• Sagar Acharya@lemmy.ml
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    2 years ago

    John Rawls introduced justice theories in which he asked to distribute money generated in value chain fairly. That’s hardly how it works.

    So say, in capitalism, a raw material is generated by a farmer which is process A and there are processes B and C which generate value(price sold in market to buyer). Today, we find that most money is generated by those who control permissions which doesn’t have much value contribution. Business is cutthroat but it’s in the interests of all A, B and C to atleast keep each other existent. Today, whichever party amongst A, B and C is replaceable is squeezed to the fullest and the 1 key party which holds the right permissions takes all or majority of it. Since permissions are granted by government, that party will definitely be connected to someone within government.

    In Kautilya’s Arthashastra, Justice theories were more or less enforced by deciding in advance how much would each value addition cost, like say, if a metalsmith were to polish a metal, the price for that has been decided by the king, or say, if someone sells milk, the cost is decided. The old system has it’s cons but it isn’t as unfair as capitalism where 1 party bags it all.

    Government licenses are required in areas like food today where poisoning can be done, etc. but many licenses provide no real value in value chain but it serves monetary interests of people who hold those controls. When governments didn’t exist and debates were happening on what power governments should have, many debates were of the form that government should manage just murder and theft, they should prevent that. While I don’t think such extreme minimal governments will work, but I think minimum amount of rules are very important.