[Aerroon]

You'll just get a different form of power concentration. Do you think the Soviet Union didn't have power concentration in individuals? Of course it did, that's why the general secretary of the party was more important than the actual heads of state and government.

[wat10000]

Do you think I’m proposing anything like the Soviet system?

[Aerroon]

No? I'm saying that power concentration is pretty much unavoidable. The question is more about what they can do with that power. I suspect that people getting more power through wealth in the modern world is better than people concentrating power through politics.

[1718627440]

> I'm saying that power concentration is pretty much unavoidable.

It's avoidable by formalizing the execution of power. The head of state is very powerful, but he can't create laws or anything. That all needs to be done be the parliament, which is several hundred people.

[Aerroon]

Most democratic countries use the parliamentary system, where the party that wins elections creates the government through the prime minister. They are also the largest party in parliament.

Sure, the US does it differently, yet the parliament seems to often just not do anything and let courts legislate instead. Then you end up in this weird situation where the supreme court positions end up being extremely partisan to set the "correct" precedent.

Either way there's a lot of power in the executive in either system.

[wat10000]

I don't think it's unavoidable. I don't see why you couldn't have a relatively weak government that's otherwise pretty laissez-faire besides taxing the hell out of extreme wealth. And a strong government doesn't have to have extremely powerful individuals. Power can be divided, and representatives are ultimately accountable to the people.

What you're saying basically boils down to: kings are inevitable, might as well choose them by economic success instead of the more old-fashioned approaches. I reject the first part.

[Aerroon]

You cannot have a "relatively weak government" that "taxes the hell out of the wealthy".

First, if the people can incentivize the government enough to tax the wealthy with outrageous amounts, then those same people will demand regulation on everything whenever something goes wrong. You end up with a poor country this way. Second, the wealthy can just leave or influence the policy to be changed.

Also, the irony is that the US is already one of the best countries when it comes to taxing the wealthy instead of the poor. You don't have a 20-25% VAT that applies to everything you buy. You have a progressive income tax and your payroll tax (that avoids the progressive part) isn't a giant ~30% of gross income. You don't have giant excise taxes on things like gasoline that makes everything more expensive (including food). You also generally don't have punitive taxes on things that poor people buy a lot of, like sodas and similar.

The list above are things that are done by (a lot of) European countries. Our "welfare states" don't exist because rich people pay a large share, it's because everyone does.