I thought I’d reblog an old article I wrote two years ago. More relevant today than ever:
“Most of us forget that in the past wealth was always obtained by the subjugation of others or the theft of their goods. All the elites in the empires of old built their fortunes by taking land, enslaving peasants, and sacking the bounty of wealthy neighbors. Inequality was said to be ordained by God and preserved by blue blood and one’s condition at birth. Capitalism changed all this.”
They then turn their lazy eye upon the villain – capitalism and the capitalist countries – ostensibly because we have more. They rail against corporate pay; the desperately poor making common cause with the accidentally rich in denouncing tycoons and masters of industry or those who have built for themselves great wealth. They lobby for central plans which – at the point of a gun – take from some to give to others; with the only real beneficiaries being the intermediaries of this theft.
The truth is that this analysisis the result of tunnel vision and a stunning lack of retrospection.
I recently returned from a trip to Vienna – where I spent the evenings wandering through the old parts of town; passing in front of the palaces and churches and mansions of the imperial overlords of old. Massive structures of arrogant opulence built not by those who created but…
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