Comment by tancop

the utility of wealth is not linear. a billionaire getting $100 probably has no use for it and they wont notice either way. but a homeless person getting $100 makes a big difference for them no matter if they use it to buy new clothes and apply for a job or spend it all on liquor. redistribution is actually good by itself because it maximizes the total wellbeing of society.

all the negative effects on economic output come from the fact that there is always some minimum amount of capital you need to start a successful business in each industry, and if nobody has enough wealth to match that requirement the business has no way to take off. but that argument only works if crowd funding or state investment are not practical, which is mostly true in our economic system but its not a law of nature.

we dont have to go all in on soviet style five year plans. in fact we know its one of the worst possible systems because the real world is unpredictable and large scale inflexible plans usually fail. its not always a disaster but its always unstable. but neoliberal capitalism is not the only form of a non-command economy.

"there is no alternative" only makes sense if you ignore all the things in between and outside to create a false binary. there is also tito style market socialism, decentralized commune systems, continuous planning, hybrid systems like china and vietnam, capitalism with worker ownership, and a lot of others i dont even know. not all of them are practical (like anarchy) but the ideas already exist and i think its worth it to try and make them real. a better world is possible as long as ours is not perfect.