Good energy policy doesn't need to be about using less energy, provided we can produce it in renewable ways. That may mean that energy needs to cost more, but it doesn't mean we need to cut back.
Energy companies right now don't want to produce energy in renewable ways. They don't like wind, they don't like solar, and they don't like any kind of hydroelectric other than dams. Current suggestions range from the feel-good idea of purchasing voluntary certificates to supposedly offset an individual's carbon footprint, to capping carbon emissions and creating a market for carbon credits. Both have issues.
There is one simple thing we could do. Deregulate, with a twist.
Right now, in most markets, residents have only two choices: purchase their power from a single approved utility company, or live off the grid. Deregulation doesn't provide the competition needed to create a more friendly market situation. Utility companies just don't seem to compete (I'd like to see any examples to the contrary).
Instead of simply stepping back from regulation, the state needs to change the way it regulates. We need to exercise eminent domain over the power lines, the grid, and take over that intermediary role: the bridge between the consumer and the producer. The state has a decent track record of simply maintaining infrastructure, and we don't need to put it into any actual business role.
So what does the state do with this newly public grid? Simple: it dictates at what price it will purchase power, and at what price it will sell power.
For real progress on our energy production, that production needs to be distributed. Small producers need to be included, and producers need to be free to innovate. Right now, the producers, a small number of them, have proven they can make money from dirty technology, and they are reluctant to abandon their proven method for one that, while it will undoubtedly be better for the world, may not be better for their investors. We need to cut the ties that keep those companies the only ones producing power. If the government owns the power lines, it can say that it will buy solar energy at one rate, wind at another, hydroelectric at two more rates depending on the ecological impact of the specific facility, clean coal at another, dirty coal at yet another, and nuclear, if at all, at a final rate. All of this power can be sold to the consumer at one rate. The government can, if it has to, take a loss and fund the difference out of taxes.
Yes, these differential rates constitute subsidies, tinkering with purely market forces. That's okay. We're allowed to say that things that don't end up in an accountant's report still have value. That is not, however, a decision we can expect a company to make. This plan would open up the system to all the small and experimental and less profitable producers that we need. Some things just shouldn't be left to purely business forces.
30.7.07
25.7.07
Children's Health Insurance
Headlines like this miss the point.
Health insurance for poor kids: a good thing.
Taxing tobacco products to pay for it: not a bad idea.
Taxing cigars at $10 per cigar: excessive.
They ought to be proposing to tax cigarettes at a higher rate than cigars, or both at the same rate. The way the suggestion is, it looks like they're just looking to beat up on the less popular product.
Health insurance for poor kids: a good thing.
Taxing tobacco products to pay for it: not a bad idea.
Taxing cigars at $10 per cigar: excessive.
They ought to be proposing to tax cigarettes at a higher rate than cigars, or both at the same rate. The way the suggestion is, it looks like they're just looking to beat up on the less popular product.
24.7.07
A Law to be Proposed
We cherish our freedoms, and generally believe that the world would be a better place if more people had similar freedoms. We harbor fears that terrorists target us because they somehow hate our freedoms, rather than the more natural assumption that they might in fact hate us, or the more logical assumption that they would wish to use our fear of violent death to push us towards some specific action.
Yet we also tend to be unwilling to wage war to force some other group to adopt our freedoms. This is sensible; it seems that it would be difficult to force freedom upon someone. However, we do have a very good tool at our disposal.
That tool is money. All we need do is threaten to restrict trade with any country that does not protect basic freedoms by law, and actually enforces those laws, and countries will, after a bit of consideration, start doing so.
Not all, of course, and not immediately, and that's the first problem. Given much of a time lag in compliance where we have to stop trading with any country, and given any refusal to comply by a major trading partner, we would have people from both of our major political parties objecting. Democrats would claim that we were punishing people living under repressive regimes for the actions of their governments, and both Democrats and Republicans would claim that this was bad for the American economy.
There's only one response to that, and it wouldn't sit well with either group: We do what we have to do. We can't force anyone to accept our values, but should we facilitate their rejection of our values? Should we actually seek to benefit from their lack of those freedoms we hold dear?
