kirby
Can you see the difference between what Yuyutus is talking about, and what you're talking about? (Hint: it's really obvious.)

Keith Suter
An interesting concise opinion, and well written.

You make two assumptions which I think you can't defend.

The first is that:
"a new notion that economic growth required a mixture of government intervention and free market principles unlocked more wealth for more people than ever before."

The second is this:
"Therefore, the challenge for governments and the financial planning industry is to make sure that the new "priests of finance" are ethical. They do not want to run into the "abuse" problems encountered by many religious organizations (financial abuse is the most common form of elder abuse)."

I challenge you to prove these propositions, on terms that any argument by way of begging the question, personal argument, political opinion or ideology, self-contradicting, misrepresentation or non-sequitur, admits that the person making that argument, has lost the general question,

namely whether:
1. such government interverventions do in fact create net wealth for society as a whole, rather than engaging in a redistribution based on legal force, privilege and deception.

Basically the state and the pet favourite corporations they regulate, form a parasitic symbiosis, as against the non-consenting persons who are fleeced to pay for the state to enforce obedience against the population, in ways that benefit the corporations or trades, and expropriate others.

Thus the problem of abuse is not solved by making government the decision-maker. It is indeed capable of scaling up the criminality in legal corruption, for example, making huge profits for certain corporations based on the governments' regulations.

You assume
2. government has the ethical capacity to do what you want. But gumment has its own interests much of which can and do conflict with those of the society as a whole. It has all the same ethical liabilities and more.

Yes people need fiduciary and prudential counsel. However that, of itself, doesn't automatically over-rule the moral primacy of voluntary transactions. It does not automatically qualify as government intervention displacing consent with regulation and corporate favours.

That is indeed the economic policy definition of fascism. That's what we've got, and that's what you're defending.

And a person giving such counsel will necessarily be faced with the underlying pragmatic and spiritual questions for the client he advises. And these will go to wisdom.

The wise way is to help the client so that they satisfy the pragmatic problem, at the same time getting spiritual satisfaction.

The unwise way is for the counsel to lead the client down a path that does not satisfy only a formal financial or legal need, without satisfying the underlying human being as to his pragmatic and spiritual interests.

"Financial planning needs to be reframed as an honourable calling."

This problem is not presumptively solved by merely handing the decision-making to government.

As a matter of economic history, the policy of the fascists was precisely that symbiosis of big corporations and the state, knotting like toads in a dungeon.

It is enough to require that all transactions be consensual. The rest is criminal fascism by government.

Yuyustu says it all!
Alan B.