Rethink.

The word economics comes from the Greek word for "household management," and I want it to be more about our choices in daily life than about "the wealth of nations."

1. While arguing over an inheritance tax here and here, it dawned on me that I need to be explicit about what the relation between property and the individual is in our order.

Machiavelli says that a ruler that threatens his subjects' property will most certainly be hated and deposed. It seems weird that he says such a thing - he says men value property more than lovers or family, and that both of the latter can be taken away from them and they won't complain.

It would be all too easy to say that Machiavelli (and Hobbes, Spinoza, Locke and all his other disciples) have founded modern political thought on a purposeful lie, that he is being partial only for an end (i.e. "If your goal is the preservation of liberty, make sure a ruler backs off claims to your property first"). I think there is a degree to which that is true - Montesquieu seems to conceive of property as an alarm system, where you know a government is tyrannical for sure if they start taking away property arbitrarily. One doesn't need to judge motives or think about character issues or use the intellect in any way: "deprivation of property = government bad."

But if I follow that line of thinking out, what I need then is to change what seemed to be an insight into behavior (men fear losing property) into a normative principle (we need to fear the day men stop fearing losing property). Again, I'm willing to do that - to a degree.

What I want to add is that there is a clear case when deprivation of property is tyrannical and will undo the regime immediately. It is when those who have more have that taken away from them. Aristotle holds that all regimes have a democratic and oligarchic element, and I think that's inescapable. Alienate that oligarchic element, and they will attack the democrats, and all hell breaks loose (cf. Thucydides, and the revolution in Athens after the Sicilian loss).

Right now, we're getting away with an inheritance tax because really rich people have multiple ways around it, and because the world has never seen wealth like the First World has now. As more and more people are driven into the ranks of the oligarchs because of an inheritance tax, disloyalty to the government will rise. Nobody works to give nothing to their children.

2. So let us assume my above discussion is accurate, and that property is central to our liberty in deep ways. What then?

Right now it looks like we're making tons of money. The numbers tell us the economy is excellent and everyone's employed and...

...What? You hate your job? Wow, only every other person says that and means it. And many of them have excellent arguments. It looks like we're overworked, or when we're not overworked, working for people who really do want to rip others off, it looks like there is no higher purpose than making money, little or no reason to have corporate pride, and that generally, labor exists under the continual threat of being fired or downsized or whatnot.

Most of us blame free-market capitalism for this state of affairs. But let's be clear about something: there's no way I could get a job teaching in a public school. Think about that for a second, and why 'union politics' + 'a ready-made major (education)' = 'some good employees (I know plenty of good public school teachers) and a lot of corrupt ones who don't know squat except how to preserve themselves via tenure.'

We've destroyed our schools by over-bureaucratizing the classroom. Yes, it means that people who go for teaching get employed. That's really wonderful, except that it comes at the cost of the common good.

What we need is for people to feel free, not fearful, of capitalism. Being an entrepreneur shouldn't be overly burdensome for no reason: it'll always be hard work and have a risk of failure. But we should want people to learn, do and succeed.

You might say, "well, we have business schools, no?" The whole premise of those things seems wrong to me, like as if success can be taught, and as if only one type of property - money - matters.

A real economy values a diversity of things, some of which are beyond creature comforts. For example, money should be flowing to the arts naturally, not as a result of charity, or with the idea that luxuries are disposable - they really aren't. Any society that focuses exclusively on necessity fails inevitably at even giving all their citizens the bare minimum. "Luxuries" are really a manifestation of what we conceive as the good, as what we want to live for, besides merely being.

3. I don't think there's any easy solution to the tension between the need to make money/have property and our longing for higher things in life. But I do think we need to get away from the numbers and the models and start talking about the choices we make.

And a large part of talking about those choices means dropping the "I have to do this" talk, as if everything were wholly necessitated. I remember a girl I liked very much telling me seriously that she had to find someone rich to support her and needed to be attractive. I thought at first she was saying this to keep me away - when I realized she was telling everyone this, and it was her central concern, I started becoming aware of a lot of other manifestations of this attitude in other people.

What we really need (no irony intended, although it's all over the place at this point), I think, is to be clear about what we want and create conditions where employers can emerge and provide that.

We've already done this to some extent, but in a bad way. We're a mobile people, so most of us pick up multiple low-paying jobs that offer flexible hours and some benefits. I need not tell you how horrible this is when this sort of job becomes the standard, as it has rapidly become in many areas.

If we're clearer about what we want - do we want stability? Do we want firms we can take pride in? What sort of benefits can we reasonably expect? - then we can have more capitalism and it will be more effective.

A large part of being clearer about what we want is having a better education. Look, I'm being vague on these issues because I haven't thought about them as much as some others - my mind is mainly focused on making peace real in the world, as corny as that sounds. But I've thought of them. That makes me one of a handful of people in the world to do so.

I know full well that if we put the old books in front of more of you and expose you to the riches of knowledge more fully, you'll figure out what you want and get it. If we can get away from the technical stuff and the feeling of inevitability accompanying it (science has to be deterministic, otherwise hypotheses can't be falsified), you'll see how much more can be done with what you already have.

The example, I hope, will be this blog. I'm gambling that speaking my mind alone will account for some small (capitalist? in the sense of appealing to a "market," yeah, in the sense of making money, no) success. If we can get people to be more appreciative, and more productive in senses other than practical, this economy will work a lot better for each of us.

As it stands now, it uses us more than we use it. We're scared of forces we don't understand, and our own freedom seems divorced from our sense of value.

• Rant: Is a Society that Obsesses over Economic Issues in Political Decline?
• More on whether the US is a nation of predatory lending and unwarranted debt, or a land of opportunity, or what
• Eliminate the Corporate Income Tax?
• Thank You
• Are There People Whose Talents Concern Only the Common Good? If So, Could Their Private Lives Still Be A Mess?

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