“In the modern capitalist world, in which the historical extremes of poverty have been widely overcome, the most acute moral issues relate to recognition of accomplishment and superiority- treatment not of the poor but of the excellent and gifted people whose work is indispensable to providing opportunities for the poor and everyone else.  In capitalism, as I wrote in ‘Wealth and Poverty’ some thirty years ago, the great conflict is not between rich and poor but between incumbent elites and existing forms of capital and the new elites and superior forms of capital that must necessarily displace them if economic progress is to occur.”

“Thus the paramount conflict in capitalism is between the established system-entrepreneurs, business,political movements, and bureaucracies- and the superior minds and methods, vessels of excellence and innovation, that threaten to usurp them. On one side stand the alliances of government and elites, in democracies and tyrannies alike, that distort economies around the globe by protecting the past in the name of social fashions and special interests.  On the other side are the inventors, entrepreneurs, industrial innovators, and visionary artists who challenge every establishment.”

from George Gilder’s “The Israel Test.”

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