David Simon: 'There are now two Americas. My country is a horror show'

Except it isn't. It's based on the expectation that the market will allocate resources based on factors like supply/demand.

We focus on growth because it's a human tendency to always want more. Has nothing to do with capitalism.

This was implemented quite effectively and was largely based on legitimate economics. But it has a giant flaw in implementation: the state intervention part over time becomes a tool for those with power and not for the entire representative population, from where it draws power to intervene.

For example, take economic stimulation during recessions, which are often the only time direct economic corrections happens for the average person. The goal is to increase "consumer spending" during downward market trends. Meaning the continued purchase of things they don't really need (new cars, houses, and bank loans). Revenue keeps flowing to the large organizations who would often be hit the hardest during recessions. Plus a few special organizations get direct bailouts from a central bank.

We're told in the long run this is better than a complete recession/depression and we'll recover faster. If we just hold on and keep spending, things will get back to normal and everyone in the economy benefits. But if you look at it from a higher-level, the top-end of the market is easily the biggest beneficiary of this policy, while consumers are largely still left with very little ability for upward mobility.

The same trend exists in almost all state interventions. Those who come out on top as the result of the policy are almost always those already at the top. It is neither the invisible-hand of free markets nor equal-distribution of state power at work.

Inflation has a compounding effect of screwing the poor and transferring that wealth to the rich. It shouldn't be surprising that in 1970 Nixon unpegged the dollar and let inflation float and since 1973 the income inequality in this country has gradually become unhinged.

we keep giving more power to fewer people under the rubric of "better government", and, lo and behold, our society has ever more power and wealth concentrating in fewer and fewer hands. Why, oh why ever could it be.

Rich and wealthy liberal economists keep prescribing more government(which they may or may not realize contributed to their cupidity) to 'help out the poor' with 'stimulus' (which gets subcontracted to politically connected, wealthy people - did we not just throw 650 millon dollars at already-rich people to build a broken healthcare website?), while stabbing them in the back with inflation

On a more "scholar" note there is the notion that a leviathan is needed.

Moreover, I think private companies and individuals can be as violent, or more, than any government that claim monopoly on its use.

Be it physically or symbolically.

I don't deny that the government plays an important role in funding science and tech, which in turn is essential for silicon valley. But it is still completely wrong to characterize Silicon Valley as "state-sponsored investment". Take Google. The original algorithm was developed at Stanford, but it didn't involve any fancy math that required a DARPA grant. The founders came up with the idea of using commodity hardware for servers. All the other technologies they later built (MapReduce, BigTable, etc.) were the company's own inventions, involving no help from outside sources.

Similar things can be said for Apple, Microsoft and also much of the Open Source movement.

The fact that the government played some role does not mean all the value generated really belongs to the government.

And in case anyone was tempted to make some false assumptions about my viewpoint, I'm not arguing that there should be no redistribution of wealth. I'm just arguing that claiming that we don't live in a market economy is wrong, and a poor basis for arguing for redistribution of wealth.