By their nature, capital goods cannot be redistributed among the people in any sense that results in equality and wealth. The redistribution of wealth, if taken seriously, necessarily means the complete and utter destruction of wealth.
There is a fundamental fact about the world that has profound implications for the supply of natural resources and for the relationship between production and economic activity on the one side and man's environment on the other: the entire earth consists of solidly packed chemical elements.
Excerpted from a speech given in the House of Commons on the civil disabilities of the Jews, April 17, 1833: "Let us do justice to them. Let us open to them the door of the House of Commons. Let us open to them every career in which ability and energy can be displayed."
Herbert Spencer is often misrepresented in textbooks and websites as a "social Darwinist," but these claims describe a mythical Spencer that never existed. The real Spencer was quite different. The real Spencer often expressed views quite similar to modern-day libertarians.
God forbid someone anger the hyperactive trade unions. They will use force, seize the economy, and fervently hunt down anyone who dares to think that each worker is responsible to consumers and not to union leaders.
The collectivist doctrines look upon the individual merely as a refractory rebel. This sinful wretch has the impudence to give preference to his petty selfish interests as against the sublime interests of the great god society.
One of Josiah Child's main deviations from free-market and laissez-faire doctrine was to agitate for one of the favorite programs of the mercantilists — to push the legal maximum rate of interest ever lower. Formerly discredited "usury laws" were making a comeback on faulty economic rather than natural-law or theological grounds.
Hundreds of fans of the Austrian School are joining the campaign, because they realize the wonderful corner into which Krugman would be painted. He will either have to debate Austrian business-cycle theory or explain why a New York City food bank would miss out on $100,000+ in "right-wing" money.
Because the state is grounded in a network of lies, contradictions, deceptions, and conflicts, political systems are inherently in conflict with reality and must resort to intentional distortions of truth as a way of trying to appear coherent to a gullible public.
The more historians and publicists worshiped and adored the greatness and the majesty of Franklin Roosevelt, the more they scorned his predecessor as the dour man in the high collar who tried but failed to thwart the nation's ascension to paradise.
