Wednesday, August 05, 2009

Historical Oddities: Liberty and Prosperity

They're linked. They causally reinforce one another. Oddities. More often there is oppression, poverty, disorderly anarchy, death, disease, etc. Think liberty and prosperity are here to stay, indelible features of the social world? Think you can create a bloated and wasteful government which spends more money than the private sector and have your liberty and prosperity too?

For the sake of the ease of not having to look after oneself and for the sake of economically equal outcomes, we will relinquish liberty, with which an enormous government is incompatible. Prosperity will evaporate. But we will have no ease and we will have a tiny group of wealthy masters above us. We will return to the usual: oppression and poverty. Liberty and prosperity will return to their normal abode, the history books.