The second problem is more basic: which rights do we require? We can't, shouldn't, and won't require that anyone adopt all of American law, so what do we demand? What freedoms do we really hold dear? Freedom of Speech is obviously basic, as is Freedom of Religion. Freedom of the Press is a basic extension of Freedom of Speech, as are both Freedom of Assembly and the Right to Petition. That takes care of the 1st Amendment. I would argue that most of the rest of all possible rights should be left to the other countries to work out for themselves, once they have the basic tools to actually discuss such things openly. Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech are absolutely required.
Since we're using trade as our leverage, it seems logical to include requirements that trade actually be fair. That is, we should require that the Freedom of Assembly include the right to unionize, and we should require that at the very least workers not be forced to work for poverty wages in dangerous conditions.
Democracy is not a requirement, but it is a likely result.
China and Saudi Arabia stand in our way.
China's government has no respect for the Freedom of Speech, and uses the governmental power that creates to keep its status as a source of cheap labor. Other countries are similar in this, but China can be emblematic of this issue. We can ignore it, and continue to talk about "Free Trade" in a context that is distinctly un-free, or we can do something about it, and short of war, trade is our only tool that can be relied on.
Saudi Arabia is emblematic of our problem with oil. Many of the countries that supply us with oil have little or no meaningful Freedom of Religion, and sometimes lack other important freedoms as well, yet we fund these repressive governments. We cannot continue to do that and claim that we support freedom.
We need to stand up to these two countries, and all the others like them. We need to stop betraying our ideals for cheaper pants and cheaper gas. Economic freedom, that thing that seems to be at the center of Republican policy, is not the foundation of all other freedoms; other freedoms support economic freedom.
This law is needed to clarify to goals of our foreign policy, but I doubt anyone has even thought of proposing it, and if someone did, it wouldn't pass. And, of course, President Bush would veto it.
Yet we also tend to be unwilling to wage war to force some other group to adopt our freedoms. This is sensible; it seems that it would be difficult to force freedom upon someone. However, we do have a very good tool at our disposal.
That tool is money. All we need do is threaten to restrict trade with any country that does not protect basic freedoms by law, and actually enforces those laws, and countries will, after a bit of consideration, start doing so.
Not all, of course, and not immediately, and that's the first problem. Given much of a time lag in compliance where we have to stop trading with any country, and given any refusal to comply by a major trading partner, we would have people from both of our major political parties objecting. Democrats would claim that we were punishing people living under repressive regimes for the actions of their governments, and both Democrats and Republicans would claim that this was bad for the American economy.
There's only one response to that, and it wouldn't sit well with either group: We do what we have to do. We can't force anyone to accept our values, but should we facilitate their rejection of our values? Should we actually seek to benefit from their lack of those freedoms we hold dear?
The second problem is more basic: which rights do we require? We can't, shouldn't, and won't require that anyone adopt all of American law, so what do we demand? What freedoms do we really hold dear? Freedom of Speech is obviously basic, as is Freedom of Religion. Freedom of the Press is a basic extension of Freedom of Speech, as are both Freedom of Assembly and the Right to Petition. That takes care of the 1st Amendment. I would argue that most of the rest of all possible rights should be left to the other countries to work out for themselves, once they have the basic tools to actually discuss such things openly. Freedom of Religion and Freedom of Speech are absolutely required.
Since we're using trade as our leverage, it seems logical to include requirements that trade actually be fair. That is, we should require that the Freedom of Assembly include the right to unionize, and we should require that at the very least workers not be forced to work for poverty wages in dangerous conditions.
Democracy is not a requirement, but it is a likely result.
China and Saudi Arabia stand in our way.
China's government has no respect for the Freedom of Speech, and uses the governmental power that creates to keep its status as a source of cheap labor. Other countries are similar in this, but China can be emblematic of this issue. We can ignore it, and continue to talk about "Free Trade" in a context that is distinctly un-free, or we can do something about it, and short of war, trade is our only tool that can be relied on.
