It's About Liberty: A Conservative Forum
Topics => Economy => Topic started by: LadyVirginia on November 23, 2011, 03:44:48 PM
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Like in 'Life of Brian,' protesters assume medicine, material goods will exist without the economic system that makes them possible. (http://www.mrc.org/bmi/commentary/2011/Occupy_Wall_Street_Crowd_Blind_to_Benefits_of_Capitalism.html)
By Gary Wolfram
Friday, November 11, 2011 10:45 AM EST
Every semester I ask my students: "What would you rather be? King of England in 1263 or you?" Every student would rather be themself. They enjoy using their iPhone, indoor plumbing, central heating, refrigerators and electric lighting. All of these things are available to the average person in America today and none of them were available to the aristocracy when the West operated under the feudal system.
How is it that for thousands of years mankind made very little progress in increasing the standard of living and yet today half of the goods and services you use in the next week did not exist when I was born? It wasn't that there was some change in the DNA such that we got smarter. The Greeks knew how to make a steam engine 3,000 years ago and never made one. The difference is in how we organize our economic system. The advent of market capitalism in the mid 18th century made all of the difference.
Which is why "they" want to destroy it.
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They're like cargo-cult people who believe simply building airport runways will result in the appearance of industrial-made goods. Voila! Magic!
Idiots.