Women are usually considered an oppressed, dominated group. They are usually thought of as inferior to men. Even the great philosopher Aristotle held that men are superior to women. Nathaniel Branden in his article once accused that “Ayn Rand once wrote that no woman should aspire to be the President of United States as it would make her superior to all men” ¹. While it is not at all clear that the profession of the President is superior to other ones, such politically incorrect views deserve all the attention it can get.
It is the task of this article to examine what Capitalism did to the status of women. Capitalism is blamed for everything from dowry to prostitution to work place sexual harassment. How much of it is true? If one gives all these accusations a moments thought, he would realize that beneath all this lies ignorance and anti-capitalist mentality.
Prostitution is one of oldest professions of the world. It is stupid to blame prostitution and all its effects on capitalism. What is implicit in that accusation is the realization that prostitution is basically a trade and in this special case, sex is traded for money. People stupidly think that if money and trade are abolished, they would put prostitutes out of business. Moreover, there is nothing wrong in prostitution as such. It is a trade, just like any other. Every human action is a trade, on a fundamental level. When a person chooses one course of action against another, he is trading his effort for the improvement in his state he wants to bring about.
A prostitute doesn’t physically infringe anyone’s personal freedom. She provides sex for people who are willing to pay for it. A prostitute wouldn’t have acted in the manner she did if she hadn’t expected to gain from it. The same goes for the man who approaches her for sex. It is a voluntary exchange for mutual benefit. If anyone is against the trade, he is free not to take part on it. What right does that person to prevent others from voluntarily trading with others? The illegalization of prostitution leads to a lot many anti-social people getting into that profession and a deterioration of the service people get from a prostitute.
Do an individual, or a collection of individuals under the banner of Government have the right to prevent two individuals trading with each other? Is morality to be enforced on the point of a gun? Is it possible to lead people to morality through coercion? To anyone who understands the sanctity of individual rights and personal freedom, the answer to these questions is a big No. If a person doesn’t want to have sex with a prostitute, he is free not to patronize her. He doesn’t have the right to decide for others. Anyone who wants to decide for others is a potential dictator.
Dowry is another case in point. People who blame Capitalism for dowry are totally ignorant of history. In the past polygamy was prevalent. It was only after women started to bring in wealth to the marriage, people started sticking to one wife. I shall quote Mises:

“As the idea of contract enters the Law of Marriage, it breaks the rule of the male, and makes the wife a partner with equal rights. From a one-sided relationship resting on force, marriage thus becomes a mutual agreement. Nowadays the position of the woman differs from the position of the man only in so far as their peculiar ways of earning a living differ. Woman’s position in marriage was improved as the principle of violence was thrust back, and as the idea of contract advanced in other fields of the Law of Property it necessarily transformed the property relations between the married couple. The wife was freed from the power of her husband for the first time when she gained legal rights ever the wealth which she brought into marriage and which she acquired during marriage. That marriage unites one man and one woman that it can be entered into only with the free will of both parties that the rights of husband and wife are essentially the same — these principles develop from the contractual attitude to the problem of married life.”

Dowry is also a case of voluntary trade for mutual benefit. Some might find it crass to link marriage to trade. In their eyes, marriage must be done solely out of love. They totally miss the point. No one is forcing anyone to pay dowry or accept it. If a girl wants a boy who loves her without any monetary ties associated with it, she is free to seek such a person. Then she should be willing to wait for such a person and accept him when she finds him. She would have to narrow her search. If she is consistent, she wouldn’t look at the job or income of the guy she is going to marry. That too would be crass and materialistic. She would marry solely for love!
Some people mistakenly say that dowry has made marriage a trade and bride a commodity. In the first place, marriage would be a trade even in the absence of dowry as people are trading sex and love to get back the same in return. In the second place, it is the bride’s family which pays dowry. Certainly, it is the groom who is treated as commodity here. It should also be noted that usually the bride’s family look at the job and income of the groom. Doesn’t that make it a trade? Doesn’t that make that girl a prostitute, as she is trading love and sex for money? Feminists usually say that marriage is slavery. But, as Murray Rothbard had pointed out, in most families the husband goes for work and looks after his wife. It certainly means that it is the husband who is treated as slave here.
Collectivists usually bring up the case of work place sexual harassment. They ask what would be done if the employer sexually harasses the employee in a libertarian society. What they fail to understand is that sexual harassment is a crime and the employer who sexually harasses his employee would be punished if the victim files a case and proves it. Law would be much more efficient in a libertarian society as the lawyers have both moral and financial incentive to be objective. In a statist society the lawyers have only a moral responsibility. Moreover, in a private organization it would be in the interest of the employer to avoid such incidents as it is expensive and would keep female employees away. In a government organization, that is not the case. What is implicit in the collectivists question is that they assume that in most cases, women submit to such harassment. If that is case, it would mean that women are trading sex for her salary, job and all the benefits which come with it. Doesn’t that make her a prostitute? Do these collectivists sympathize with prostitutes?

