Corporate America's 'Elite Charade'

If you mean the state should be larger...great...but that is something totally different. That would require significantly less redistribution, raising taxes on the middle class, and bringing people who pay no income tax into the system (this is usually a significant minority ~30%+ in progressive tax systems).

Also, the content of your post is essentially: "I want free things, and I want [group I dislike] to pay for it". Trumpish.

I hear this sentiment a lot from people on the left, and I don't understand it. A fairly modest UBI of $1,000 per month (the basis of Yang's campaign) for adult citizens would cost $3 trillion, which is about 14% of the US' GDP. That's a bit less than healthcare as a fraction of the nation's GDP, but it's also a historically unprecedented amount of wealth being directly redistributed. How can one seriously argue that this is not a "massive and transformational" program?

It's interesting to see people with seemingly like-minded intentions come to such different conclusions.

Afaik all the sectors with the most government intervention are the ones plagued by monopolies, stifled innovation, cronyism (even cap n trade has rewarded polluters).

However, I think you are misinformed if you believe those candidates will set a market price on carbon. They want command and control solutions.

What makes things affordable is the price of those things.

And I cannot see how any of the 'XYZ-for-all' makes the price affordable.

In fact, I do not know of any policy except this concept of 'fair competition', that makes price for something, affordable.

In my view, western countries such as US, UK have not been practicing competition in health care, financial service, technology -- for a very long time.

The competition is, instead, of who has better lawyers and better 'hooks' to political establishment.

So it is breaking those 'unfair competition' practices, that will make prices for many services, more affordable.

That in, turn, should allow people to save, hedge against risks more efficiently, and therefore, take more risks in the type of business opportunities that they venture to explore.

And that would drive progress

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_hand#Criticisms

> Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, is often cited as arguing for the "invisible hand" and free markets: firms, in the pursuit of profits, are led, as if by an invisible hand, to do what is best for the world. But unlike his followers, Adam Smith was aware of some of the limitations of free markets, and research since then has further clarified why free markets, by themselves, often do not lead to what is best. As I put it in my new book, Making Globalization Work, the reason that the invisible hand often seems invisible is that it is often not there. Whenever there are "externalities"—where the actions of an individual have impacts on others for which they do not pay, or for which they are not compensated—markets will not work well. Some of the important instances have long understood environmental externalities. Markets, by themselves, produce too much pollution. Markets, by themselves, also produce too little basic research. (The government was responsible for financing most of the important scientific breakthroughs, including the internet and the first telegraph line, and many bio-tech advances.) But recent research has shown that these externalities are pervasive, whenever there is imperfect information or imperfect risk markets—that is always. Government plays an important role in banking and securities regulation, and a host of other areas: some regulation is required to make markets work. Government is needed, almost all would agree, at a minimum to enforce contracts and property rights. The real debate today is about finding the right balance between the market and government (and the third "sector" – governmental non-profit organizations.) Both are needed. They can each complement each other. This balance differs from time to time and place to place.[22]

Even kings and queens that subscribed to the notion of divine right, recognised that they had an obligation to the people they ruled over.

This exchange of power was often codified. The relationship wasn't one group of people ruling with an iron fist over another. If you were a serf, you had to provide labour but you received rights and benefits in exchange.

That system often broke down in periods of population growth (a common example is vagrancy laws in the late 16th century) but even there was an established right to riot and dissent as a way of pressing claims.

It was only during the Cold War that we really saw this understanding of dictatorship/monarchy/whatever completely break down (imo, there are a ton of books on the above i.e. Polyani but I am speculating now) as dictators were able to maintain power through their allegiance to the US/Soviet power (and changes in technology made this easier too).

And, of course, our notions of community/society have totally changed too. Substantial reductions in economic and physical uncertainty has made most people unwilling to live in a system in which another person has dominion over you.

But this doesn't change the fact that this is why these systems existed in the first place. And, in most cases, people who have tried to rise up and create systems in which the bottom class rise up and have found themselves crushed under the weight of the obligations they are forced to assume (they do not disappear, risk has to be assumed by someone).