How Paul Graham Gets It Wrong in “Economic Inequality”
Coming from a former communist country, I don't understand why smart, capable people want to give away their money to a corrupt, incompetent state to manage it for them.The US is fundamentally different than Nordic countries, where socialism appears to be working:
* The Nordic countries are tiny compared to the US.
* They are highly educated.
* Their society is homogenous.It seems like everybody is assuming that there will be this rational actor collecting money from the rich and distributing them to the poor.What actually is going to happen is that instead of entrepreneurs becoming rich, politicians will grow even richer than they are now. The politicians will have more power, power that they want to keep, and the only way to do that is to suppress the press and the people.And that's how communism starts. It might sound like I'm taking it too far, but it's happened a number of times already.