1. Nathaniel Branden accused, Ayn Rand [↩]

We all are capable of having emotions. Emotions give us much valuable information about ourselves and how we perceive the world. Wrong emotions are usually the result of wrong ideas held by a person. Consider a person who admires a “successful bureaucrat”. I seriously doubt whether he would have the same emotions towards that bureaucrat if he has learned Free Market economics and have understood that bureaucrats are unnecessary for the proper functioning of the society, and that they do great harm. His admiration is likely to turn into hatred once he learns these facts. Or consider a person who thinks that advertising is harmful and leads to a wastage of resources. He would feel negative emotions towards advertisements. It is likely that his emotions would change if he learns about the benevolent effects of advertising. He would start enjoying advertisements.
A lot many people sympathize with collectivism and its several variants. It is also a shocking fact that so many people admire dictators. Why does a large part of the population admire dictators and hate businessmen? There are several reasons. Envy is truly one of the reasons why they hate businessmen. People simply can’t accept the fact that there are some men who earn more than they do. The morality of altruism is another reason. They sense that a businessman is not an altruist and is acting in his long term rational self interest. In their eyes, everything a dictator does is not for him, but for his subjects. It doesn’t occur to them that whatever the dictator does are not for the well being of the people, but for a state of affairs which would lead to his well being. They fail to see that people can help the society only if they act in their own self interest. They stick to their code of altruism like a neurotic even when it is well evident that the consequences of altruism are disastrous.
Most people hate responsibility. They want someone to guide them on the right path. They want their survival guaranteed to them. This is part of the reason why they hate liberty. Too dull to see the fact that economic freedom is essential for economic security, they see a conflict between liberty and security. Liberty in their eyes means a free hand for the rugged individualist- the capitalist who exploits the masses. Morris and Linda Tannehill have explained it clearly:

“It is a deep fear of the responsibility and risk of having to make one’s own decisions and accept the consequences, with no ultimate authority to appeal to for guidance and to blame in case of failure. This is the reason for such cries as “We must have strong leadership in this time of crisis,” “We need new and better leaders,” and “God, give us a leader “.

People who fear responsibility find it easier to call for leaders, even when those leaders may become tyrants, than to accept the risk and effort of looking for solutions to the problems that beset them.
Upon examination, such people usually prove to be suffering from a deficiency of self-esteem—lacking a sense of personal efficacy and worth, they feel a sneaky, uncommitted doubt about their ability to survive in a world where they will never be provided with the unearned. Those who persist, in spite of all evidence to the contrary, in believing that totalitarianism makes a nation strong are revealing a sneaky admiration for dictatorship. Such an admiration springs from a psychological dependency which cannot conceive of having to be free and thrown on one’s own uncertain resources.”
We are now getting to the other part of the problem-Why people are attracted to men with a dark side. Men have always had a fascination for the dark. They had worshiped fire and thunderstorms. As long as there are rejecting or tyrannical parents, people will have a fascination for such men. They want others to treat them as they were treated as a child. It is a severe mental disorder. It is an addiction, worse than any narcotic addiction or alcoholism. Nothing good can come out of such a relationship. Masochism is all there is behind this perversion. Some turn to the other side of the coin warding off their pain and tender feelings as weaknesses.
Camille Paglia, another female writer, who is known as the Ayn Rand of 90’s in her writings, find fault with abused women as they are weak; that they might be enjoying it covertly. I am not to question the merit of her argument, which could be right or wrong, as the case might be, but it is no coincidence that Paglia; Rand are Nietzschean’s. It is also, not a coincidence that Nietzsche, who believed in eliminating all weaknesses and tenderness, was a German. It was the brutal parenting in Germany, in those days, inspired by many writers including Shrebers, which created a Hitler, and many men who would march to his tune. Hitler, who was afraid of his father, too believed in rooting out all weaknesses and instilling cruelty. So, did his humiliated followers. Pseudo-strength and cruelty, they thought would let off their secret shame. It didn’t!

