How Inequality Shapes Our Lives
The following article was written by Roderick T. Long and published on Austro-Athenian Empire, Part 1: September 10th, 2010 Part 2: September 22th, 2010.

How Inequality Shapes Our Lives (Part 1)

Those of us who regard socioeconomic inequality as a serious problem are often accused of “envy,” as though such concerns were simply a matter of begrudging someone else’s having more cookies than we do.

I think this reaction misses the point in a number of ways; let me say just a bit about just one of those ways:

Suppose you forget to pay your power bill (or your phone bill, or your cable tv bill, or your internet access bill, or your credit card bill, or whatever). What happens? Your provider disconnects you, and you’ll probably have to pay an extra fee to get service reestablished. You also get a frowny face on your credit report.




These aren’t merely cases of some people having more stuff than you do. They’re cases in which some people are systematically empowered to dictate the terms on which other people live, work, and trade. And we generally take it for granted. But it’s not obvious that things have to be that way.

When it comes to diagnosis and prescription, those of us who worry about socioeconomic inequality go in two different directions. Some identify the free market as the cause of such inequality, and government regulation as the cure; for others, it’s precisely the other way around. I’m obviously with the latter group; all the phenomena I mentioned are made possible by systematic restrictions on competition. Libertarians need to spend more time focusing on liberty as the solution to these pervasive asymmetries of power, rather than giving the impression that they find them unproblematic.

How Inequality Shapes Our Lives (Part 2)






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