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Rethinking Capitalism, Part 4
Perhaps, it’s time to think like a corporate shareholder…
So far, in this series, I have been focused fairly exclusively on the benefits of a Universal Basic Income. I’ve done this to the exclusion of the larger picture of governance in general.
This was deliberate. In order to lay out a case, you have to build the narrative. But now, let’s change focus a bit. Because there’s an ongoing debate, using the word pretty loosely, about whether there should be a big government or a small one.
I’m going to say straight out that this debate entirely misses the mark and pretty much on all sides. A small government can be intrusive. A large government can be useless and lax.
The real issue is not how large the government is, it is how effective it is and what it is doing.
I must confess that I have gotten caught up in this trap on multiple occasions. I only recently came to realize that the very question of size is a false dichotomy. It’s not the size. Not at all. We have a comparatively large government now, and it is largely ineffective. Not because it’s large, but because it’s unfocused, and where it does have focus, it’s on the wrong things.
Business will do what it needs to do almost without regard to the scope of governance. Business, by and large, lives by the dictum…