Many of you would have read of the merits of the superior culture of pre-World War I Germany. “Children were all disciplined and well behaved, as military cadets.” It is the very same culture which they praise, that paved way for a dictatorship. It was then believed that the will of a child is to be broken for him to be easily manipulated later. A child manipulated that way could be manipulated as easily, later, by an adult. She, in fact, would seek men who would be in control and manipulate her that way. She roots out her pain and humiliating imagining all these manipulations and abuse to be expressions of strength. It is such manipulations which makes things easier for Hitlers, Stalins; Saddams. Some learn the art from being once manipulated that way. It is worth noting that Saddam, Hitler, Pol Pot; Stalin all were extremely tortured as children.
It is the early idealization of parental figure, based on a faith-Which means: not based on any rational evidence, which is the very root of this neurosis. It is the belief that children should love their parents. It is the belief that one shouldn’t be true to oneself, but act on a sense of duty. All religions and variants of totalitarianism, including statism are based on such faiths: that some acts or emotions are good in, by and of itself, and that one should act against his own self interest. Such notions help them to repress what was done to them in their childhood. They imagine themselves to possess a love which, in fact, is only a vague apprehension they can neither define nor cure. What else is the path towards virtuosity? When it comes to their mind what was done to them, the only solution it would occur to them would not be to hate their parents, but to idealize their acts. The same happens to men in a dictatorship too. They try to evade their hatred acting it out on others, by torturing their own selves or seeking others who would do that job much effectively. How far they are from their true selves! They haven’t even the wits to know such behavior was motivated by power hunger, humiliation and revenge and not by any benevolent motive. Love, discipline and charity aren’t to be instilled by a sense of duty. The only solution is to have their hatred rightly directed. One would ask: What is to be gained by such hatred? My answer is: No one gains anything by faking reality. No one can oppose injustice giving moral sanction to it. It is much better to have that hatred directed rightly. It is much better to be true to one self. Does that mean one should act on it? Not necessarily!

“All property is theft”, said Proudhon. The very statement contradicts itself. An act could be called theft only if it involves taking the property of another which is legitimately owned. If no one legitimately owns any property, then how could it be termed as theft? If one could extort a grain of truth out of Proudhon’s statement, it would be that property was largely acquired through wrong means in the past. In India, in most cases land was forcefully appropriated by kings and distributed to Zamindars for the ease of tax collection. The Zamindars have no just claim to the land they acquired in this manner. There were cases of feudalism and slavery in the past. The crucial question is whether ownership claims to land possessed by the descendant of the looter have legitimacy or not. Should it be handed back to the descendants of the victims?
A few days back a reader of my blog posed this question to me: What if an industrialist who is creating wealth and providing jobs for millions is the descendant of a person who earned his wealth by loot? Should his right to property be respected?
In all my readings I haven’t found a libertarian thinker deals with this aspect morally other than Murray Rothbard. Ayn Rand is said to have provided a moral basis to Capitalism. But she doesn’t deal with a crucial aspect –The initial allocation of property rights. Capitalism is a politico-economic system based on private property rights and this sort of evasion is hard to digest.
The question I was asked is quite valid. Take the case of Dalits. Most of them are poor. In the past property was acquired through wrong means and it can’t be denied that it has played a role in the poverty they suffer from. The same could be said of blacks in the United States. Should anything be done about it? I am not a fan of Arundhati Roy and was a strong critic of her views, but I shall quote a few interesting lines from Roy’s An Ordinary Person’s Guide To Empire

“Even if it were true that there is a Hindu temple under every mosque in India, what was under the temple? Most likely an Adivasi Shrine. How deep shall we dig?”

