One of the little probed mysteries of social history is society’s hostility to its greatest benefactors, the producers of wealth.  On every continent and in every epoch the people who have excelled in creating wealth have been the victims of some of society’s greatest brutalities.  Recent history has seen, in Germany, the holocaust of Jews; in Russia, the pograms of Kulaks and Jews; in northern Nigeria, the eviction and slaughter of tribesmen; in Indonesia, the killing of near a million overseas Chinese; in China itself, the Red Guard rampages against the productive; in Uganda, the massacre of whites and Indians; in Tanzania, the expropriation and expulsion; in Bangladesh, the murder and confinement of the Biharis.  And as the seventies drew to a close, much of the human wealth and capital of Cuba and Southeast Asia was relegated to the open seas.

Everywhere the horrors and the bodies pile up, in the world’s perennial struggle to rid itself of the menace of riches- of the shopkeepers, the bankers, the merchants, the traders, the entrepreneurs – at the same time that the toll also mounts in victims of unnecessary famine and poverty.  Everywhere nations claim a determination to “develop”; but everywhere, too, their first goal is the expropriate, banish, or kill the existing developers.  At the United Nations, these contradictions reach a polyglot climax, as voices rise with alternating zeal against the blight of want against the Americans and Zionists, creators of wealth.

There is something, evidently, in the human mind, even when carefully honed at Oxford or the Sorbonne, that hesitates to believe in capitalism: in the enriching mysteries of inequality, the inexhaustible mines of the division of labor, the multiplying miracles of market economics, the compounding gains from trade and property.  It is far easier to see the masters of the works as evil, to hunt them as witches, favored by occult powers of Faustian links.

From the new edition of Wealth and Poverty by George Gilder.  Originally published in 1980 the new version is updated with 40,000 words and views on the current scene

HKO

Perhaps the greatest contribution in the evolution of economics is the understanding that economic development is not a zero sum game.  Yet this is also the most hard to learn and understand; that the success of the wealthy is not required to come at the expense of others.  The poorest in the countries with substantial economic freedom live far better than the poorest in the countries with little economic freedom.  Yet we are continuing down a road where we believe that the poor will be greatly benefited by policies that greatly reduce the economic freedom of our producers. We are adapting the language of demonizing wealth creators that is more associated with third world countries.

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