> I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade, as laid out in Adam Smith’s genre defining book The Wealth of Nations. > Strangely, even though we’re in a golde

> I’m a huge fan of capitalism and free trade, as laid out in Adam Smith’s genre defining book The Wealth of Nations. > Strangely, even though we’re in a golden age of hyper-efficient production and trade, the overall GDP growth of the USA is slowing. We don't have pure capitalism and we certainly don't have free trade, couldn't those be valid reasons why GDP growth has been slowing? Rules, regulations, and laws have only been increasing and corporatism is winning. It's a memory leak. This isn't the result of capitalism, this is the result of businesses colluding with government to create coercive monopolies. Natural monopolies don't exist in this country, they are all spawned out of the nation states' monopoly on force. I also disagree with the premise that wealth inequality is necessarily bad. If everyone's quality of life is increasing over time, that seems good for everyone, right? It's a terrible metric to base economic policies on. Having said all that, I'm a reasonable person. If we replaced the current welfare programs with UBI, I'd be excited to see that experiment play out. I think eventually the cost of basics (in particular rentals) will increase to meet the new income floor, and people will inevitably say "UBI doesn't meet basic needs anymore, we must increase it." Haven't we heard this before? We read about it all the time with minimum wages. After reading the arguments for it (which seem bountiful and raises red flags for me), I'm ultimately skeptical, but I'd be willing to give it a shot and I think it is better than the systems we have in place today. Things that are too good to be true usually are.