Saudi Arabia is emblematic of our problem with oil. Many of the countries that supply us with oil have little or no meaningful Freedom of Religion, and sometimes lack other important freedoms as well, yet we fund these repressive governments. We cannot continue to do that and claim that we support freedom.
We need to stand up to these two countries, and all the others like them. We need to stop betraying our ideals for cheaper pants and cheaper gas. Economic freedom, that thing that seems to be at the center of Republican policy, is not the foundation of all other freedoms; other freedoms support economic freedom.
This law is needed to clarify to goals of our foreign policy, but I doubt anyone has even thought of proposing it, and if someone did, it wouldn't pass. And, of course, President Bush would veto it.
23.5.07
8.2.07
Taxation, part 1
We have a government, and we want it to do things for us, so we need to give it money to accomplish whatever goals we assign to it. Where should that money come from?
Currently, our answer is the income tax. Before exposing the income tax as a farce or endorsing an alternative, I will attempt to outline the various paths money can take through our economy so that we may easily identify the best way to apply a tax to fund government activity.
First, money comes from a mint. Money is not itself a thing of value, it is just exchanged for things of value, goods and services. Through the medium of various banks, this money enters the economy. This step is only important for the purpose of pointing out that money only represents potential wealth.
Lets begin our consideration with a person who does some work in exchange for wages. These wages are paid in the form of money. It is unimportant what that work was, be it construction work or investment banking, so long as it is paid for with money. From there, this person has four options. He can 1) spend the money on some good or service, 2) save the money in some financial institution, 3) invest the money, or 4) keep the money.
If the money is spent (1), then it is either spent on 1) necessities, or 2) luxuries. Either way, someone else receives money for a good or service that was produced via work. Though we can easily see a reason to treat these differently, for the purposes of the economy, they function almost identically, with the exception that demand for necessities is more stable than for luxuries, so we will label them the same.
That spent money (1) is handed over to either 1) an individual or 2) a company.
If the money is handed over to an individual (1.1) then we return to our original four options. At this point, it is useful to understand that a company is not the same as a person. A company is a financial intermediary; it does no actual work and consumes no goods or services, but only facilitates the interaction between one person or group of persons and another. It holds money to pay for the production of a good or service and collects it when that good or service is sold. It also collects money from investors, who are actual people or groups of people, to invest in creating a greater capacity to produce goods or services, and pays out profits back to those investors. Therefore, if the money is handed over to a company (1.2) the company has only two options, although one of those can play out in a variety of ways. The company, when receiving money, can 1) pay wages or repay investors, or 2) purchase goods or services. If the company pays out the money (1.2.1), either to workers or investors, whoever receives the money has our original four options. If the company instead purchases goods or services (1.2.2), whether those are materials the workers need in order to produce goods or services, or improvements to the company's capacity to support the production of goods or services, then we return to our second step, with the money being either paid to an individual or another company.
If our original money is saved (2), then it ends up in the hands of a financial intermediary, a bank. The bank only has two real options. To ensure a return on the money left in its hands, the bank either 1) lends it to a person or 2) lends it to a company. Lending it to a person (2.1) is a service, and the interest paid on that loan can be considered the price paid for that service. Lending the money to a company (2.2) is an investment, which places the bank as the intermediary between the company receiving the investment and the original holder of the money. The bank receives a return on that investment and pays a small interest rate to the individual who deposited the money, and pays the rest in combination to its employees and its own investors, since it is itself a company. All three of those results revert back to the original array of four options.
If the money is invested (3), the result is that the money is either 1) lost, totally or partially, or 2) gotten back with an increase. If the money was lost (3.1), someone got it, they just failed to return the expected increase in the potential supply of goods or services in the economy. Investors in companies assume this risk because they expect to make more than they lose. This is a reasonable assumption, so long as the total economy, the supply of goods and services, continues to grow. Companies cannot starve. They pay their employees and insulate them from some of the risk of producing a good or service. If no one buys whatever was produced, the employees do not immediately starve, they just have to look for another job when their previous employer, the unlucky company, dissolves. Neither can companies become rich. They cannot consume anything, so wealth is of no use to them. If they have extra money then we're back to what a company can do with money (1.2.1 or 1.2.2), which basically amounts to giving it away to someone else, a real person, who has our original options. This is the situation when our investor gets his money back with an increase (3.2); he again has to decide what to do with his money.
