Oh! You mean we'd all be French?
Posted on 12/08/2005 1:58:44 PM PST by SirLinksalot
This editorial is two weeks old but still worth reading ..
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The World’s Worst Disease
It is not AIDS or Avian Flu.
It is a monstrously flawed idea.
The sickest thinking and the source of human misery throughout the ages is based on a belief that:
1. The earth is running out of resources 2. People consume more than they contribute 3. Wealth is a zero sum distribution game
History overwhelmingly refutes these ideas, or else humankind would still be living in caves, sharpening its spears for the hunt. Our lives would be brutal and short, lasting on average about 30 years. We’d enjoy no books, movies or iPods; we’d drive no cars to visit grandma on Thanksgiving; we’d enjoy no pumpkin pie if the economic pie had not been growing all along.
Yet most politicians, economists and journalists act is if growth is a mirage and wealth is zero sum. What else accounts for today’s headlines screaming GM’s cut of 30,000 jobs? Does the creation of 30,000 jobs get equal treatment? Why not? That’s about how many jobs are born every week in the United States.
What causes some to take the zero-sum view?
Politicians, even the best and brightest, I think, become zero-sum thinkers over time because they occupy a zero-sum world. Only one person can be U.S. president. Only 50 can be governors. Only 100 can be Senators. The most creative entrepreneur in the world can’t change these facts. Politicians live in a world where one person’s gain is another’s loss.
Journalists at MSM organizations also live in a zero-sum world. There can be only one evening TV anchor, one top editor at a newspaper or magazine, a fixed number of columnists on the op-ed page . . . and thus the MSM puts out alarming stories about GM job cuts, trade and fiscal deficits, global warming, oil going to $100 a barrel and so on. Why does the MSM love environmentalists? Both share a zero-sum view of the world.
Meanwhile, the most energetic, original and positive writing has been migrating to the Web and to blogs. No surprise here. Anybody who creates a blog is: (a) an entrepreneur and thus probably NOT a zero-sum thinker; (b) a producer first and a consumer second. These two attributes alone guarantee that the blogger probably has a more accurate view of the world, and how it really works, than does the zero-sum thinker toiling away at his MSM position.
Economists and professors compete for a limited number of tenured university spots. This warps their view toward zero-sum thinking. It is no surprise that the top business mind of the last 50 years – Peter Drucker – by and large operated outside of the university system. Drucker, who escaped Germany in 1937, was no Pollyanna or stranger to evil. But he saw that evil had its roots in a belief system of limits; in the Nazi’s case, a belief that there was room on the planet for one ideology and race.
As we approach Thanksgiving, let us give thanks to our divinely created bountiful world . . . and to ordinary people, who by their daily optimism and creative actions, add to the world’s abundance.
ISLAM
Failure to understand God's Tenth Commandment.
Beautiful article.
This is an awesome article and the best description I have read of the "I win and so you have to lose" mentality. A lot of people with advanced degrees have this mindset and this is the most cogent argument I have read to combat that. This is the foundation of liberalism: their economic beliefs are totally flawed. This should be required reading for all college grads.
jealousy is not uncommon . ( IE: the death tax)
Jealousy is not uncommon but to think I will have more because you have less is absurd. The way I look if you prosper that is proof that yet another American is rich and keeps my belief in the American dream alive. The more wealthy people there are the more opportunities there exist for me to succeed as well. The Zero sum game mentality is absurd and the world outside is proof that we live in a planet of abundance and prosperity.
"It is Liberalism"
I was right.
The sickest thinking and the source of human misery throughout the ages is based on a belief that:
1. The earth is running out of resources
2. People consume more than they contribute
3. Wealth is a zero sum distribution game
"Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable. In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
Oh! You mean we'd all be French?
then you and I agree. seems some think(even here) if you have less and someone has more and does not voluntarily help you, then the gubmint should force them to.
see post/thread:
Court: Disabled can't escape student loans (Supremes get one right)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1535961/posts
Well stated!
BTTT
BUMP
Excellent. Forbes does it again -- and this will be read by a whole different audience than frequents FR.
I always liked their article by Ben Stein a few years back
How To Ruin American Enterprise
http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2002/1223/225_print.html
bump
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