"...but what reason is there to think that the government will change things so that the supposedly “correct” amount is produced? There is every reason to think that the government will make matters worse."
Indeed. That is the case throughout history. And doubly so with command economies that steal from the creative or the industrious to give to the inactive.
Only whiners complain about free markets and "inequality". In reality, there is no equality, whatsoever. There are personal goals and desires that motivate us. To para-quote Adam Smith and a little Henry J Kaiser, if all people act through self-motivation for their own benefit, all benefit, because prosperity can be personally obtained by "finding a need and filling it." This model is based on legal and moral brackets placed on behavior, naturally. People who fall outside them are not entrepreneurs or business people; they are crooks.
Every human endeavor is fraught with problems, but we should not judge a free market by captured markets run by oligarchs, elitists, and robber barons.
Everything is based on such wrong-thinking that it's difficult to find where to start. The idea of "property rights" for example, is fallacious, so everything built upon that is fallacious too. Why are property rights fallacious? Because nobody can own land in actuality. The land is for everyone and belongs to all including future generations. Ownership itself is a fallacy because there are always so many people involved in production that no one can really "own" anything, let alone land. However that doesn't mean we can't agree to a system that enables people domain over land for as long as they are alive. Everything would have to be different then and everything built upon it would then work for everyone. The fact that we have poverty at all is a testament to how stupid and insane this system is. A proper system would not produce poverty. Only because money comes into being through debt do we have poverty. When we talk about equality, it is too broad a term and so it is where we conflict unnecessarily with each other (this is built into the language BTW) Equality would make more sense if we referred to it as equality of voice, equality of say, so that anyone can speak their mind and be aired. But as it is, the people with money are the only ones to have a voice through their ownership and domination of the media (although that is changing now with digital technology, thank goodness). I agree it is silly to think that we have to be equal in what we desire and what we "own" because like you said, we are all different and viva for that. The idea of ownership needs a total overhaul if we want to advance beyond crudeness.
"...but what reason is there to think that the government will change things so that the supposedly “correct” amount is produced? There is every reason to think that the government will make matters worse."
Indeed. That is the case throughout history. And doubly so with command economies that steal from the creative or the industrious to give to the inactive.
Only whiners complain about free markets and "inequality". In reality, there is no equality, whatsoever. There are personal goals and desires that motivate us. To para-quote Adam Smith and a little Henry J Kaiser, if all people act through self-motivation for their own benefit, all benefit, because prosperity can be personally obtained by "finding a need and filling it." This model is based on legal and moral brackets placed on behavior, naturally. People who fall outside them are not entrepreneurs or business people; they are crooks.
Every human endeavor is fraught with problems, but we should not judge a free market by captured markets run by oligarchs, elitists, and robber barons.
Everything is based on such wrong-thinking that it's difficult to find where to start. The idea of "property rights" for example, is fallacious, so everything built upon that is fallacious too. Why are property rights fallacious? Because nobody can own land in actuality. The land is for everyone and belongs to all including future generations. Ownership itself is a fallacy because there are always so many people involved in production that no one can really "own" anything, let alone land. However that doesn't mean we can't agree to a system that enables people domain over land for as long as they are alive. Everything would have to be different then and everything built upon it would then work for everyone. The fact that we have poverty at all is a testament to how stupid and insane this system is. A proper system would not produce poverty. Only because money comes into being through debt do we have poverty. When we talk about equality, it is too broad a term and so it is where we conflict unnecessarily with each other (this is built into the language BTW) Equality would make more sense if we referred to it as equality of voice, equality of say, so that anyone can speak their mind and be aired. But as it is, the people with money are the only ones to have a voice through their ownership and domination of the media (although that is changing now with digital technology, thank goodness). I agree it is silly to think that we have to be equal in what we desire and what we "own" because like you said, we are all different and viva for that. The idea of ownership needs a total overhaul if we want to advance beyond crudeness.
What a pile of horse shit. For an alternative view start here https://donfindlay.substack.com/p/creating-a-new-society
https://donfindlay.substack.com/p/the-freedom-of-usership