If the original holder of this money decides to keep it (4), then we're at a dead end. That money does nothing at all, and at every moment represents a decision between our first four options. This is the worst situation from both the perspective of the individual, he could be getting at least a small return on it from a bank or wealth, goods or services, from an individual or company, and from the perspective of the economy, which does not receive the benefit of this added exchange.
Or, to put it another way:
-I) Spend the money, on either necessities or luxuries
---A) Given to an individual
-----1) Start over
---B) Given to a company
-----1) Pay employee wages
-------a) Start over
-----2) Repay investors
-------a) Start over
-----3) Purchase goods or services from outside the company
-------a) Purchase from and individual, start over
-------b) Purchase from another company, return to B
-II) Save the money, money given to a bank
---A) Bank lends to an individual
-----1) Start over
---B) Bank invests in a company
-----1) Return to IB
-Note: A bank is itself a company, so any profits can be treated as from IB. Returns from a bank, in the form of capital plus interest, are money, and we start over.
-III) Invest the money
---A) Money lost, either totally or partially
-----1) A company received the money, but failed to return the expected output
-------a) Return to IB
---B) Money gained
-----1) Start over
-IV) Keep the money
---A) Start over So there we have a very basic outline of the economy.
Currently, our answer is the income tax. Before exposing the income tax as a farce or endorsing an alternative, I will attempt to outline the various paths money can take through our economy so that we may easily identify the best way to apply a tax to fund government activity.
First, money comes from a mint. Money is not itself a thing of value, it is just exchanged for things of value, goods and services. Through the medium of various banks, this money enters the economy. This step is only important for the purpose of pointing out that money only represents potential wealth.
Lets begin our consideration with a person who does some work in exchange for wages. These wages are paid in the form of money. It is unimportant what that work was, be it construction work or investment banking, so long as it is paid for with money. From there, this person has four options. He can 1) spend the money on some good or service, 2) save the money in some financial institution, 3) invest the money, or 4) keep the money.
If the money is spent (1), then it is either spent on 1) necessities, or 2) luxuries. Either way, someone else receives money for a good or service that was produced via work. Though we can easily see a reason to treat these differently, for the purposes of the economy, they function almost identically, with the exception that demand for necessities is more stable than for luxuries, so we will label them the same.
That spent money (1) is handed over to either 1) an individual or 2) a company.
If the money is handed over to an individual (1.1) then we return to our original four options. At this point, it is useful to understand that a company is not the same as a person. A company is a financial intermediary; it does no actual work and consumes no goods or services, but only facilitates the interaction between one person or group of persons and another. It holds money to pay for the production of a good or service and collects it when that good or service is sold. It also collects money from investors, who are actual people or groups of people, to invest in creating a greater capacity to produce goods or services, and pays out profits back to those investors. Therefore, if the money is handed over to a company (1.2) the company has only two options, although one of those can play out in a variety of ways. The company, when receiving money, can 1) pay wages or repay investors, or 2) purchase goods or services. If the company pays out the money (1.2.1), either to workers or investors, whoever receives the money has our original four options. If the company instead purchases goods or services (1.2.2), whether those are materials the workers need in order to produce goods or services, or improvements to the company's capacity to support the production of goods or services, then we return to our second step, with the money being either paid to an individual or another company.
If our original money is saved (2), then it ends up in the hands of a financial intermediary, a bank. The bank only has two real options. To ensure a return on the money left in its hands, the bank either 1) lends it to a person or 2) lends it to a company. Lending it to a person (2.1) is a service, and the interest paid on that loan can be considered the price paid for that service. Lending the money to a company (2.2) is an investment, which places the bank as the intermediary between the company receiving the investment and the original holder of the money. The bank receives a return on that investment and pays a small interest rate to the individual who deposited the money, and pays the rest in combination to its employees and its own investors, since it is itself a company. All three of those results revert back to the original array of four options.
