Συντάκτης: Caleb James DeLisle Ημερομηνία: Προς: System undo crew Αντικείμενο: [unSYSTEM] wealth redistribution and the rule of law
I have a hypotheses which has been percolating in the back of
my mind for some time now and I thought now is a good time to
share it.
For all that libertarian systems offer in theory, they have a
distinct problem that when it comes to practice. Unless you
consider Texas a utopia, libertarian utopias don't really exist
and I wanted to study how something which looks so good on paper
manages to fail so completely in practice.
To be ruled by law, as opposed to being ruled by men, means to
me that nobody can just order your execution or imprisonment
without dire consequences. Given wealth and power are
interchangeable, if you live in a country where one person
controls 99% of the wealth of the nation, there is no rule of
law. He can just simply up the government and whatever checks
and balances you put in place he can undo or subvert. Judges,
as impartial as they might like to be, do not live in a vacuum
and challenging a de-facto dictator is not good for one's health.
Therefore, wealth redistribution is not about paying alms to the
poor but about making sure that nobody amasses such power as to
threaten society as a whole.
tl;dr wealth and power are interchangeable, wealth/power pools
up in certain lucky and industrious individuals, without
redistributing it, democracies devolve into oligarchies and then
eventually into monarchy or chaos. The US is in the oligarchy
phase.