In reply to Postmanpat:
> Your general point seems to be that market capitalism is imperfect at allocating incentive and reward to do what you regard as the most important roles in life.
It's more than just roles/salaries. There's no incentive for investment in solving problems. For example, even though drugs can be sold at a huge profit, funding the creation of new drugs is so inefficient that crap drugs which don't work get sold and the information about how crap they are is hidden and obfuscated. The system is built of examples of precisely this nature: bad behaviour is rewarded, useful work leaves you behind in the competition.
> Obviously I'd agree, but I think you would also agree that neither is a centralised State much good at either so we are left with tinkering with or manipulating the market to achieve what we regard as better outcomes.
The solutions are not forthcoming from UKC today, no.
> The obvious problem is that your preferred outcome is not necessarily mine or anyone else's. It seems that the democratic vote via the payment of money is for footballers to be richer not only than most bankers but many many many times richer than doctors. Personally I think that's mad.
It isn't a democratic view. It's the action of the market concentrating wealth in the most pointless places. Who would seriously vote to reward footballers as they are?
> So how we decide the optimum outcome let alone the way to achieve the optimum outcome?
No idea. I guess I'm proposing that the excess resources are not taxed away from bankers and footballers, but that they might feasibly be encouraged to put that money somewhere useful. Not donated necessarily, but invested. This comes down to an idea that profit is not an end in itself, that activity should have some intrinsic value.
> I'd also suggest that quite a lot of what you call "gambling" or "money shuffling" is actually providing the incentives to achieve the outcome you want. the outcomes you want require risk to be taken and that requires rewards at the end, either for the provider of capital or of the provider of knowledge and skill.
I think it's unbelievably inefficient at achieving useful outcomes, but probably more efficient that the faux-alternative of a centrally planned economy.