As Thomas Sowell has said: 'I have never understood why it is greed to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.'

We can see how nations that became wealthy thanks to free-market capitalism later stalled when they adopted socialist ideas (most notably several Scandinavian nations) before dropping those ideas; we can see how Venezuela slipped from the wealthiest nation in South America to the poorest - with skyrocketing poverty and violence as the people cannot find enough food to eat despite having some of the largest oil reserves in the world, abundant natural resources, good soil and a year-round growing season; we can see how Chile which was once one of the poorest nations in South America became the wealthiest after partially adopting free market ideas.

We have seen the same pattern over and over again, everywhere we look, and some of us have come to suspect a causal link.

But for some reason, some people are not convinced. They prefer to accuse others of greed for wanting to keep what they have produced, even as they demand the product of other people's labor for themselves.




Baldur