Under capitalism, one man may own a string of automobile factories, and one man may own a string of oil fields, pipelines, and refineries. From their wealth comes tens of millions of automobiles and the fuel to power them and to heat the houses of the millions.
Socialists—as immense in their ignorance as they are small in their minds—resent the wealth of those who sustain them and provide them with a civilized existence. They want that wealth for themselves, in the delusion that their consuming it would make their lives easier.
Intellectually, socialists are still in the Dark Ages, when the only use of wealth was in the frame of one’s own consumption. They have never learned that under capitalism, wealth is used in the production of goods for the market and in the purchase of others’ labor to help.
Socialists do not know that the wealth so used, i.e., capital, is the foundation of the supply of products and the demand for labor and thus of the standard of living of everyone, and that the greater the capital, the greater is the wealth and well-being of all.
Socialists, in their small-minded ignorance and envy, call this fact “the trickle-down theory.” Their theory, in contrast, is the loot-and-plunder theory, a theory fit for ravenous wild dogs.
As I wrote yesterday, socialism is not an economic system. It is merely the negation of capitalism, leaving in its wake chaos, famine, and death.
For more, read the writings of Mises, Rand, and Reisman.
