I have a very different view on how societies and economies should be structured. I'd like to talk about the basis of my reasoning.
First, I want to talk about what I see as the typical American concept of wealth, so you can understand where I disagree. The standard reasoning is as follows: You do work, that work creates wealth, and that wealth immediately belongs to you. This view is tempered with a major caveat: you are obligated to pay a reasonable tithe, a tax, to support society.
I do not think that the creation of wealth immediately results in your ownership of that wealth. This view is particularly flawed when we consider that nothing in this world is really completely original. Even if I make a chair from wood, I still have taken that wood from my environment. Ultimately there is a limited amount of wood in the world, and if everyone wanted to make chairs, we would find ourselves short of trees. By making a chair, I am taking the right to make a chair from someone else.
In the modern economy, the concept of creation and ownership are even more tenuous. With regards to creation, no one is a lone actor; we assemble and create companies and markets from that which already exists. Whatever your chosen line of work, it would not be profitable without your interaction with other people, and in that behavior you potentially take resources away from other people.
With regards to ownership, you owe everything to society. The government defends your property rights. Other people assign your creations value, and you store that value in currency and investments which only have meaning in the context of global finance. The idea that ownership is a solitary act is ridiculous.
In light of this, I find extremely dubious the arguments that taxation is theft or that regulation of economic behavior is an abridgment of freedom. I agree that some specific neo-liberal or socialist approaches are probably not effective. This does not justify out-of-hand rejection of all progressivism.
Our economy is deliberately constructed as a game to encourage useful employment, and your income is the points you achieve by playing well. Wealth is given to reward useful economic behavior I do not advocate giving delinquents the same income and lifestyle and productive members of society; clearly, if we did that, no one would be interested in working. Given this, I acknowledge the justification for the game’s existence. However, I don’t see any justification for making the game any more onerous than absolutely necessary.
If we pay people to encourage them to work, why is the desire to work not a guarantee that you can support yourself? In this time of high unemployment, those of us lucky to be employed are surrounded by people who would happily do any work in order to be independent from their parents, their creditors, or welfare. Yet we blame them, and not society, for their inability to win this ridiculous game.
Generally, societies are constructed around a goal. By default, this goal is the ultimate success of the society itself, to the detriment of the people who make it up. This is insane. Totalitarianism can be very successful, but we would hardly consider that success to be a worthy goal. A rights-respecting society would make its goal enabling each citizen to achieve their own goals, not the other way around. Pure capitalism makes the assumption that the only meaningful goal of citizens is economic success. Because economic success becomes the only measure of success, the society ultimately reverts to the trying to manage a single statistic, GDP, ignoring the pains of its citizens.
Economics is a game, a game with winners, losers, and unwilling participants. You may want to play that game, but I don’t. Because of the nature of capitalism, I am forced to play, and I don’t particularly enjoy it. The objective of the society should be to keep the wheels of the economic spinning well enough that everyone -- EVERYONE -- can play the game they want to play.
