[gvr]

The way I think about economic systems is

- Level of business regulation. From left wing Marx style central production control to pure capitalism.

- Level of redistribution of wealth. From high taxation with redistribution of wealth and strong infrastructure for all citizens (think Sweden or Denmark) to low taxation.

I believe some form of capitalism mixed with somewhat aggressive redistribution of wealth would yield the highest productivity and the most humane society. This is basically how Sweden operates.

[gnarbarian]

"- Level of business regulation. From left wing Marx style central production control to pure capitalism."

This is about private property. Marxists deny the right for individuals or companies to own the "means of production".

"- Level of redistribution of wealth. From high taxation with redistribution of wealth and strong infrastructure for all citizens (think Sweden or Denmark) to low taxation."

This is also about private property because aggressive redistribution of wealth is by definition impinging on the right to accrue private property.

"I believe some form of capitalism mixed with somewhat aggressive redistribution of wealth would yield the highest productivity and the most humane society. This is basically how Sweden operates."

This is socialism which sits in the middle of the one dimensional spectrum of economic systems.

Also how do you define productivity? Because I assure you that a sweatshop is more productive per dollar than any shoe factory in Sweden.

Unless you mean maximizing the sum productivity and humanity at the expense of one or the other. But humanity is a little harder to quantify eh? :)

[gvr]

No matter how high taxes are, if you let people in a first world country work with whatever they want, you're not going to end up with university educated professionals in a shoe sweat shop. If they work in a sweatshop in Sweden, it will be one of clothing design, software engineering, or some other line of work producing many orders of magnitude more value per hour where they can make some solid money for themselves while paying a significant amount of taxes.

And yes, of course I believe that productivity and happiness are two different things and that they need to be balanced. I don't believe in trickle down economics, or that they are two different facets of the same variable on a linear axis that somehow move in unison as you slide left/right up/down.

You can probably quantify humanity (like the Gross National Happiness people are trying to do) somehow, but it's of course not going to resemble true science. I do think there are some basic markers of a civilized society that I have a hard time understanding how some people disagree with though. These include public access to nature and beaches, good education for everyone, good healthcare for everyone, etc. To me, this is a separate _economical_ issue from how much the government meddles in the work life of its citizens. If it's easy for you to think of these issues on one axis be my guest, but it is not a mental model that works well for me.

Cheers!