So many important insights here such as... "Markets optimize for profit, not well-being". My favorite writers and books are those that change the way I see the world. Rarely have I found a writer who so consistently does that while unraveling the tangled mess that is our current political process. Thank you, sir.
When gold and silver were discovered near Virginia City, Nevada in the 1860s the fractured rock in the mountain required shoring with timber.
Billions of board feet of virgin forests were felled, floated across Lake Tahoe, elevated up a steam incline, flumed to Washoe, milled to provide square-set timbering needed deep down in the hot, unventilated Comstock, the tomb of the Sierra forests.
All for a relatively small amount of shiny metal some people declared "valuable". These people could calculate the monetary cost of nearly everything and knew the value of absolutely nothing.
Worst of all, a government that claims to seek efficiency, but uses “efficiency” as a charade to deprive the disadvantaged of the constitutionally mandated charitable assistance implicit in the obligation to "promote the general welfare".
Programs of social assistance, the social safety net, are attacked by our government as rife with waste, fraud and abuse. If true, the obvious answer is to root out the existing waste, fraud and abuse that has been identified. But, no, the tactic now witnessed is to defund the entire program due to its claimed imperfections and therefore equally penalize those legitimately in need of the intended assistance and those benefiting wrongly.
There can be only one clear answer to this seemingly mindless approach – a dedication to the reallocation of wealth from those with little, to those with more than enough, who are effectively buying government influence to bend the system to their wishes.
We witness simple greed disguised as the quest for efficiency, with no public voice pointing out the difference.
"Fair share" is tough to define. I recall reading that the top 10% of earners pay 70% of all income taxes. However the top 10% also control about 70% of all family wealth, so it is the misfortune of wealth that creates this tax burden.
Fair share might best be considered a relative term. From 1940 to 1980 the top income tax rate for the highest levels of income earned in the US was never below 70%. This is apparently a period referred to when America was Great, for which MAGA wishes to return. Although not great for everyone, clearly a period of great economic expansion in the US. Today the top rate is 37%.
On that relative basis the most wealthy in the US are today getting quite a tax discount from the good times of the past. Additionally, written into the tax code in recent times are numerous tax provisions that only apply to the wealthy, which further shelter income from the highest rates.
One notable provision which I can't resist explaining is called "carried interest". It has nothing to do with interest as commonly understood. This provision, which has existed now for decades, allows billionaire hedge fund managers to claim capital gains tax rates on the fees they receive, based on the capital gains earned by their clients. This widely acknowledged but persistent abuse cuts their tax rate to 20% on earned income, as they "carry" over the nature of the income earned by their clients. This is a significant tax saving as many millions are routinely earned annually by these fund managers.
Excellent post. Our democracy and in general, capitalism is broken in America. The anger on both sides demonstrates that that the systems we rely on aren’t working for so many people. Both need to be redesigned with limits for the good of all stakeholders. New leadership needs to provide a vision for a new way forward.
James, you’ve put together an eloquent critique of market economies. But let’s untangle the poetry from the reality.
Yes, efficiency can be taken too far. No serious free-market advocate wants to see human dignity reduced to quarterly spreadsheets. That is why we have safety nets, why we pass environmental laws, and why communities rally to care for the vulnerable. It is also why the United States with all its warts remains the most charitable nation on earth, with private giving alone surpassing the entire GDP of some countries. That does not happen in spite of free markets. It happens because prosperity gives people the means to be generous.
But your argument pushes much further. You are not just critiquing corporate excess. You are questioning the very legitimacy of private property and market exchange. That is where you lose most Americans. Property rights and voluntary trade are not some sinister cultural invention. They are time-tested systems that lift people out of poverty and give them a stake in their communities. The alternative — handing control to centralized bureaucracies — has been tried, and it produced bread lines, environmental catastrophes, and regimes that crushed dissent.
You also overlook that “public goods” you celebrate — schools, hospitals, infrastructure — are overwhelmingly funded by taxes generated from private enterprise. Without a vibrant market, there is no wealth to redistribute, no revenue to pay for national parks, no thriving middle class to buy homes or support charities.
