If people are educated they do decide to contribute to job creation, even if they are "adequately employed", because they don't keep that employment for long if they don't.
You simply institute the proper incentives within companies to drive them to employ only those who are willing to help the company expand through job creation efforts, both inside and outside the company. Companies won't want to keep someone on their payroll who isn't willing to help the company grow (and could actually cause the company to suffer), so any time someone refuses to help foster job creation, they'll put their own job at risk over time.
To put it more simply: If your pay is based upon how well the company does overall and one of your co-workers decides to take action (by not contributing to job creation efforts inside and outside the company) that causes sanctions to come down on the company, you and your other co-workers are going to become angry at that person because they are hurting everyone. If they keep doing that, they will probably lose their job (and maybe more than that depending upon how angry those co-workers are), especially when there are people who would love to have that job if they don't want to play ball.
The argument putting government in charge will foster abuse of power is extremely myopic. These things don't happen when proper checks and balances are in place.
Have you considered that modern capitalism actually allows the same type of abuse of power? It simply replaces government entities with private wealthy individuals. They abuse power the same, and yet it is actually encouraged. Funny, people who preach against the evils of socialism never mention the evils of capitalism.
If you honestly believe "the greed and selfish nature of a number of wealthy individuals" keeps one another in check, then you are either uneducated on these matters or you are delusional. There is very little "keeping in check" when it comes to the wealthy in the modern system. In fact, the terrible actions of the wealthy contributed significantly to the current economic downturn, and yet within modern capitalism, there was no reason for them not to do what they did. They had every reason and incentive to attempt to exploit the system unmercifully with little in the way of negative effects on them. No, it was the middle and lower classes and the economy as a whole who paid for the sins of those greedy people at the top.
After what I've seen and learned in all the work I've done and been a part of, I'm fully convinced capitalism is a deadly destructive force which only benefits the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. In fact, I believe there is a great deal of evidence which suggests capitalism will eventually doom America's economy causing America to fall from its place in the world status.
10/30/2012 3:13 PM (edited)