Neoliberals, communists, and socialists focus primarily on wealth distribution. Much of their rhetoric revolves around the top one percent holding a majority of the world’s wealth. In their eyes there is only so much pie to go around and the top one percent have a vast majority of it while everybody else has to fight over scraps. The error of this viewpoint is that wealth isn’t fixed, it’s constantly being created.
I think part of the problem is people often mistake fiat currency for wealth. Fiat currency, as the name implies, indicates nothing more than a number some oligarch commanded to be created. Wealth, on the other hand, is the abundance of valuable resources and material possessions.
Throughout the entire history of our species wealth has continued to increase. As our agricultural knowledge increased food became more plentiful. As our metallurgical knowledge increased tools became more plentiful. As our mining knowledge increased raw materials became more plentiful. Human history is the history of more knowledge leading to more wealth. Today electricity, running water, and a plethora of home appliances are common in first world household. Internet access, automobiles, pocketable computers, 3D printers, and an almost uncountable number of other products that didn’t even exist merely a generation ago are now widely available. Their isn’t a single pie we all eat from, new pies of constantly being baked at an every increasing rate.
If you only believe there is a fixed amount of pie you focus on taking pie from others. This, in my opinion, is one of the biggest flaws in neoliberalism, communism, and socialism. Instead of trying to take pie by seizing the means of production and increasing taxes a more effective strategy is to start baking pies.
This is where agorism shines. Agorists aren’t trying to seize means of production or increase taxes. They’re focused on creating more wealth. Whether via creating more efficient means of production, preventing the State from taking a cut of everybody’s wealth, or simply creating wealth that has been forbidden by the State agorists are focused on creating more for everybody instead of redistributing what is already there.
The fact that more pie is constantly being created should be taken advantage of by everybody. Why relegate yourself to taking what already exists when you can create something better? There’s no reason to limit yourself like that.