This is a classic example of a straw man argument: The only alternative to laissez-faire, Austrian/Chicago-school, supply-side, trickle-down, Friedman/Hayek social darwinism is obviously the end of "Animal Farm". I reject that as absurd. There are no, zero, nada current market economies that are not, to some extent, socialist; it's a continuum. All the original post said was that the current place we're at on that continuum is clearly pretty unfair. Would anyone argue that? As far as where we belong on the continuum, I don't have the answer, but as for where we don't belong, i.e. what is grossly unfair/immoral? That's a subjective question, and I'll give a subjective answer: it's like pornography, I know it when I see it.
As for addressing the proper spot on the continuum, we have a perfect vehicle, (small "d") democracy. That's the government that everyone is bagging on. Is it messy, inefficient, frustrating? Sure, but it beats everything else. My opinion on one of the main reasons it's inefficient: it's big. Really big. Things that are big don't work efficiently, but they can be very, very effective. I came up with that opinion, in answer to another question, during my time in the army; a very large, inefficient, but very effective organization. I have noticed similar circumstances during stints with big green and big yellow.
A pure market economy is a fantasy in exactly the same way that a communist utopia is, namely that human beings are imperfect. All those "rational actor" models fail worse than weather forecasters because human beings don't act rationally in the real world. That's also why the financial markets (and how good you're doing in them) have so little to do with how the actual economy is doing. Here's another thing-all market theory assumes two parties to a transaction. When there's a third party affected by but not involved in a transaction, it's called an externality. They can't be addressed by the market system that created them, so they've also got to be accounted for by...democracy.
Maybe, if we can get our democracy to better reflect the values and choices of the people it's supposed to represent, we could come up with more equitable ways to address market externalities and inherent (and inherited? Oh, god, I hear the phrase "death tax" coming) unfairness/immorality in our economic system. My two ideas for that are:
-Recognize that there are people smarter than you who disagree with you, and they have good, valid reasons for disagreeing with you. This one is harder, but it's the only one that really applies to Treebuzz.
-Make sure that democracy functions like democracy and not like a market economy or corporate governance. Removing the ability of artificial persons to engage in political speech would go a long way here.
So long as liberals seek equal results instead of equal opportunity, they will always have a cause to promote their socialism.
