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RE: Income inequality
Ah, but certain traits are more widely valued than others. Compare a jeweller to a toolmaker - both require a tremendous amount of skill, yet the jeweller probably makes more money, simply because people are willing to pay more for something they don't need. Keep that fact in mind the next time some communist starts rambling about income inequality. Social engineering is less about closing income gaps and more about legislating people's tastes, which I find infinitely more insidious.
My interests are almost all niche interests. If production were up to democractic vote or central planning, I would be screwed.
if production were up to a democratic vote, you'd have a lot more free time to do what you wish with.
Meetings, voting, arguments over stuff that shouldn't be a zero-sum game in the first place... sure. LOTS of free time. [/sarcasm]
Markets decentralize all of that mess. Prices are an open information network when not muddled by political intervention, and still manage to work despite that intervention. Vote with your wallet. Make and accept offers. It's superior to direct democracy in every way.
But if you think I am wrong, you chould be free to compete and prove it. Neither of us are free because of the political system. How do we dethrone the warmongers and control freaks without installing a new one? That is the real challenge we face. And voting hasn't worked for over 200 years.
Same here, but if we lived in a centrally-planned society, we wouldn't be doing what we want, we'd be doing what state schools determined that we were best at. Sometimes, I lament that I wasn't born 30 years earlier, because maybe then, I wouldn't feel like my engineering degree was a waste of money. Then I remind myself that I wouldn't be printing wargaming minis in my basement if I lived in the Soviet Union.