As for healthcare, education, elder care sure, there are flaws. Big ones. But much of the dysfunction comes from a tangled mess of regulations, crony partnerships, and perverse incentives that have very little to do with pure competition. Insurance markets rigged by lobbyists, public schools strangled by administrative bloat, and hospitals forced to navigate mountains of federal mandates are hardly examples of free market failures. They are often the failures of government capture and bad policy.
You rightly point out that not everything that matters can be priced. Love, compassion, moral duty these cannot be commodified. But that does not mean markets are the enemy. Markets allow families to flourish by keeping food on the table. They empower workers to move where opportunity is greatest. They encourage innovation that has doubled life expectancy and put a supercomputer in every pocket.
So yes, we need laws that prevent pollution, curb monopolies, and protect the vulnerable. But abandoning market logic wholesale in favor of nebulous “care communities” would turn every critical resource into a political football, decided by bureaucrats instead of by people freely pursuing their own goals.
In the end, the question is not whether markets serve humanity. It is whether we have the moral and civic backbone to make sure they do. It is simply recognizing that free people exchanging freely, under fair laws, is still the best engine for widespread human flourishing ever devised.
There is a difference between designing for resilience and designing for efficiency. Markets often privilege designing for efficiency at the cost of resilience, which is why the average life of businesses is quite short. Designing for resilience requires consideration of longer time horizons and greater attention to symbiosis with context. Living systems evolve toward resilience.
So many important insights here such as... "Markets optimize for profit, not well-being". My favorite writers and books are those that change the way I see the world. Rarely have I found a writer who so consistently does that while unraveling the tangled mess that is our current political process. Thank you, sir.
When gold and silver were discovered near Virginia City, Nevada in the 1860s the fractured rock in the mountain required shoring with timber.
Billions of board feet of virgin forests were felled, floated across Lake Tahoe, elevated up a steam incline, flumed to Washoe, milled to provide square-set timbering needed deep down in the hot, unventilated Comstock, the tomb of the Sierra forests.
All for a relatively small amount of shiny metal some people declared "valuable". These people could calculate the monetary cost of nearly everything and knew the value of absolutely nothing.
Worst of all, a government that claims to seek efficiency, but uses “efficiency” as a charade to deprive the disadvantaged of the constitutionally mandated charitable assistance implicit in the obligation to "promote the general welfare".
Programs of social assistance, the social safety net, are attacked by our government as rife with waste, fraud and abuse. If true, the obvious answer is to root out the existing waste, fraud and abuse that has been identified. But, no, the tactic now witnessed is to defund the entire program due to its claimed imperfections and therefore equally penalize those legitimately in need of the intended assistance and those benefiting wrongly.
There can be only one clear answer to this seemingly mindless approach – a dedication to the reallocation of wealth from those with little, to those with more than enough, who are effectively buying government influence to bend the system to their wishes.
We witness simple greed disguised as the quest for efficiency, with no public voice pointing out the difference.
Tax the rich, make them pay their fair share, would be a good start.
"Fair share" is tough to define. I recall reading that the top 10% of earners pay 70% of all income taxes. However the top 10% also control about 70% of all family wealth, so it is the misfortune of wealth that creates this tax burden.
Fair share might best be considered a relative term. From 1940 to 1980 the top income tax rate for the highest levels of income earned in the US was never below 70%. This is apparently a period referred to when America was Great, for which MAGA wishes to return. Although not great for everyone, clearly a period of great economic expansion in the US. Today the top rate is 37%.
On that relative basis the most wealthy in the US are today getting quite a tax discount from the good times of the past. Additionally, written into the tax code in recent times are numerous tax provisions that only apply to the wealthy, which further shelter income from the highest rates.
One notable provision which I can't resist explaining is called "carried interest". It has nothing to do with interest as commonly understood. This provision, which has existed now for decades, allows billionaire hedge fund managers to claim capital gains tax rates on the fees they receive, based on the capital gains earned by their clients. This widely acknowledged but persistent abuse cuts their tax rate to 20% on earned income, as they "carry" over the nature of the income earned by their clients. This is a significant tax saving as many millions are routinely earned annually by these fund managers.
