Real life is filled with disappointments and limitations, even with the best social structures in place. The false promise of a social revolution that provides instant wealth and salvation for all is used by populists to gain power, but any attempt to realize this promise leads to worse outcomes for the public.
Even if we levelled all wealth, life would be limited by the finiteness of resources, and only economic development - which this levelling would inhibit - would alleviate such scarcity.
Consider what would have happened if society had followed John Stuart Mills' advice in 1848 and maximized for equal distribution of income, resulting in per capita GDP barely increasing from its $2,000 level over the last 170 years:
"It is only in the backward countries of the world that increased production is still an important object: in those most advanced, what is economically needed is a better distribution"
-John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy (1848, book IV, chap. VI)
One possibility is that such an egalitarian society would have produced more brilliant engineers and economists, by providing more opportunity to manifest one's talent to lower economic classes. And they then could, perhaps, figure out the unsustainability of their trajectory earlier, and correct it to produce somewhat slower but steady growth without environmental catastrophes, translating to better long-term outcome.
A per capita GDP of $3,000 wouldn't have provided people with the surplus time to dabble in engineering and economics. It's a living standard that today we categorize as extreme poverty.
Eliminating involuntary unemployment doesn’t require levelling of all wealth, it just sets the floor price for labour and maintains a buffer stock of employed people ready to be hired rather than a buffer stock of unemployed people who are less ready to be hired.
Without forcing people to work, it is impossible to eliminate involuntary unemployment. The government using tax dollars to offer people jobs that don't match what they're seeking would result in them refusing to take those jobs, and remaining involuntarily unemployed.
I think people generally care about the public interest because of their shared humanity. People generally identify with their society and want to see it prosper.
They should also care that their society remains well structured because it increases the probability that their own situation improves over the course of their life, and that their children/grandkids will be wealthy.
They gain nothing from believing in the false promises of demagogues, except the ephemeral contentment of false hope.
> I think people generally care about the public interest because of their shared humanity. People generally identify with their society and want to see it prosper.
This is far from universally true, and to the small degree that it is true, it is an aberration from the vast majority of human history.
> They should also care that their society remains well structured because it increases the probability that their own situation improves over the course of their life, and that their children/grandkids will be wealthy.
Should they? Sure. Will they? History says it is very unlikely.
What also comes to mind is the sociological study where they present two people with $100 to split between them. Person A decides the split, person B chooses whether to accept the split or reject the split, in which case the $100 is taken back and neither person gets anything.
The problem with your whole philosophy is that it supposes that Person B will accept the split no matter how much it is skewed to Person A, because it is the 'rational' thing to do from an individual's perspective (any money is better than no money). However, what actually happens is that above the 60% - 70% mark, Person B will often reject the split, just to spite Person A.
> They gain nothing from believing in the false promises of demagogues, except the ephemeral contentment of false hope.
Demagogues work to convince people that they are getting an unfair split and that they should reject the split. It makes their job a lot easier to do if people really are getting an unfair split.
>>This is far from universally true, and to the small degree that it is true, it is an aberration from the vast majority of human history.
I think you're interpreting my statement to suggest that people generally prioritize the public interest over their personal interest. I'm not. I'm only claiming that people, ceteris paribus, generally would prefer that society at large prosper. But they would not at their own expense.
>>What also comes to mind is the sociological study where they present two people with $100 to split between them.
This is very true.
Thiel famously believes in Rene Girard's theory that jealousy emerges from the mimetic instinct, and that religious admoninations against it are a social innovation to constrain the dark side of mimesis:
They should also care that their society remains well structured because it increases the probability that their own situation improves over the course of their life, and that their children/grandkids will be wealthy.
Are you calling USA "well structured"? Socialist European nations have much more income mobility than USA has. Few are threatened with penury, most employers pay a living wage, and many more people who have a great idea and the will to build it, do so.
Whether the US is well structured can be debated, but my point is only that even a well structured society can have poverty that cannot be eradicated in a generation.
Consider the US in 1870: per capita GDP was $3,000, so even with a totally noncorrupt and absolutely competent government, and perfect wealth inequality, the entire population would be in poverty by today's standards. Income growth takes time.
As to your point: wages in Europe are lower than in the US, and there is much less funding available for startups.
Europe is also not appreciably more socialist than the US:
