Well, but I think we have to figure out what and whether we can do something about it (inequality), how much, and for what cost (cost in the non-economic sense).
I think the observation that power accumulates in one way or the other, capitalism or not, seems to hold in any society.
Being naive and not an economist, I would still believe that money is a form of distributed trust and thus power. Lots of money means lots of power, in the sense of causing a lot of change (negative as well as positive).
And I do not think that there is necessarily something wrong with that. We all seem to praise the billionaire Elon Musk here on HN for making space flight more efficient. And I think he is a very capable individual who amassed a lot of power/money and is thus able to effect a lot of change. Why should I complain about this?
I would argue that the only things that hurt a society when it comes to accumulation of wealth/power is actually _using it in a detrimental_ sense.
Things such as:
- luxuries
- buying laws in your (corporations) favor
- using a lot of resources (ore, land) inefficiently
The more I think about it, and having recently read another person here on HN mention it, the more I think something that broadly falls under the idea of 'Geolibertarianism' would bring us closer to a more just society. And, no I am not talking about 'solving our problems' here, because I think having problems is inherent to being a human.
Actually taxing the bad effects of money instead of owning/moving/etc. money itself would also solve e.G. the problem on how to deal with the existence crypto-currencies without resorting to draconian measures.
Finally, I think that we as humans tend to shy away from even just criticizing the actual bad effects of power. I think this is as much a problem as the people with power misbehaving in the first place. Most of us, myself included, simply seem to have a very strong 'follow the leader' emotion, and we rather argue about secondary issues than the real problems. Or we invent powerless utopias and start to believe in them (Marxism, Feminism, ...), actually becoming controllable by the malevolent powers.
> Well, but I think we have to figure out what and whether we can do something about it (inequality), how much, and for what cost (cost in the non-economic sense).
Agreed.
> I think the observation that power accumulates in one way or the other, capitalism or not, seems to hold in any society.
Sure. And disease also spreads. Just because we haven't figured out how to inoculate ourselves against power accumulation as a society doesn't mean it's impossible or wrong.
I haven't read Foucault, but I'm pretty sure he answers a lot of your questions.
> I would argue that the only things that hurt a society when it comes to accumulation of wealth/power is actually _using it in a detrimental_ sense.
Detrimental according to who? Everyone, everyone agrees that accumulation of wealth/power hurts society when it is used in a detrimental sense. That's the definition of the word "detrimental". Classical liberalism was founded on understanding that this statement means nothing.
Why are luxuries detrimental? Why is crony capitalism detrimental? Why is inefficiency detrimental? These are questions that you haven't answered, because your proposal is arbitrary. Liberalism, classical or not, holds up universalism as an ideal because arbitrary measures are problematic, not least because they remain unreasoned from agreed principles but more importantly because they're ultimately elitist. Don't get me wrong: I'm not disagreeing that they're detrimental; I'm saying that you're identifying symptoms.
And I suspect the reason is this:
You see societal solutions in economic, not political, terms. And that's a problem, because people are not defined in economic terms. It's not a surprise in a place like HN; most of us are engineers and we like quantifiable problems and answers. A politician is scary, because a politician plays with forces we don't have the same grasp on.
My advice? If you want to understand power, stop learning about money. Yes, they're strongly correlated, but you're never going to get a racist to stop beating up differently colored people by offering them a million dollars.
I think the observation that power accumulates in one way or the other, capitalism or not, seems to hold in any society.
Being naive and not an economist, I would still believe that money is a form of distributed trust and thus power. Lots of money means lots of power, in the sense of causing a lot of change (negative as well as positive).
And I do not think that there is necessarily something wrong with that. We all seem to praise the billionaire Elon Musk here on HN for making space flight more efficient. And I think he is a very capable individual who amassed a lot of power/money and is thus able to effect a lot of change. Why should I complain about this?
I would argue that the only things that hurt a society when it comes to accumulation of wealth/power is actually _using it in a detrimental_ sense.
Things such as: - luxuries - buying laws in your (corporations) favor - using a lot of resources (ore, land) inefficiently
The more I think about it, and having recently read another person here on HN mention it, the more I think something that broadly falls under the idea of 'Geolibertarianism' would bring us closer to a more just society. And, no I am not talking about 'solving our problems' here, because I think having problems is inherent to being a human.
Actually taxing the bad effects of money instead of owning/moving/etc. money itself would also solve e.G. the problem on how to deal with the existence crypto-currencies without resorting to draconian measures.
Finally, I think that we as humans tend to shy away from even just criticizing the actual bad effects of power. I think this is as much a problem as the people with power misbehaving in the first place. Most of us, myself included, simply seem to have a very strong 'follow the leader' emotion, and we rather argue about secondary issues than the real problems. Or we invent powerless utopias and start to believe in them (Marxism, Feminism, ...), actually becoming controllable by the malevolent powers.
But maybe I am just naive.
*edit: typo(s)