> actual wealth [vs.] frivolities like fashion accessories and entertainment.
I'd argue that's a fallacy. Show a pre-industrial revolution subsistence farmer a car factory, and he'd throw his arms up in horror over the frivolity. Imagine his reaction to seeing a airplane factory producing billion dollar vehicles that are meant to freight hundreds of so-called "workers" to spend a week out of their FOUR annual vacation weeks drinking and dancing in southern Spain (where? the furthest this farmer has ever travelled is the next county over where his sister lives).
> (Side note: there is a case to be made that pure libertarianism would result in more wealth for everyone, meaning more people could afford voluntary charity and community spending. Bluntly, I don't have that much faith in human nature. At minimum, I could only see that working when coupled with the right sociocultural value system, which emphasized a balance between selfishness and community, rather than an adulation of greed.)
Governments enforcing sociocultural values only works when those values exist. In the old east-block, governments were hard at work enforcing a set of values it's citizens didn't share. It didn't work. The UK doesn't have a constitution, but it was much better at protecting it's citizens than these east-block countries whose constitutions, on paper, were vastly superior.
If the people broadly didn't care about inner city schools or the homeless, nothing would be done for them, government or not.
I'd argue that's a fallacy. Show a pre-industrial revolution subsistence farmer a car factory, and he'd throw his arms up in horror over the frivolity. Imagine his reaction to seeing a airplane factory producing billion dollar vehicles that are meant to freight hundreds of so-called "workers" to spend a week out of their FOUR annual vacation weeks drinking and dancing in southern Spain (where? the furthest this farmer has ever travelled is the next county over where his sister lives).
> (Side note: there is a case to be made that pure libertarianism would result in more wealth for everyone, meaning more people could afford voluntary charity and community spending. Bluntly, I don't have that much faith in human nature. At minimum, I could only see that working when coupled with the right sociocultural value system, which emphasized a balance between selfishness and community, rather than an adulation of greed.)
Governments enforcing sociocultural values only works when those values exist. In the old east-block, governments were hard at work enforcing a set of values it's citizens didn't share. It didn't work. The UK doesn't have a constitution, but it was much better at protecting it's citizens than these east-block countries whose constitutions, on paper, were vastly superior.
If the people broadly didn't care about inner city schools or the homeless, nothing would be done for them, government or not.