But through the agency of patent laws, enforced by government, I can force and coerce that competitor to either pay me a royalty or stop selling the discounted drug. Without that coercion, in a true laissez-faire capitalist system where government takes a hands-off approach to interactions between businesses, drug companies could not afford to take such risks like a decade long development that is going to be copied by generic drug companies almost as soon as it comes out. So I guess your ideal of laissez-faire capitalism does not include government enforced patents. Too bad.

Interesting example, Leaf. I will refute it later.

Meanwhile…

Don’t you think the definition I quoted is very similar to Pope Paul’s words…???

 

[LeafByNiggle]

The first line of the encyclical was not mentioned in the post.

No, but if you are going to make statements like:

I believe Pope Paul VI is addressing the Italian government or some monarchy in the first statement.

you should be little more careful about having a basis in truth for such statements.

 

[JB_Dugan]

No, but if you are going to make statements like:

Quote:
I believe Pope Paul VI is addressing the Italian government or some monarchy in the first statement.

you should be little more careful about having a basis in truth for such statements.

Like I said, I reply only to what is posted. However after reading the first line of the encyclical I see that it is merely an “address”. Not exactly a preamble. His actual statement that follows the “address” seems to pertain to Italian government or some monarchy.