Cruelty in the service of the social engineers

My Good Friend Ben Knoll disagrees with me in the strongest possible terms regarding the utility of a death tax (see here for previous posts).  He fears that a society where the very wealthy can pass on their wealth to their children will become so imbalanced that the wealthy will constitute a permanent aristocracy.  The aristocracy will then be able to buy themselves political and (eventually via technology) cognitive advantages that will result in a two tier and definitely un-democratic society.

I have sympathy for the concern but reject the 'remedy'.  If we are to discourage large concentrations of wealth being handed from generation to generation, then how much more should we legally discourage large concentrations of intelligence and elite credentialing from doing the same?  After all brains, brands and networks are simply the raw materials of great power and fortunes. Ask BHO, GWB, WJC all who inherited no money (GWB perhaps will in the future) but huge reservoirs of the BBN.  The Bell Curve argued persuasively that the 'egalitarian' universities were deliberately and selfishly cultivating a biological and credentialed cognitive elite.  And of course they sell elite networking as the core value add of their institutions.  Why aren't these measurable and huge advantages taxed?  Or banned?

I think Warren Buffet and his sidekick Charlie Munger have a better approach.   Buffet is shaming the rich into giving it away (I think it a Bad Idea if given to the wasteful charity/state borg but it's not an Immoral one).  Munger makes less of a splash but ultimately has it more right:  keep it out of the hands of the wealth destroying sectors, keep it working for society.  Their answer is their example:  emphasize relative modesty (for middle class Americans are fabulously rich by world standards) in lifestyle and the obligation to give back to the society that has given one so much.

Kevin Williamson said something that I thought was interesting, he calls it his state intervention heuristic:   If you’re not willing to have somebody hauled off at gunpoint over the project, then it’s probably not a legitimate concern of the state.

Laws embed in them state cruelty and state terror.  The terror comes from fear of the cruelty.  Fear of the guns, shackles, humiliation, prison and confiscation that is visited on those that refuse to abide by the states endlessly proliferating diktats.  It is a necessary evil to be kept to an absolute minimum.  My problem with the left (both decent and fascist) as well as the church lady right (MADD is a classic) is that they are far, far too willing to pick up the pistol and the shackle to ‘remake’ society in their image.  The cruelty and terror (not to mention the rent seeking) that they engender tear at our social fabric.

And lead good men to dream of worlds where everyone is so terrorized that they don’t even think of stepping out of the bounds that the (cognitive, branded, networked-rich run) state has set for them.  Which they call 'democratic'

Soma, anyone?