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Musings on Freedom and Capitalism


W_L

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When some people read Of Pride and Power and wonder, how is this libertarian? Sure, I have private ownership, organic industrial development, and individual choice, but you aren't allowing capitalistic enterprises from forming, i.e. corporations or generational wealth.

That's a choice on my part as I don't think long-term, the concept is good for a free-market. Modern capitalism is an innate weak form of economic theory. 

As the world exists today, prices are rising, land and resources are becoming more scarce, and ultimately society is unable to deal with varying social issues created by unstable conditions, whether it's racism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobia, ethnocentrism, religious intolerance, and so much more. At the heart of everything is flawed economics. 

Let's use a real simple example of this problem: 

An elder in a small town has spent his life working, building a business, and buying land and homes for himself and his family. He wishes to transfer this wealth and legacy to his children, so they can continue what he has built. Sounds good, it's a traditional dream of many people around the world. However, look on the flip side, due to the lack of business opportunities in the small town and housing due to this one family's accumulation of wealth, prices rise and development is stifled as the value of the "held property" isn't in the market. The laws of supply mean that prices will rise as a result of one person's traditional dream and everyone in that small town is far worse off for it. It can be applied to far bigger issues, replacing the elder with corporations or trusts, and extending legacy concepts with traditional ideals like race-based marriages, heteronormative dynamics, religious continuity, and so on.

The heart of the issue with capitalism is the creation of these asset traps, but the common solution with individual taxation is usually insufficient or can cause harm by further weakening individual development as it creates a barrier to entry (more established sellers are big enough to absorb additional costs of managing taxes or hiring people to circumvent them). A better solution would be wholesale taxation based on the seller of goods and services alone, but that only treats the symptoms, not the disease of asset traps and legacy created issues.

Ideally, a society needs to be built based on the merit of individuals at a given point in time. Wealth should not be transferrable beyond basic means. At the heart of it, you need a mechanism to enforce things, because people are selfish and will gravitate to hold property/lands. To create a society where individual contracts, individual choice, and individual merit actions can be rewarded properly, you need to fight this kind of capitalism that traps assets and ideas. A government is a tool for enforcement, not the reason for enforcement, a distinction between socialism and my idea. Though collective groups can exist like guilds in my story, they act as marketplaces for individuals, not as an individual onto themselves as modern corporations do. The goal is a society that runs based on individual competition, where each individual's drive is seeking the highest merit reward based on their contributions without regard to background.

Of course, in my story, transhuman elements are needed to make sure that such a society and government doesn't stray off-course. Eli and Robert are literally living gods due to their abilities, along with a collection of specialized genetically engineered people serving as their administrators on various subjects. 

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