It sounds to me that the objection you are raising is a political objection rather than an economic one. It sounds like you are saying, "there will be tremendous incentive to tamper with any such setup, amendments and exceptions would be added, and pretty soon we will be back to where we started." I think this is a potent objection -- this is essentially what moved the relative income equality the U. S. A. experienced in the 1950's and 1960's, to a much more unequal one today. Nevertheless, this is a political problem, not an economic problem, isn't it? Or am I missing something?

I regard it as a strategic objection rather than a political objection. Right sizing an economy is a very different objective than growing an economy. In a resource limited world it may be very desirable for people to work themselves out of a job. Making products that are long lived and repairable provides the same effective use value for a much smaller consumption of resources. The fact that such products require less manufacturing labor would be regarded as a good thing in ecologically rational world. It is very hard to achieve such a right sizing emphasis when we are economically preoccupied with current exchange income in dollars and with competitive accumulation of wealth. We need people who are exercising their smarts trying to figure out how we can produce a decent quality of life with a minimum consumption of resources rather that trying to reach whatever salary cap we have decided to allow.

Resource caps might be worthwhile even if we eliminate competitive accumulation as our primary economic modus operandi since, even if I am not trying to get ahead of the Jones, the long term stability of whatever wealth level we achieve is still an issue.

I cannot really give you many details about the day to day operations of CODELCO. I just gave them as an example of a state owned company that has been successful and profitable over a long period of time. CODELCO has a seven person board of directors which is appointed by the Chilean president and excess profits are appropriate by the state treasury. In 2007 Fitch Ratings gave them very high financial ratings, claiming that their long term outlook was very positive and that their production cash costs were among the lowest in the industry.