Wealth comes from the production and exchange of goods and services. If someone efficiently produces a good that many people willingly trade their money for, he becomes wealthy. Sheldon Richman More Quotes by Sheldon Richman More Quotes From Sheldon Richman Those who create the wealth naturally want to keep it and devote it to their own purposes. Those who wish to expropriate it look for ever more-clever ways to acquire it without inciting resistance. One of those ways is the spreading of an elaborate ideology of statism, which teaches that the people are the state and that therefore they are only paying themselves when they pay taxes. Sheldon Richman wish clever people Government spending reduces the capital that could be invested to serve consumers and to produce new employment opportunities. Sheldon Richman employment government opportunity In an unmolested market economy - one where all dealings are consensual - the 'allocation' of wealth and income is the result of transactions. Sheldon Richman income wealth economy The housing and financial crisis could not have occurred in the absence of government housing and monetary policies. Sheldon Richman financial government absence The draft is a monstrous violation of individual liberty, and even a good motive cannot make it otherwise. In a free society no one should be compelled to take up arms, or be forced to kill or risk being killed... But who can blame prospective volunteers from doubting that there is a threat from Iraq? The Bush administration has yet to make a persuasive argument to that effect. Sheldon Richman volunteer iraq risk Among other grand achievements, F. A. Hayek had a remarkable career pointing out the flaws in collectivism. One of his keenest insights was that, paradoxically, any collectivist system necessarily depends on one individual (or small group) to make key social and economic decisions. In contrast, a system based on individualism takes advantage of the aggregate, or 'collective,' information of the whole society; through his actions each participant contributes his own particular, if incomplete, knowledge-information that could never be tapped by the individual at the head of a collectivist state. Sheldon Richman incomplete-knowledge careers keys
