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Even if they have the best of intentions (they don’t), governments have proven to be terrible capital allocators. Plus the second a government stops adhering to personal property rights of their citizenry, all bets are off. Seems pretty dystopian.

While true that they are terrible capital allocators, you cannot deny the fact that they are presently in control of all tax, which includes everything from capital gains tax rates to deductions and property taxes etc. Wheather we like that or not is irrelevant, it is a fact. The ”personal property rights” you claim exist are already severely limited as it is. This is why it is quite a leap to call these moves dystopian — it is more an issue of working within already existing structures by re-evaluating tax rates and adapting incentives to nudge investments in other directions.

I think the reality of this is far, far simpler and far more obviously self serving than “being helpful”: They live entirely in the bottom left corner of the give-a-shit matrix, they need more money for war and all their “grand plans,” they’ve already squandered everything they get, they need another way to siphon money from the people to them. Thats it, that’s all this is, and it’s naive and ignores the evidence to believe it’s anything but exactly that. They will have a plan (whether it ends up being this or not) to default allocate pensions and investment funds from employers or retirements or whatever else, into their pockets, which will get loaned against at interest rates good for *them,* not the saver, and then they will spend it all and IOUs who’s loss of value continues to accelerate will sit in the actually empty accounts of everyone hoping to retire one day. The entire thing is a scam, everything they do is the same, and this is more of the same. They take, they waste, they kill some people, we pay.

You may of course turn out to be right, time will tell. All I’m saying is that I know that most people in governmental positions genuinly believe in the system they run. Most people in Brussels and elsewhere truly believe in democracy, the political system and the value of having a government and so on. Of course they are self serving to some extent (as all people are), but typically they think their ”grand plans” are truly for the greater good. Is there some elements of corruption, or indirect corruption? Probably. Is the entire government corrupt? No. One could even ask if corruption in general truly is the issue here? Or is the issue more about the fact that the entire system itself is dysfunctional long term? Personally I don’t believe in the dystopian narrative, it appears less speculative to assume that we are witnessing a system that is slowly just tearing itself apart over time by its systemic inertia, rather than framing it as a case of villains vs people.