This is the reason I am not at all sympathetic towards Anti-Reservation activists. It is also not at all evident that confiscating all property and distributing would cure the problem of poverty. It would only lead to chaos and poverty for all.
Let me quote some libertarian theorists in this issue. Rothbard writes in “Egalitarianism-As A Revolt Against Nature” that “It is not enough to call simply for defense of the “rights of private property”; there must be an adequate theory of justice in property rights, else any property that some State once decreed to be private” must now be defended by Libertarians, no matter how unjust the procedure or how mischievous its consequences.”
Or of the man who might be the current possessor by purchasing the land from Henry Jones X? If Smith and his descendants are lost to antiquity, then title to the land properly and legitimately belongs to the current Jones (or the man who has purchased it from him), direct application of our theory of property titles.” “Suppose that centuries ago, Smith was tilling the soil and therefore legitimately owning the land; and then that Jones came along and settled down near Smith, claiming by use of coercion the title to Smith’s land, and extracting payment or “rent” from Smith for the privilege of continuing to till the soil. Suppose that now, centuries later, Smith’s descendants (or, for that matter, other unrelated families) are now tilling the soil, while Jones’s descendants, or those who purchased their claims, still continue to exact tribute from the modern tillers. Where is the true property right in such a case? It should be clear that here, just as in the case of slavery, we have a case of aggression against the true owners-the true possessors–of the land, the tillers, or peasants, by the illegitimate owner, the man whose original and continuing claim to the land and its fruits has come from coercion and violence. Just as the original Jones was a continuing aggressor against the original Smith, so the modern peasants are being aggressive against by the modern holder of the Jones-derived land title. In this case of what we might call “feudalism” or “land monopoly,” the feudal or monopolist landlords have no legitimate claim to the property. The current “tenants,” or peasants, should be the absolute owners of their property, and, as in the case of slavery, the land titles should be transferred to the peasants, without compensation to the monopoly.
Ludwig Von Mises’ ideas are entirely opposite in this regard. He writes in “Economic Freedom And Interventionism :“Under the conditions of the capitalistic market society this program of land reform no longer makes any sense. In the market economy the consumers daily decide anew who should own the material factors of production and how much anybody should own. By their buying or abstention from buying the consumers allot control of the material factors of production to those who know how to use them in the best and cheapest way for the satisfaction of the most urgent wants of the consumers. Ownership of land means in the market economy the sovereignty of the consumers. The owners are mandatory of the consumers as it were, bound to employ their property as if it were entrusted to them by the people. When they fail in this regard, they suffer losses. Then they are forced to improve their management or, finally, they go bankrupt. Others who know better how to serve the consumers replace them.”
I would have to state that I am totally in agreement with the views of Rothbard in this issue. Property appropriated wrongfully should be given back to the victims of his descendants wherever they can be traced.

Any doctor would say that health is the ideal condition of human body. In a similar manner a good economist would say Capitalism is the ideal system of social organization. This must be surprising as most of the people who claim to be “economists” are anti-capitalistic. Yet, what I say is no exaggeration. The only real economists are the advocates of liberty and capitalism.
Economics is the study of production of wealth under a system of division of labor. A higher degree of civilization is possibly only under a system of division of labor. The division of labor, however is a recent phenomenon and exists only in the nations which are termed as Capitalist. The existence of division of labor in a society is dependent on the laws which the society adopts. Any nation is free to adopt the rules and laws which would help division of labor flourish, yet very few nations have opted to do so, and the ones which have opted to do so have done so only in recent past and in an incomplete manner.

