 Bertrand Russell Quotes 366 |
Free competition, which was the watchword of nineteenth-century liberalism, had undoubtedly much to be said in its favour. It increased the wealth of the nations, and it accelerated the transition from handicrafts to machine industry; it tended to remove artificial injustice and realised Napoleon's ideal of opening careers to talent. It left, however, one great injustice unremedied - the injustice due to unequal talents. In a world of free competition the man whom Nature has made energetic and astute grows rich, while the man whose merits are of a less competitive kind remains poor.
Source: Bertrand Russell: Success and failure (written in Jan. 11, 1932 and pub. in Mortals and Others, v.1, 1975.
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Russell's phrase ‘great injustice due to unequal talents’ has implications. What is the most important role or goal of the state? If money is of paramount importance, is the most important role and goal to increase gross national income (GDP) as much as possible? Or is it to ensure that as many citizens as possible feel happy? If being financially well-off is a condition for happiness, then the two go together, but it is not that simple.
There were (and still are) not a few senior figures in the LDP government who praised free competition and believed that the state should invest in talent and bail out those who fell behind, e.g. through basic income. However, due to the neoliberal policy since the Koizumi administration, the proportion of non-regular workers has increased from 20% to 40% in the last 30 years. This may be a good change for those who have become wealthy through free competition (or through stocks, etc.), but for those 40% of non-regular workers, it has been a bad change. Abenomics needs to be analysed and evaluated in detail.