If the money is invested (3), the result is that the money is either 1) lost, totally or partially, or 2) gotten back with an increase. If the money was lost (3.1), someone got it, they just failed to return the expected increase in the potential supply of goods or services in the economy. Investors in companies assume this risk because they expect to make more than they lose. This is a reasonable assumption, so long as the total economy, the supply of goods and services, continues to grow. Companies cannot starve. They pay their employees and insulate them from some of the risk of producing a good or service. If no one buys whatever was produced, the employees do not immediately starve, they just have to look for another job when their previous employer, the unlucky company, dissolves. Neither can companies become rich. They cannot consume anything, so wealth is of no use to them. If they have extra money then we're back to what a company can do with money (1.2.1 or 1.2.2), which basically amounts to giving it away to someone else, a real person, who has our original options. This is the situation when our investor gets his money back with an increase (3.2); he again has to decide what to do with his money.
If the original holder of this money decides to keep it (4), then we're at a dead end. That money does nothing at all, and at every moment represents a decision between our first four options. This is the worst situation from both the perspective of the individual, he could be getting at least a small return on it from a bank or wealth, goods or services, from an individual or company, and from the perspective of the economy, which does not receive the benefit of this added exchange.
Or, to put it another way:
-I) Spend the money, on either necessities or luxuries
---A) Given to an individual
-----1) Start over
---B) Given to a company
-----1) Pay employee wages
-------a) Start over
-----2) Repay investors
-------a) Start over
-----3) Purchase goods or services from outside the company
-------a) Purchase from and individual, start over
-------b) Purchase from another company, return to B
-II) Save the money, money given to a bank
---A) Bank lends to an individual
-----1) Start over
---B) Bank invests in a company
-----1) Return to IB
-Note: A bank is itself a company, so any profits can be treated as from IB. Returns from a bank, in the form of capital plus interest, are money, and we start over.
-III) Invest the money
---A) Money lost, either totally or partially
-----1) A company received the money, but failed to return the expected output
-------a) Return to IB
---B) Money gained
-----1) Start over
-IV) Keep the money
---A) Start over So there we have a very basic outline of the economy.
30.1.07
Freedom of Religion and School Vouchers
Silly separation of church and state.
More precisely, silly people who claim to support the separation of church and state. First off, the phrase never appears in the constitution, though people like to find the concept there. The constitution does grant religious freedom, which has the effect of limiting what religiously oriented actions the government can take, and that's a good thing. But it does not mean that the government can't have an interest in anything that anyone considers a religious issue, just that that can never be the sole rationale for a government action. For example, the government can ban abortion without running afoul of the 1st amendment, but only by determining that fetuses have rights, not by stating that it knows that a soul is given at conception.
The abortion issue seems likely to sort itself out just now, although it will take a while. Less likely to sort itself out is the issue of the religious rights of school children and their families. "But how are those threatened?" you might ask. I wouldn’t offer the question if I didn’t intend to answer it.
Let's start with the concept of religion. Religion cannot be limited to simply a church structure with clearly delineated beliefs and practices. Religion is much more inclusive than that. Atheism is a religion, or more accurately a set of related religions. Religion is any set of beliefs regarding the purpose and meaning of life, the definition and sources of truth, and the nature of reality, possibly including a clear judgment on the supernatural but maybe not. In this sense, everyone has a religion, and therefore everyone has religious rights to protect, and not just from unfair subjection to another's beliefs. This is an important definition because it makes it clear that freedom of religion is never freedom from religion, since no one is ever nonreligious. Everyone has a right to religious expression, and everyone has a religion to express.
There are two main places in our society where the church state issue comes up most frequently: government and schools. We get upset when a government official gives as a reason for doing something their religious beliefs, and we say something along the lines of "Well, he can't just force his beliefs on everyone else," as if his reason is more important than the action. It isn't. First off, the action is what counts, what affects the rest of society. His reason explains to the rest of us why he might take a particular action and what his goals for that action are, but the action is still the point. Second, as stated above, everyone has religious beliefs, and by the definition used above those beliefs will always influence every decision a person makes. Always. We elected people based on what actions we think they'll take, and we based that judgment on the beliefs they espoused. Well, we shouldn't be surprised when they actually act on the beliefs we chose them for (the whole money and lying politician issue aside). This is annoying to hear in public discourse as it is clearly not a well considered opinion, but we can ignore it and move past it, and it would never stand up in court anyway.