If we are to attain a state of complete liberty, the majority of the population must have a reasonably good understanding of Economics. People should realize that inflation is expansion of money supply and booms and busts are the result of it. They should be able to trace back shortages to price controls and unemployment to minimum wage laws and labor union regulations. They should be made aware of the fact that taxation is bleeding the economy and regulations are strangulating it. The study of economics should be an essential part of everyone’s education, especially the first hand and second hand dealers of ideas. A clear understanding of economics is necessary if we are save the civilization. It is the ideas which are held by the majority which determines the economic policies a society adopt. Hence, the burden is on everyone’s shoulders. The task demands an exacting morality. But, the rewards are worth the effort.

The teachings of economics are usually derided as it seems to be totally against the notions of conventional morality. For example, selling Gas during a cyclone at a higher price is the most logical thing to do and is beneficial to everyone stuck in the cyclone, but society gets furious whenever such a thing happens, and is considered as “Price Gauging” and is usually outlawed. Capitalism is also said to be the cause of alienation and other mental diseases. Karl Marx introduced this concept of alienation out of his hatred of the producing class, but it was later supported by psychologists like Erich Fromm and even some popular novelists like Chetan Bhagat. Such notions are the result of ignorance of the immense benefits Capitalism and a division of labor society bestows.

Capitalism is a politico-economic system based on the concept of individual rights. Capitalism is the only system which grants individual freedom to its citizens. A society with fundamental structure as capitalism was implemented largely as the result of the ideas of enlightenment age philosophers like John Locke and the founding fathers of United States. A philosophy which upholds reason-that reason is capable of dealing with reality, and the fact that there isn’t a life beyond grave have played a large part in the flourishment of Capitalism.

It is usually believed that a Government is required for the proper functioning of the society, but nothing can be further from the truth. Government is an agency which is given the power to initiate force against any individual in the society for the sheer purpose of preventing initiation of force in the society, but if the initiation of force itself is wrong and immoral, how can the government be the entity to prevent initiation of force. All services and goods, including defense and security services could be provided by private individuals. Some intellectuals argue that doing away with the government would provide private agencies with an unregulated power to employ force. Well how is this any different from giving unregulated power to a government agency, hence this argument contradicts itself, as who will regulate government bureaucrats and politicians other than themselves?

Economic freedom and political freedom are indivisible. Both are in fact, the different aspects of the same thing. It is usually said that we have all the political freedom we need, sadly we lack the economic freedom we could use. Most people think that the right to vote gives political freedom to the citizens. Then there are people who think that economic freedom means that a job or income is guaranteed. They usually utter bromides such as “a hungry man is not free” or that economic freedom means “the freedom to starve”. All these people are way off the mark. Economic freedom means one would be free to pursue his economic goals without the initiation of physical force from others. If a person wants to start working at a wage lower than which the labor unions and government legislation decree, he would be allow to work in a system which guarantees economic freedom. The employer would be free to hire a person, and the employee would be free to work. Economic freedom is a necessary, though not sufficient condition for economic security. It is widely believed that government measures such as social security are necessary for economic security, though the exact opposite is true.

One of the main reasons why people turn their deaf ears towards the teaching of economics is because of the morality of altruism. They are too dull to think for themselves, they think that one man’s loss is another man’s gain. The other reason is that to understand the theorems of economics, one needs a long chain of thoughts. What appears to be true in first glance, may not be true in reality. Irrational, short term interests too happen to play a large role in the opposition to economics and its teachings.
Envy plays a much larger role in the hatred of economics, as most people want their superiors to be taxed and humiliated. Whatever the reasons, it is evident that the vast majority of the people don’t agree to the teachings of economics. Their ignorance is taking us on the path of destruction. If we are to save the world, we should turn to the teachings of economics and other social sciences, which all lead to the same conclusions in the matter of social organization.

