The problem is the operational definition of "property rights" in civilization as we know it. People give up their right to initiate force and in exchange they get 2 things related to property:
- Gambling the homestead (oldelsrett aka bördsrätt they could have acquired, by their individual force, against other individuals) in hopes of accumulating property beyond that homestead, and
- A subsidy of that excess accumulated property.
I'm sorry the education system did that to you, and I know it's upsetting -- particularly to "libertarians" to think they may have been misled by the Austrian School of Economics, etc., but, yes:
In operation the protection of property rights is financed primarily by taxes on economic activity not on property. Local property taxes are a minute fraction of civilization's infrastructure cost to protect property rights.
Yes, so-called "entitlements" soak up much of those resources, but this merely points to a problem with #1 above:
Most people wouldn't choose to gamble their homestead that way and are therefore genuinely entitled to an annuity of some sort. That the welfare state captured and perverted the meaning of "entitlement" is the real rationale for replacing the welfare state with unconditional basic income.
Although this subsidy of property kicks in the moment one accumulates property beyond that which one could defend against other individuals in a state of nature, it is insignificant for the vast majority of legal persons as their wealth does not greatly exceed their homestead. Note that a "homestead" is best defined by the traditional rationale for bankruptcy protection: Allow a man to keep his house and tools of his trade, such as cultivatable land, horse and plow, etc. so as to permit him to subsist.
However, when you get to something like Google (Alphabet, Inc.) the taxes being paid are a tiny fraction of what would be paid if there were a use fee charged on the liquid value of the stock. Moreover, the network effect enjoyed by Google's scale of clients yields them unearned value that almost certainly could be better managed by any of a number of entities that could afford to buy out Google if Google's market cap was its tax basis. Finally, Google's subsidized network effect is even more socially significant than is Microsoft's vendor lock-in mediating software users, hardware vendors and software vendors. Google's mission statement is the clue:
“...to organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful.”
That Google has become a government subsidized gatekeeper to information is a social function of the most profound importance.
Scott's defense works up to Sudar Pichai as CEO of Google, and even beyond to Larry Page as CEO of Alphabet, Inc. However, that's the limit of Scott's defense. Beyond the CEO of Alphabet, Inc., we're dealing with the Board of Directors as representative of the stockholders -- and that is where the blame lies for this travesty.
I'm not saying the Board of Directors necessarily should be directing the executives to be more socially conscientious regarding James Damore's essay. I am saying, however, that, collectively, the stockholders of Alphabet, Inc. are socially liable if they do not use the subsidy they are given by civilization, to correct the tax base of civilization.
Yes, I know, they won't do so. After trotting out the entire corpus of "economics scholarship" (excluding classical economics like John Stuart Mill, Henry George, etc) and having their ears pinned back, they'll point to their "poor education" regarding political economy as the excuse -- the same poor education that led you to ask, "A subsidy?" However, there is a point when one's receipt of what are, in effect, stolen goods does amount to a "Social Injustice" -- especially when it is on such an epic and socially damaging scale.
Note: Thus far, I haven't even gotten into the "bell curve" issues raised by James Damore.
Passage of "affirmative action" obligated the statistical generalization of groups as groups because they were legislatively constructed entities, the purpose of which was to equalize group "opportunity". This was not intended to guarantee group "outcome". "Outcome" equalization only became implicit public policy due to an assumption that has become central to the Cultural Marxist moral zeitgeist of Western Civilization:
"The potential of different groups is statistically equal."
If that assumption is incorrect, Western Civilization's current moral zeitgeist falls, and with that fall comes a restructuring of moral authority in Western Civilization.
The hysterical Mau-Mauing of of James Damore is all about the threat of such a restructuring of moral authority.
The more money spent, and the more working class white lives sacrificed (and I mean that literally in birth rates as well as life quality if not expectancy) to avoid questioning this assumption, the more its proponents become liable for the damage they've done if that assumption turns out to be wrong. It has now morphed into a psychotic political movement called "Social Justice" that is turning "whites" into an increasingly hated minority.
James Damore's essay's real thought crime is precisely the same as that committed by Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein in their book "The Bell Curve":
It causes people to question this implicit assumption and expose them for the monstrosities they have allowed themselves to become.
This, by the way, is why Sam Harris, in his recent interview of Charles Murray, kept asking Murray the same question even though Murray had answered it: "Why study these group differences at all if it is such a volatile topic?" Harris was hard of listening because, although he did admit he had been a passive part of the monkey-beat of Murray and Herrnstein, he couldn't confront the fact that he had also become a monstrosity in his treatment of working class whites via affirmative action's implicit assumption of "equal potential" of "protected groups".
There is an entire structure of pathology in "affirmative action" governmental policy that _does_ raise the issue of the stockholders being more socially conscientious in their response to "the bell curve".
But that responsibility has been violated by civilization's "Great and Good" long before Google.