More problematic is the issue of schooling. There are two basic issues here: should schools be nonreligious, and can schools be nonreligious? The answer to both questions is no, but we'll get there. For the first question we have to decide is what schools we're talking about. Some people have argued that private schools should not be allowed, but they were defeated in the Supreme Court long ago, and not too many people care to revisit the issue. I think the majority of people agree that private schools have every right to be religiously partisan. Good, now on to public schools. We have decided that it benefits society greatly to have a large population of people with at least a basic education, so we publicly fund schools. This public funding becomes an issue every time someone wants to start the school day with prayer, and occasionally when a valedictorian wants to thank the God of their choice in a graduation speech. The argument is that to allow religion to enter into any aspect of public education is to trample the rights of the tax payers, who don't get a choice about what they fund and shouldn't be forced to fund religious activities with which they disagree. Fair enough, the argument is rational and honest. The argument does, however, favor the rights of some over the rights of others, at least in the case of the valedictorian's speech, although I think the valedictorian would be highly likely to win that case in court. Rights aside, what about the quality of the education provided? Is an education devoid of any values, not just moral but also intellectual, of any value whatsoever? And it would have to be devoid of intellectual value, since religion is the ultimate source of any determination of what constitutes a valid source of truth. Without a determination that experience constitutes truth, science means nothing. Without a decision to believe written sources, history means nothing. Math requires a reliance on logic, and literature is an open debate anyway. Education is, and should be, filled with this sort of existential discussion, and this is exactly the sort of discussion that cannot be had in a nonreligious environment. For this reason alone all education should be religious, even if that religion ends up being materialist atheism.
Then there's the consideration of the rights of the parents to instill their religious values in their children, which tends not to be successful when the people they are trusting for the construction of their understanding of reality are not holding the same basic suppositions about the world. And the rights of children to possess and express sincere religious beliefs, which properly should come up in an educational setting but would be highly disruptive in a nonreligious educational setting. Both of these rights are fully protected by the phrase "or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," but discarded by the current interpretation of "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion." So, no, schooling should not ever be nonreligious, whether that school is public or private.
This becomes a moot point as soon as we consider the second question: can education be nonreligious. Just as no one is ever devoid of religious beliefs, even if they do not choose to define them as such, no education can be devoid of religious values. Those same value judgments on the sources of truth that provided the argument that schools shouldn't be nonreligious proves that they cannot be. No school can educate a child without making these judgments, and we cannot pretend that these judgments do not constitute religious decisions. In the end, rather than be nonreligious, all a school can do is choose its religious values. Public schools are religious institutions, just not of any religion that holds organized church services. That is not adequate fulfillment of the requirements of the argument put forth by Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, among others. Since their argument does not have an appropriate solution, another way must be sought.
We have two options if we want to be institutionally neutral towards religion. We can either not fund education, in recognition that all schools teach religious values, or we can fund all religions schools evenhandedly. Since we believe that education is a public good, the first is not a good choice. That leaves the second. Yes, this involves giving government money to explicitly religious institutions, but it's only different in that explicit bit from the current situation. Since the government should not be running religious institutions, that means these schools will have to be privately operated. That means school vouchers. The ACLU and the Americans United should be supporting school vouchers, not opposing them, which brings us back to my opening statement.
Silly supporters of separation of church and state.
29.1.07
The Economy
The economy: one of the most interesting topics that can be found regarding a political system.
Most people think it’s boring. Who cares what people are doing to make money? It's regrettable that they even have to work, why should we waste our time talking about the various ways in which they sell their souls?
They’re wrong. It’s enthralling. It gets caught in the mind like a fishhook and stays there, festering. What we spend money on is a strong indicator of what we care about, both on a personal level and a national one. How we interact economically tells us how we really relate to each other. Are we as generous as we'd like to believe, or are we selfish backstabbing scumbags?
