I make the following claims:
  1. In capitalism, the most reliable way out of the misery of wage labor is to start your own business.
  2. In social capitalism, the government pretty much closes off this path by making the life of a small business owner miserable. They impose endless bureaucratic obstacles, and then they proceed to confiscate the income you and your business desperately need to survive.
  3. All this damage is rationalized as necessary for the government to promote that cherished "fair distribution of income". In effect, the government destroys economic opportunity, stifles everyone's progress, and then tries to make it look as though it's doing something good for everyone.
  4. The way to fix capitalism is not for the government to stumble around trying to ensure a "fair distribution of income". Instead, the solution is to provide a fair distribution of opportunity.
  5. A way towards a fair distribution of opportunity would be to remove the insensible burdens placed on everyone who tries to escape the wage labor treadmill by starting their own business.
  6. The majority of bureaucratic burden on small businesses would be removed by repealing the income tax in all forms and replacing it with a sales tax that's much simpler to administer. An exceedingly large proportion of work that goes into running a small business is spent following procedures whose only objective is to enable the government to measure and take away your income. If there is no income tax, the need for the majority of red tape in a small business goes away.
  7. The remaining part of bureaucratic burden would be removed by removing regulation where unnecessary. This is especially egregious e.g. in professions where regulation serves mainly as a barrier of entry for newcomers. For example, the government decides that there are already "enough" hair salons, so it makes life difficult for young hairdressers who want to start their own salons, protecting the previous generation that already has them. The new hairdressers are therefore effectively forced to work for the established ones, who treat them badly and pay them a pittance. That's a stark violation of the fair opportunity principle, and it stems from the damaging belief held by some members of the government that they can "decide" what's "best" for everyone.
Governments are filled with people who are as stupid or stupider than everyone else, and so are in no position to make decisions about other people's lives. Everyone would be much better off if most of them just stopped trying.