I am reading two books recommended by J. One is "The Divine Right of Capital" and the other is "Commending Heights". The first book calls for economic reform by redistributing wealth between employees and shareholders. The author thinks that the current system gives shareholders aristocratic privileges. He also illustrated corporation should be communities rather than private entities from the legal perspective. I endorse the author's point of view that a good system should not just view people as "assets" of corporation and "markets" for the products. Some people think socialism may be the answer to many of the problems we have today.
I know a lot of people still dreams about Utopia. I, too, dream that I can live in the tree house of Disney land, and we all get along and are very happy. That is a dream that could never be reached universally. First of all, we are imperfect. Second, we all have to stand alone (with loved ones) in face of life's challenges. I came across an article ranking happiness by countries. It turns out most of the top happy countries are countries that have high level of socialism. It is true that sometimes government can provide certain security that we need to deal with in hardship in life. But nothing is without consequence. Government is not God. More power the government has, less power for the individuals. Any top down instead of bottom up idealism (no matter what it stands for, such as spreading democracy through government force) is immoral and oppressive.
The second book discusses about free market and government intervention from historical point of view. Asia's success story has generated a lot of interests. Highly concentrated power and free market seems to unleashed a high level of efficiency and economic growth. National capitalism is playing a bigger and bigger role in the global scope of competition. The values we stand for as human being: freedom, justice, and dignity have cost. Is wealth and economic growth the solution to our happiness? I do still dream that I can live in a "tree house" community that is as Utopian as it can get, but not at the cost of my freedom.