“Do not ever say that the desire to “do good” by force is a good motive. Neither power-lust nor stupidity are good motives.”, said the great philosopher, Ayn Rand.
Let us examine the quote itself. How much of it is true?
I don’t think anyone would argue that power lust is a good motive.
Is stupidity a good motive? Whether stupidity is good or evil is a different matter altogether. Stupidity is not a motive, let alone a bad motive. Stupidity is an intellectual state.
An overwhelming majority of the people believe socialists are motivated by good motives. People usually think that the desire to take money from the wealthy for redistribution is a good motive. Karl Marx is thought of as a naive, impractical visionary. These people fail to realize that there is nothing good, in and by itself. An act, motive or idea could be considered good or evil based on its relation to reality. If an idea bears no relation to reality, then it has to be discarded and considered evil. The desire to help the poor through dishonorable means is not a good motive. No. The ends don’t justify the means. It is not just the means we are against, it is the end itself. No man has a rightful claim to the wealth produced by another.

Isabel Paterson was of the opinion that most of the harm done on earth is basically by good individuals. They support wrong policies because they are well intentioned. They don’t wish harm on their fellow citizens. Unable to see the consequences of the ideas and policies they support, they bring greater harm than malicious individuals. It is true that most of the individuals are well meaning, at least on a conscious level. They stick to conventional morality. Ayn rand doesn’t seem to be completely unaware of this. Consider these words of her about the Twentieth century Motor company-

“We saw that we’d been given a law to live by, a moral law, they called it, which punished those who observed it—for observing it. The more you tried to live up to it, the more you suffered; the more you cheated it, the bigger reward you got. Your honesty was like a tool left at the mercy of the next man’s dishonesty. The honest ones paid, the dishonest collected. The honest lost the dishonest won.”

However, it is not true that the people who stick to the conventional moral code are entirely innocent. Their intentions were well expressed by these words of Rand:

“We weren’t so innocent either. We didn’t do it just because we believed that the drippy old guff they spewed was good. We had another reason, but the guff helped us to hide it from our neighbors and from ourselves. The guff gave us a chance to pass off as virtue something that we’d be ashamed to admit otherwise. There wasn’t a man voting for it who didn’t think that under a setup of this kind he’d muscle in on the profits of the men abler than himself. There wasn’t a man rich and smart enough but that he didn’t think that somebody was richer and smarter, and this plan would give him a share of his betters’ wealth and brain. “

It might not be true that all who hold wrong ideas are evil. Barbara Branden rightly asks “We shouldn’t denounce someone who does not understand what we learned only yesterday. Were we evil the day before yesterday?” While some of the people hold wrong ideas mistakenly, there is overwhelming evidence to say that a lot many of them are motivated by evil intentions. It is evident from the fact that most of the innovators were opposed by the majority of the masses.
Great businessmen were called robber barons. It is also interesting to note that most people who hate big businessmen, inventors and innovators love and admire dictators. So many publications in my state shed crocodile tears when Saddam was murdered. Those publications criticize Bush, but it seems that they criticize him only because they think America to be a leading capitalist country. Another striking fact is that though a lot many people are sympathetic towards socialism, and in the days of Soviet Union praised the stupendous achievements of Soviet Union, there was no brain drain to Soviet Russia. Today a lot many people praise the achievements of Cuba in health care and other aspects, but still there is no brain drain to Cuba. Why is that so?
It is also worth noting that the greatest supporters of Socialism and totalitarianism are intellectuals. It is not surprising when we consider the fact that intellectuals are dependent on the state for their survival! How could some one evade the glaringly obvious fact that the freest nations are the most prosperous and the poorest ones are the most controlled?

“Throughout man’s history, money was always seized by looters of one brand or another, whose names changed, but whose method remained the same: to seize wealth by force and to keep the producers bound, demeaned, defamed, and deprived of honor. Yet through all the centuries of stagnation and starvation, men exalted the looters, as aristocrats of the sword, as aristocrats of birth, as aristocrats of the bureau, and despised the producers, as slaves, as traders, as shopkeepers—as industrialists.”-Ayn Rand

