Sublime

a well-constructed welfare state can distribute education and nutrition more widely. The individuals supported by this state are not only better off, but they are more likely to be productive and pay taxes, and they are less likely to overturn public order. Other benefits of redistribution stem from political improvements. Social welfare programs

Friedrich Hayek’s book The Fatal Conceit: Errors of Socialism expressed with clarity and authority what I had long felt but was unable to express, namely the unwisdom of powerful intellects, including Albert Einstein, when they believed that a powerful brain can devise a better system and bring about more “social justice” than what historical

But, to anachronistically borrow our function metaphor once more, Hayek points out that the projection from the n-dimensions of information to the one dimension of price destroys an enormous amount of information.

Hence, the attempt to achieve social justice through the redistribution of capital wealth is inherently contradictory. The more welfare policies and state regulations that prevent the exploitation of living labor, the more restricted are the possibilities of extracting surplus value, and the less “wealth” is available to distribute in the economy.

Anyone with a sneaking suspicion that socialism has a point, that people and their abilities are finite, is forever handicapped as a businessperson. If the pie is of a fixed size, one creates nothing, merely taking from others.