The Public Sector and Private Fortunes The best way to understand the right-wing social vision - and what is wrong with it - is to start with a very simple "thought experiment". Imagine a millionaire is marooned on a desert island - kind of like Mr. Howell on "Gilligan's Island", for a corny example. What is his fortune worth? The answer is absolutely nothing. In fact, his fortune is less than worthless. It is meaningless. "Wealth" has no tangible reality outside of the social system that creates and regulates its social conventions and symbols. In fact, "wealth" is based on an entire infrastructure of legal concepts.
These are things like "property rights", "contract rights", "legal tender", "negotiable instruments", "corporations" and the "stocks" and "bonds" those "fictitious persons" issue. On a desert island, your trunk full of cash and your stocks and bonds are so much toilet paper - and they aren't even very good for that. So when cheap-labor conservatives say that "government plays no role in the private economy", I just laugh. In fact, government has created a vast web of infrastructure, conventions and institutions that make our advanced industrial society possible.
The right-wing social vision often fails to recognize the role of the public sector in creating and maintaining the infrastructure that allows private fortunes to exist. This thought experiment of a millionaire being marooned on a desert island illustrates how wealth is only meaningful in the context of a thriving social system. This system is made up of many components, such as property rights, contract rights, legal tender, negotiable instruments, corporations, and stocks and bonds. These components are all created and regulated by the government, and without them, private fortunes are meaningless. Therefore, it is impossible for the private economy to exist without the public sector playing an essential role.