Thousands of years back, when Rehoboam’s main tax collector Hadoram set out to collect his revenues, Israelites met him with all their might. Stones were thrown upon him that he had to die. History tells us that power and authority were always opposed when first imposed, though the opposition did wear off in course of time. How do we fare up with the ancient Israelites? When did we learn to praise the power hungry as ‘aristocrats of the bureau’? When did our perceptions get so muddled, mind so feeble and soul utterly devoid of self-respect that a biblical story is needed to remind us of our folly?
Wealth is goods made by man. Wealth, as such doesn’t exist simply on earth. It doesn’t simply grow on trees. It is not absorbed from the atmosphere. Wealth ought to be produced, and it is produced by individuals. It is man who creates the character of goods as wealth. What is produced by individuals rightly belong to them. No body else can have a rightful claim on it. To say that someone other than the producer can have a claim on wealth would mean that it belongs to the person who hasn’t produced it, but not to the producer. Nothing can be more ridiculous than such a claim.
If wealth produced by a person belongs to him, it should be obvious that taxation is robbery. Taking the produce of another person is definitely robbery. I don’t think I have to point out that robbery is evil and immoral. What is shocking is that most people don’t see taxation for what it is. They fail to realize that to tax is to rob. Of all the nonsensical notions held by man, the most ridiculous is that taxation is voluntary. If taxation is voluntary, why is it conducted at the point of a gun? Is it possible for a person to evade taxes? If it is not possible for one to evade it, then by what code of logic is it voluntary?
People are so used to the practice of taxation that they are unable to think of a world without it. They are unable to think logically and realize how monstrous it is to rob Raman to pay Rehmaan. When it is pointed out that taxation is robbery, statists argue that we get goods and services in return for the taxes that we pay. They totally miss the point. Why not let the people keep their money and have them spend it on whatever goods and services they consider necessary? Why forcefully extort money from them? Is it possible for the government to provide services to people according to their contribution of tax money? If it is possible to do so, what is the whole point of it? Implicit in the notion of taxation is the belief that wealth should be redistributed. Taxation redistributes wealth in a reckless fashion.

Most people are of the opinion that wealth should be distributed fairly so that the poor would be taken of. There are several problems with this notion. No matter what ones need is, a person doesn’t have a rightful claim to the wealth produced by another person. Even if a person is poor and starving, he doesn’t have a right to another person’s wealth. The notion of redistribution as a fair practice takes wealth as a given. They naively believe that wealth would be produced no matter what policy the government adopts. They fail to realize that taxation reduces the incentives for both the producer and parasite to produce. Why should a person work if sustenance is guaranteed to him? Why should he educate his child at his expense if education is provided free of cost? Why should he pay for health care if it is free for all. While it is true that all do not depend on government for these services, it should be taken in account that a vast majority of people become parasites given a chance. The fact that most of the children study in government funded schools and most avail “free” health care is enough evidence to justify this conclusion. Consider the case of education. Most children are forced to go to government funded schools as their parents are taxed to fund it. The same goes for health care and other services.
Another fallacy regarding taxation is the the money taxed out of the private industry is spent on the public sector. However,the government doesn’t spend the money just as the tax payer would have spent it. If government spends just as the tax payer would have spent it, it would have no excuse to step in and tax. It is also said that there should be some government investment to stimulate growth, to reach a particular level of growth, especially in the case of underdeveloped countries. Nothing can be more ridiculous than that. Government spending is consumption and not investment. Investment is done to serve the ultimate consumers and not the investor himself. In the case of government spending, money is spent in a manner which makes government bureaucrats and politicians happy. It is consumption, pure and simple.

It is also held that taxation helps the poor. Behind this belief is the notion that people would keep on producing wealth no matter what government does to their wealth. When government taxes around 40% of the income of individuals, businessmen would not be able to expand production. It reduces incentives to take risks. Would anyone take a lottery if he has to divide the prize among those who hadn’t paid for it? Taxation also reduces the wage rates received. Wages are dependent on productivity of labor, which in turn depends on the capital invested. It is taxation which tampers with capital accumulation and reduces the lives of the vast majority of the population to poverty.

When Saddam was hanged, many publications all around the world shed crocodile tears over the ‘heinous murder’ of a mass murderer. I wonder whether any of those houses would have anything to say on Bill Gates being punished by a European court. One was a hard core criminal and death would have been the least punishment he had deserved. The other was a man we all owe a lot, being punished on the basis of unintelligible laws backed by a huge vacuum of Economic nonsense. While there would have been at least some men to damn Saddam, I don’t think an overwhelming majority would have any sympathy towards Gates.

