Economic equality harms individuals

The man who sees economic disparity and can only pursue equality through confiscation, under threat of violence, of wealth from those who have it dooms his society to poverty and tyranny. This is especially true when private, profit-seeking institutions are provided access to the coercive authority of government and participate in the confiscation.

The most efficient and nefarious of these institutions are banks. When granted both the power and protection of the state for profitable enterprise, banks are incredibly adroit at transferring wealth, in the name of economic stability, from the middle and lower classes and concentrating it at the top. This is exactly the situation in which we find ourselves today.

It is no accident that we have massive debt and unemployment at the same time that commodity prices are skyrocketing. Our misguided sense of morality led us to trust central planners with authority, not only to protect us from each other, but to determine economic outcomes.

This authority has been exercised, in complicity with private industry, to divert wealth from its natural distribution to sectors deemed preferable to the central planners. Whatever their stated intentions, these central planners’ priority is not the best interests of ordinary citizens.

We have allowed ourselves to be conned. We asked for economic safety nets and protection from the consequences of our own choices. We got what we asked for.

Joshua Douglas
Yuma