"To him that hath, more shall be given and to him that hath not, more shall be taken away"
I suppose it was more popular in seemingly simpler times when the playing field was more even and the players more evenly matched and distributed. But here we are in the future, and that game seems to have been concluded.
I myself rather preferred the view from the shoulders of giants than the undersides of their feet.
In this model, it's the rules of the game, not the morality of the players that causes the effects.
Arguments about efficient allocation are laughable when you consider that someone who is socially 6 steps removed from an institutional 'money printer' lives in a monetary environment where money is 10 times more scarce than it is at the source (due to taxation between each hop). Few people are so far removed in practice but the effects are still very powerful even with less distance. Taxation brings all economic activities closer to the government and banking sector.
In competitive industries were profits are paper thin, monetary asymmetry can fully determine business outcomes. The company receiving government contracts on the side has a massive upper hand over its competitors during a monetary contraction. Same can be said about companies which operate in environments where their customers have access to large amounts of credit by virtue of their highly valued collateral. Their success has little to do with optimal allocation and a lot to do with socio-economic positioning and monetary system design.
I never claimed it was a perfect system and I am more than willing to admit rent extraction, scams, and monopoly power are massive issues with capitalism. It still hasn't been shown that replacing that with government is better.