We, as a nation and as a culturally imperialist force, are capitalists. Oddly enough, most of us don't really know what that means exactly. We usually think we do, but we've missed something important somewhere and we don't quite know what or where. We get this nagging suspicion that maybe this thing that runs our lives isn't quite what we really want, but since we don't know what it is, and we can't agree on what it is that we really want, we don't even talk about alternatives seriously.
We think about capitalism as being synonymous with "free market economy," but it isn't. Capitalism is characterized by the investment of capital with the expectation of a profit, which will then be reinvested ad nauseam. This ends up meaning that the people with the money will make more money because they have the cash to invest, while the people without money can't fix that little problem, because they need all or most of what they have on hand. At first glance you'd think that the stock market would be the perfect fix to this situation, allowing people with only a little money to invest, but it isn't. It doesn't allow them much control of the companies in which they invest. Most of that stock is non-voting stock, because they'll never have enough shares to make a difference. Effectively, the stock market becomes a tool of the wealthy to make the less wealthy think that there's something resembling a level playing ground. In our capitalist system, the people with money get to start companies and make money, while the people without money have to work for them and buy goods and services from them. Money ends up back where it started with only a brief layover in the pockets of the workers. Investment doesn’t have to be a bad thing; investment leads to a buildup of capacity, which leads to more jobs and a larger supply of, and thus a lower price for, goods and services. However, the way we set the market up to receive investment is heavily weighted against the non-rich, or even one non-hyper-rich person.
Our modern economy is too big for a single capitalist to form a company that would successfully dominate a market. For that we need groups of rich oppressors. We call those groups corporations. Corporations have none of the good qualities that individual people have, even rich oppressors, and all of the worst. A corporation exists only to provide a return on shareholders' investments. Corporations have no consciences. Our rich oppressors don't have the means to oppress our citizenry - the sheer size of it prevents them - so the corporation has been created to be the new and improved oppressor.
So corporations, a natural product of capitalism, are evil. So what? We're free, right? We could do something about it if we wanted to. Well, maybe, but it wouldn't work. People who have ideas but no money can't get started in this system. Corporations have everything so wrapped up legally that there's not much leeway for anyone who can't employ an entire law firm. Intellectual property laws, stemming from the idea that everything should have an owner even if it isn't something that can actually be felt or seen, assist in the lock corporations have on economic life. If you've got a great idea, but it happens to threaten some major business, say you've got an idea for a workable alternative fuel vehicle and Ford's scared, a corporation can buy that idea from you and just sit on it, and it becomes illegal for you or anyone else to use that idea. Sure, they have to convince you to sell out, but they’ve got the money to convince most people. Basically, because they've got money, they get to make it illegal to produce things they don't like. That is not a feature of a free system. The whole ownership thing, while good and healthy for society when applied to material goods like clothes or furniture, but not material things like forests and bodies of water, is very damaging to society when applied to things like ideas. Non-material things, being non-material, cannot be owned. When they are owned, which in this case means when their use is forcibly and artificially restricted, society suffers.
So I've gotten a bit sidetracked. Oh well. Back to the topic at hand.
The free market is completely different. The free market, based on the freedom to make what you want, provided it isn't illegal to make that thing (illegal for everyone, not just for you), and sell it to whoever wants to buy it (not whoever is forced to buy it because they need it and you happen to be the only supplier, which isn't free at all), is the powerful force Adam Smith described. He wasn't really talking about capitalism. The free market actually is more efficient in terms of employing people and providing the goods and services they need at prices they can afford, but it's fragile and requires active protection to exist.
The free market economy is the traditional model of economic interaction. Anyone who wanted to could start up any business they wanted to and make a living, so long as someone else wanted what they were selling. Work made money. Now we've mixed it up. Work doesn't always make money. Look at the numbers. Federal minimum wage was, until very recently, $5.15 an hour. At that rate, which is the state minimum wage in the majority of states, a person would have to work about 75 hours a week to make $20000 a year. 20 grand barely keeps you out of bankruptcy in a lot of places, and that's with no vacation. Work alone doesn't keep people alive. Money, on the other hand, makes money. That just isn't right.
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