I have been working on a piece on Socialism. If you study history, you have empires, where people physically take other peoples stuff by force. They are followed, in the West, by Mercantilism, which is basically economic extortion, backed by military force. Crown favorites are given monopolies; subject populations are told what they can buy and sell, and to whom.
Capitalism plainly favors those with money, but as a system which sponsors and rewards innovation, capital can take the form of ideas, that cost nothing.
In what we might term the Robber Capitalist period, the government was used to prohibit strikes and organization by workers. This is contrary to the doctrine of free trade, which permits workers to create what amounts to a counter-corporation to balance the possibilty of collusive practice on the part of business owners.
But plainly, the balance was in favor of those with money.
Socialism inverts this, by favoring workers, at the expense of Capital. Since those with money are those who create things, and workers those who consume them, this system is very poor at wealth creation.
In the middle is what I call Liberalism, which has as its goal the maximum amount of freedom possible. Practically, of course, this means that some liberties have to be curtailed–such as the freedom to murder or commit other crimes–because their use constitutes an abuse of others.
In the realm of economic activity, it means contracts are enforced, violence is banned between all economic entities–especially between labor and capital, broadly understood–and trusts both of Capital and Labor are prohibited. Trusts are de facto power accumulation, and are thus anti-competitive, even though individual companies like AT&T might be innovative. Had AT&T not been broken up, one wonders if the internet would have evolved as it has. I don’t see how it could have. Much of what drove our bandwidth explosion was competition.
Always, the fear is that of accumulated power. In our Constitution, the Federal Goverment is balanced by the States. The executive is balanced by Congress and the Supreme Court. No one balances the Supreme Court, which is a problem. The right to gun ownership balances the prospective abuse of police power (only criminals have guns in Mexico, and many of the criminals are cops).
Any straying from this basic idea is Illiberal. Fascism is illiberal. Communism is illiberal. Mercantilism is Illiberal.
I wanted to find a word that encompassed all these realities. This might be it, and I might change my mind.