Practically All Government Attempts To Redistribute Wealth

The More 'adequate' We Make Relief, The More People We Are Going To Find Willing To Get On It And Stay On It Indefinitely. The More We Try To Make Sure That Everybody Really In Need Of Relief Gets It, The More Certain We Can Be That We Are Also Giving It To People Who Neither Need Nor Deserve It.

There May Have Been Somewhere, As A Few Eighteenth-century Philosophers Dreamed, A Group Of Peaceful Men Who Got Together One Evening After Work And Drew Up A Social Contract To Form The State. But Nobody Has Been Able To Find An Actual Record Of It. Practically All The Governments Whose Origins Are Historically Established Were The Result Of Conquest-of One Tribe By Another, One City By Another, One People By Another. Of Course There Have Been Constitutional Conventions, But They Merely Changed The Working Rules Of Governments Already In Being.

In Practice [monetary Management] Is Merely A High-sounding Euphemism For Continuous Currency Debasement. It Consists Of Constant Lying In Order To Support Constant Swindling. Instead Of Automatic Currencies Based On Gold, People Are Forced To Take Managed Currencies Based On Guile. Instead Of Precious Metals They Hold Paper Promises Whose Value Falls With Every Bureaucratic Whim. And They Are Suavely Assured That Only Hopelessly Antiquated Minds Dream Of Returning To Truth And Honesty And Solvency And Gold.

The Way To Maximize Production Is To Maximize The Incentives To Production. And The Way To Do That, As The Modern World Has Discovered, Is Through The System Known As Capitalism - The System Of Private Property, Free Markets, And Free Enterprise.

The Ideas Which Now Pass For Brilliant Innovations And Advances Are In Fact Mere Revivals Of Ancient Errors, And A Further Proof Of The Dictum That Those Who Are Ignorant Of The Past Are Condemned To Repeat It.