Money In America
Money In America: that’s how we keep score.
No matter how much we get, we want more
Even though we may not know what we want it for.
Money In America: that’s how we keep score.
The difference between what I want and what I need
Seems like the very definition of my greed.
How much of the many, many things that I buy
I think I ”really need to have” because I bought a lie?
Money In America: that’s how we keep score.
No matter how much we get, we want more, more, more.
Even though we may not know what we want it for.
Money In America: that’s how we keep score.
Where wealth is your worth, you are what you possess -
What a place of unchecked wants and unhappiness!
Life measured by the SQ FT of your primary residence
With so many homeless doesn’t make much sense.
Money in America…
Disappointment comes when our wants get denied.
If we control desire, we will be more satisfied.
Tolstoy speaks of one man’s loss because of his greed
In his tale asking “How much land does one man need?”
“His servant picked up a spade and dug a grave, long enough for Pahom to lie in-
And buried him in it. Six feet from his head to his heels was all he needed.”
“Money, I’m tellin’ you, son – that’s how we keep score.
You go to work; you got enough? Then work more, more, more!
How else would we know we’re better than the poor?”
Excellent post. Our democracy and in general, capitalism is broken in America. The anger on both sides demonstrates that that the systems we rely on aren’t working for so many people. Both need to be redesigned with limits for the good of all stakeholders. New leadership needs to provide a vision for a new way forward.
James, you’ve put together an eloquent critique of market economies. But let’s untangle the poetry from the reality.
Yes, efficiency can be taken too far. No serious free-market advocate wants to see human dignity reduced to quarterly spreadsheets. That is why we have safety nets, why we pass environmental laws, and why communities rally to care for the vulnerable. It is also why the United States with all its warts remains the most charitable nation on earth, with private giving alone surpassing the entire GDP of some countries. That does not happen in spite of free markets. It happens because prosperity gives people the means to be generous.
But your argument pushes much further. You are not just critiquing corporate excess. You are questioning the very legitimacy of private property and market exchange. That is where you lose most Americans. Property rights and voluntary trade are not some sinister cultural invention. They are time-tested systems that lift people out of poverty and give them a stake in their communities. The alternative — handing control to centralized bureaucracies — has been tried, and it produced bread lines, environmental catastrophes, and regimes that crushed dissent.
You also overlook that “public goods” you celebrate — schools, hospitals, infrastructure — are overwhelmingly funded by taxes generated from private enterprise. Without a vibrant market, there is no wealth to redistribute, no revenue to pay for national parks, no thriving middle class to buy homes or support charities.
As for healthcare, education, elder care sure, there are flaws. Big ones. But much of the dysfunction comes from a tangled mess of regulations, crony partnerships, and perverse incentives that have very little to do with pure competition. Insurance markets rigged by lobbyists, public schools strangled by administrative bloat, and hospitals forced to navigate mountains of federal mandates are hardly examples of free market failures. They are often the failures of government capture and bad policy.
You rightly point out that not everything that matters can be priced. Love, compassion, moral duty these cannot be commodified. But that does not mean markets are the enemy. Markets allow families to flourish by keeping food on the table. They empower workers to move where opportunity is greatest. They encourage innovation that has doubled life expectancy and put a supercomputer in every pocket.
So yes, we need laws that prevent pollution, curb monopolies, and protect the vulnerable. But abandoning market logic wholesale in favor of nebulous “care communities” would turn every critical resource into a political football, decided by bureaucrats instead of by people freely pursuing their own goals.
In the end, the question is not whether markets serve humanity. It is whether we have the moral and civic backbone to make sure they do. It is simply recognizing that free people exchanging freely, under fair laws, is still the best engine for widespread human flourishing ever devised.
Always remember: The truth is not hate speech.
There is a difference between designing for resilience and designing for efficiency. Markets often privilege designing for efficiency at the cost of resilience, which is why the average life of businesses is quite short. Designing for resilience requires consideration of longer time horizons and greater attention to symbiosis with context. Living systems evolve toward resilience.