Well, then we have been living in a system that's as close to fair as possible since global individual wealth has been growing for a long time. The few times we had it shrink significantly over some period of time is when local populations attempted forced wealth distribution.
Our present system, by this definition, is amazing!
No it's not. If the property of fairness is that everyone grows wealthier then a system that makes everyone wealthier is a fair system. That's as close to a tautology as possible.
The resulting absurdity is why OP was right to ask what fairness was: everyone has their own belief in it, oriented towards equality or proportionality or some notion of deserving.
In order to claim that the system is “as close to fair as possible”, you would have to demonstrate that the system has optimized everyone’s wealth growth as much as possible. Something going up for a long time isn’t proof of optimization.
Well, no you don't have to optimize each person's wealth growth. It could be incredibly uneven so long as you optimize the number of people whose wealth grows.
And clearly, since it is better than every other method, it is the best by definition. If other things were not done it is because they were not possible: since possibility requires an agent to execute and since no agent succeeded in executing a better plan it is, by definition, impossible.
>And clearly, since it is better than every other method, it is the best by definition.
That isn't how "by definition" works. For that to be the case you would have to define everything to be inferior which is a purely subjective choice.
What you should have said is something along the lines of "based on our best efforts this has had the most success" which has completely different implications, such as failure to discover or adopt better systems.
It is especially strange since what you are talking about violates neoclassical models. There is no wealth inequality built into those models so why would it be obvious that this will be the best solution forever?
>. If other things were not done it is because they were not possible: since possibility requires an agent to execute and since no agent succeeded in executing a better plan it is, by definition, impossible.
Except The Wörgl Experiment succeeded in every respect. Stop rewriting history. Your theory is also unable to explain the success of the Chiemgauer [0], which is severely limited by legal problems and the ability to find loopholes.
After all, if your theory was correct and no improvement is possible, then why does improvement occur anyway? Feels like you are just taking the stance of an authoritarian thug.
[0] The Chiemgauer makes money off of ending capitalism, which is a paradox if we assume it is impossible for anything to be better than capitalism.
I was using “everyone” in the same way that I assume you were using it—everyone in aggregate. You seem to be basing this on a rather dubious position—that we’ve thought of, tried, and optimized every conceivable system for growing wealth and that the result of this exhaustive history is our current system.
You don't need to do an exhaustive search because optimality here did not account for different amounts for each. A thing is optimally fair in this world if everyone's wealth goes up. That doesn't need exhaustiveness.
A thing that gives me 1 million and you 1 is as fair as one that gives us both 500k.
And yes, we did actually search everything possible because if something did not get done it was, by definition, impossible. After all, the agent that could have made something possible could not have acted as such because we know they did not. If they could have they would have. If they could not conceive of a better thing then the thing was impossible because it was not conceivable by anyone.
Except even Fisher Black recognizes a potential currency trap at the zero lower bound and Fisher Black is someone who strongly believes in economic equilibrium.
At that point I can't help but think that most people who think capitalism works are delusional since this is such a fundamental problem with capitalism that can at best be handwaved with eternal inflation.
The US had both higher growth and higher wealth redistribution after world war 2 (extremely progressive income taxation and steep wealth taxes). The 70s ended wealth redistribution and the US has lower growth. At least get your basic history right.
Our present system, by this definition, is amazing!