This sentence is so bizarre not even the opposite is correct. First off, 'effective leaders and managers' isn't an antonym to 'bureaucrat'. There are effective leaders and managers in bureaucracies. In fact that's kind of what bureaucracy means, effective and rational management of resources.
Furthermore, bureaucracies exist both in the private sector and public sector. Wealthy billionaires employ hundreds (if not more) of individuals doing nothing but managing their wealth in highly bureaucratic fashion. They don't run around and employ their billions in some sort of crazy act of pizza and dorm-room fuelled creative destruction, the deploy countless of institutions and non-profits and accountants and lawyers, the gates foundation looks more like the tax office or a defense department than a garage workshop.
>, or give people with a proven track record more resources to devote to new enterprises
No, the point of capitalism is to allocate capital to people who don't have any proven track record. Because that's the people who actually make new things. If you only want to distribute money to people with track records then a bureaucracy is the right address, because correctly licensing, testing, rewarding, and promoting people based on their track record is the very essence of the ideal Weberian bureaucracy. Keeping track of who does a good job is 90% of what bureaucracies are all about.
As long as the capital is being employed productively and managed by the most competent people to do so, we all benefit. I'm carefully trying to avoid a 'tax bad, government bad' position and the phrasing you pointed out quite reasonably might have given that impression.
> Inheritance taxes should be high, without being overly punitive
What's strange is that when you talk to people about inheritance tax they become instantly outraged at the idea of the government taking their money by force, yet they seem to have no problem with the government forcibly taking close to half of their salary.
It's a strange paradox and it seems that people just aren't used to the idea, despite it being much fairer. Tax the wealth of the dead rather than the earnings of the living.
If we could slash income tax in half but implement an inheritance tax of, for example, 50% above a certain threshold, it would be a win-win for everyone. The rich would still leave lots of money to their kids and the average person would get to keep more of their earned money. It's more meritocratic on every level.
Sadly, so many of our leaders now are very wealthy themselves, so this isn't a proposition they're likely to be enthusiastic about.
That said this is an issue that for some reason has a lot of poor people who would never be affected taking up the torch in support of the very same billionaires that are currently screwing them over. It's really remarkable the power of propaganda.
One could argue that the current system of selecting corporate executives produces no better result than the general election process used to select some government officials. Certainly there is no lack of poorly run companies in the modern world, especially when compared to highly competitive companies like Apple under Steve Jobs and Tesla/SpaceX under Elon Musk. The advantage to corporate boards is that candidates don't have to spend time and energy with public campaigning, but they gravitate towards conservative governance that is unable to adapt to changing times.
At any rate, the competence of the leadership at companies doesn't really matter. If they make money they can be taxed on that. How competent the leadership is may or may not impact how much money they make. Poorly managed companies may even make more money in the short term.
Your statement is a gross misunderstanding of tax codes. Inheritance should not only be protected from excessive taxation, it shouldn’t be taxed at all in the first place. It is literally taxing Death.
The state can levy a small fee to retire identity of the deceased for legal purposes. But other than that, transfer of wealth being taxed is theft.
The feedback loop in Capitalism is to direct capital towards people who discover more efficient way to provide goods and services, or provide better goods and services, to help them scale up, or give people with a proven track record more resources to devote to new enterprises. This is exactly what we want.
There are three main issues with this picture.
The first is rent seeking behaviour, where simply having capital enables growing more capital without productive activity. This is what we need to tax punitively. Capital that is not being used productively is dead weight on the economy.
Secondly, monopolistic behaviour is closely related to rent seeking, it's using market power to extract rents or exert unfair influence.
Finally inheritance is a problem because it's un-earned wealth. There's no reason to expect that those inheriting wealth are likely to manage it effectively. Inheritance taxes should be high, without being overly punitive after all one of the main incentives to work hard and accumulate wealth is to provide for the next generation. You want to allow successful business owners and investors to benefit their families without facilitating excess waste of resources.