Soros is exploring territory that has been explored by others years ago, including me. Unfortunately, like Bruce Scott (who he refers to) he seems to be settling on a definition of capitalism that assumes large-scale government control as part of the definition. This threatens to destroy the analysis by basically defining one term out of existence.

Unfortunately, even assuming Soros has the purest of motivations, this will lead to the same old fallacy people have been working under for years:

Prosperity and economic success is just a matter of giving the right government leaders control of the economic system.

The corollary to this thesis, of course, is that the long litany of failures of controlled economies is just that the wrong people were in charge.

Rinse, repeat.

Soros will spend a lot of money on a lot of experts, and I can tell you for free what they'll come up with: The solution to economic problems is more regulations, stronger controls, and more restrictions on economic activity, But this time, done right.

Scott, who uses sports effectively as a metaphor for economic systems, conflates "rules," "referees" and "owners." There's a difference.

The ultimate moral foundation of basic free market ideas is that a person owns their own life, and it is immoral to take their life and property without consent or value returned.

All collectivist economic ideas are based on the concept that you can enslave a man and make him like it. Maybe, but you don't get an advanced and prosperous technological society out of slaves. Even if you overlook all the philosophy and analysis, and all my windy rhetoric, the empirical evidence of the last century speaks for itself.

I'll know more about where Soros is going after his last lecture (today). But I'm afraid it won't be much of a surprise.