"And for myself, I imagine there's a quantity of government that is the most efficient amount, but I have no idea how a person can calculate what it is, so I don't try. Nor do I care much if an idea is labelled socialist or capitalist."
CactusFlower: That sounds like wisdom to me! I think it is worth TRYING to calculate or, at least, reason it through.
I think that has to start with first principles in terms of what is wealth and what is "ILLth": http://www.resilience.org/stories/2011-11-14/wealth-illth-and-net-welfare/ (I haven't read this particular article...you can do your own search for the word "illth", though, as it is a real, worthwhile concept from which to start.
If you pocket "wealth", but it is only by leaving the greater society (including environment) clearly worse off, then wisdom suggests you should not be allowed to get away with just walking away...externalizing some or all of the cost...leaving someone else to clean up, or pay the price, for your extraction.
"Capitalism", at least as currently practiced, SUCKS. "Socialism" does, too. Who do these suck from, and how much NET? Now, the laws of physics, and particularly the principle of entropy, rule everything in the long run. But it should be possible to decide what is going to be used as the measure of wealth, and illth, and compare systems rationally.
Socialism (government control of distribution) works well with small tribes with limited resources. Another word for socialism is tribalism -- that got us through 100,000 years but it was hardly a eutopia (unless you consider slavery a eutopia). But in larger groups, and epecially with limited resources and NO OPT OUT it *always* degrades rapidly to Oligarchy. How do you get around that without eliminating all real humans and only leaving Morlocks and Eloi?
I haven't read much directly of Adam Smith (something remaining for me to remedy) but I have read a bit of other classical economists, especially Ricardo and his Theory of Comparative Advantage (which is widely MISconstrued--often deliberately, I suspect).
Ricardo (MISrepresented) is the usual justification for global "Capitalism". But Ricardo made clear that his argument had a good number of PREMISES...startng with "free markets" but also including factors of production not being easily movable. So, the entire logical/algebra justifying what we now call "capitalism" is specious.
Mussolini DEFINED Fascism as the integration of corporations with government. So, a good argument can be made that ALL countries around the world are more Fascist, by far, than anything else. People that throw the word "fascist" about are, more than anything else, either ignoramuses or deliberately trying to cloud the waters. It has a clear definition: it IS what the UK and the US and Germany, etc. etc. etc. all embrace now. Mussolini deserves a Nobel Prize in economics for having converted the world to his system of economics.
Looping back to where I started on this short essay, I think first principles deserve to be carefully questioned and re-examined. The industrial era is winding to a close and hydrocarbon energy resources, of all sorts, but also including most “renewables” and even nuclear, are rapidly moving toward net 1:1 EROEI. (Some of these are already below 1:1, with no salvation -- and it is idiotic to continue them). Most of them are badly calculated. Endgame is near. Endgame for corporate capitalism as we know it. But also endgame for Socialism, WHERE cost is not considered, human psychology is not considered, and the physics of depleting resources can no longer be ignored.
Maybe not the best essay I've ever written, but an okay start to some core issues and concerns I think can be, and MUST be, worked through if we are going to keep anything alive, and not backslide into a new Dark Age... or worse.
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