It’s well and good to spend some words attacking the premises of progressive policies and calling their supporters the intellectual progeny of slaveholders.  But unless we’re willing to declare that we have no responsibility to each other, no Golden Rule, then we need an alternative approach.

Let’s start by defining (one, two) the economic universe as the total value that human beings attribute to existence, as measured by the maximum amount of productive effort that we could expend to live it fully.  Some large portion of this total lays fallow, as economic “potential.”  We can break this down again into smaller parts:  Some of our potential is locked up in things we haven’t learned to do yet or psychological hang-ups we haven’t overcome; some of our potential we set aside for simple enjoyment, like hours spent in the yard tanning or simply conversing with loved ones.

The active economy, then, is what remains: the value that our society measures with money.  (Remember that money is not value, of itself.)

The goal of social policy (in and out of government) ought to be the greatest possible realization of value from life.  The active economy can be a good indicator — inasmuch as it shows how much people are motivated to work for things they value — but it’s not sufficient.  Work is not the goal or the thing to be maximized.

Free-marketers often write and speak of the complexity of the economy, arguing that central planners can never have sufficient information, collected quickly enough, to guide an economy in a competent way. The conclusion is that we’re better off, as a practical matter, letting prices reflect value organically.

My framework, herein, not only compounds this complexity with all of the intangibles that make human existence valuable, but also makes central planning a moral presumption.  The central planners aren’t only trying to balance the needs of the economy, they’re also presuming to pass judgment on what each person should find fulfilling in life, including to compromise it for some in the name of uncertain attempts to unlock the potential of others.