Why is it that men have no empathy for victims when they are all praise for their tormentors? We will have to get to root of the problem to find an answer to it. It’s understandable that a complex mode of reasoning is needed in the case of Anti-trust laws and it is part of the reason why they hate Bill. It is impossible for a young or ill informed person to take a strong stance on such an issue. Does the same go for Saddam? Who knows not that he is a brute? It proves to us how much people can repress, how much they can hate a superior man, and how deep a fascination they have for the evil. They might deny it with all their sincerity not knowing the roots of their emotions.
Roots of Anti-Americanism, environmentalism, statism, and socialism all could be traced to it. If they find US imperialism brutal, wouldn’t the same go for what controlled nations do to their own citizens? Why do the men who plan on so short a range in the case of economy, think of the ‘environment’ in terms of generations? If men know it not on a conscious level, it is only because there is a lot of repression going on. Repression is the clue! The same reason could be given for anti-capitalistic mentality. People repress their feelings of inferiority and incapability in dealing with reality. Their repressed feelings come to the surface as anti capitalistic mentality

Capitalism is the only politico-economic system consonant with human nature. No other system pays respect to individual rights. Mankind made all its progress since the basic structure of the society was made capitalistic. The nations which were the most capitalistic made the greatest progress. The progress that the less free nations made were parasitic on the freer nations-through imported machinery and medicines from semi-capitalistic nations. The pace with which Capitalism wiped out famines, decreased the infant mortality rate and increased the life expectancy is shocking indeed. Population used to grow at a rate of around 3% in every century. But, population grew at the rate of 300% in the nineteenth century.
Most of the children used to die before the age of five before the advent of Capitalism. Capitalism gave them a chance of survival. Industrial revolution was an offshoot of Capitalism, not the other way around. It was not a pure, unregulated, uncontrolled Capitalism, but the difference even the hampered Capitalism made is for all to see.
All this facts we would expect that people would be in support of Capitalism. We would expect that intellectuals would fight for individual freedom and Capitalism. Unfortunately, that doesn’t seem to be the case. The dominant ideology everywhere in the world is statism. Intellectuals are largely anti-capitalistic. Ludwig Von Mises digs deep into the minds of Anti-capitalists in his classic “Anti-Capitalist Mentality”.
Envy, he says, is a widespread phenomenon. Most intellectuals envy the wealth of businessmen. Most people are unable to fulfill their ambitions in life. When it so happens, they are reluctant to admit that his failure is due to his inability or laziness. Such a person is in search of a scapegoat. He finds consolation in the idea that Capitalism is a monstrous system and doesn’t reward people according to their abilities. The fact that people cling to this idea like a neurotic is because deep inside there are aware of their inability.
The professional intellectual is a relatively new phenomenon. They hadn’t a means of survival through intellectual means before Capitalism. Why do they oppose Capitalism when the fact is that they survive due to Capitalism? One reason could be that it is people who are unemployable otherwise who turn to intellectual profession. Deep down they have a feeling that they are not market worthy.
Moreover, it is likely that intellectuals would think that their work is of high value and they should be rewarded accordingly. They find it humiliating that men in other professions earn considerably greater than them. They don’t realize that they are incapable in their own tasks is evident from the fact that are unable to appreciate the value of Capitalism and freedom. Incapable intellectuals think that they would be rewarded better in Socialism. It never occurs to them that the men in power would decide whom to patronize under socialism. Or,they know it well. They are aware of their own incapability to survive in a free market.
Whatever one might think of Capitalism, there is one thing no honest person can’t evade. The degree of a nations prosperity is the degree of its freedom. The richest nations are the most capitalistic ones. America and Hongkong were nations of poor immigrants. These nations reached where they are today through individualistic means. One can’t fail to see the prosperity of United States, Hong Kong and Japan, the collapse of Soviet Union and various nations which embraced socialism at some point in their course.
If a person genuinely wanted to help the poor, he would find out why some nations are rich and why some are poor. He can’t evade the fact that difference lies in individual freedom.