Taxing “dead capital” to make it more productive
At least since the birth of modern capitalism in eighteenth-century Europe, competition has been recognized by many economists and other theoreticians of ethics and social sciences as an essential driver of progress. Either applied to trade, politics or science, competition, they claimed, stimulates innovation and confronts products, services, parties or ideas on a marketplace that rewards the best and sanctions the worst, alike a permanent race where spectators are also expected to be voters, as it should be the case in liberal democracies.