Equality and the Economy
An economy is, at base, the production and distribution of goods and services. You can talk about investment and employment and ownership and trade, but in simplest terms, it is how humans interact to meet their needs. And our present economic system is rapidly becoming untenable. Currently, the vast majority of businesses and capital are owned by a small fraction of the population. This is not a free market. This is not private ownership. This is a nightmare version of socialism, where everything is controlled by a tiny pseudo-government which was never elected and against which citizens have no recourse. Ideally, the system should reward participants for producing and enable distribution to consumers. But we are instead rewarding ownership and manipulation, and enacting barriers to obtaining needs. The benefits of the system are being paid to those who own, while those who do the work find their reward is being steadily whittled away. “Human capital,” is a term that exemplifies the v...