I Chose Liberty - Ludwig von Mises Institute

a failure, usually due to some theory of religion or politics or economics, to allow ideas that
work to be put into effect. This brings me back to the socialist view: no matter how noble
and worthy its basic idea, it will work to create poverty. It will prevent ideas that will work
to enrich everyone from being put into place and allowed to operate.
Ultimately, there should be a premium not on the idea that the poor should “be helped,”
but on ways and ideas that allow them to help themselves, to have their own homes, businesses,
power to give and make things. In contemporary history, the main causes of failure
of such systems coming to be are governments and left wing ideologies, often with good
intentions, that do not allow what needs to be done to happen.
So, if I were to answer the question about why I, even though a “practicing socialist,”
am an advocate of a free market, it is because I think it is really the only way that the poor
will be helped or the only way in which a rich society can remain free to deal with things
beyond politics. We are in an anti-growth, ecologically oriented ideological world that is
not based on the idea of the real abundance of nature and of the effects of mind with regard
to things. The real enemies of the poor are those who maintain ideas or institutions, including
governmental ones, that do not work.
One final word on the notions of envy and greed. Though envy is generally associated
with the poor, it can also be a vice of the rich. And though greed is also considered a vice
of the rich, it can also be a vice of the poor. In other words, the virtues and vices that make
life worth living are not the exclusive property of anyone. For Aristotle, envy was the desire
of honors due to another. Greed was the desire of another’s property. Aristotle recognized
that both greed and envy needed to be ruled through the will.
Aristotle also remarked that if someone steals because he is poor, the proper solution
is to see that he has some property so that he can produce his own necessities. But some
people steal because of pleasure. The solution for this vice, he thought, was virtue. But
there were still others who might steal because of some grandiose scheme to cure mankind.
He thought a correct philosophy was the only solution for this more deep-seated and dangerous
problem.
When we read the classics, it looks like first we confront the economic problem, then
the political problem, then the philosophical or religious problems of mankind. In terms
of analysis, this is a perfectly good way to proceed. But in terms of action, it seems quite
obvious that the economic problem, which can be solved, is not allowed to work because
of prior problems of vice or more likely of philosophy.
Plato was not wrong to point his whole philosophy toward properly understanding the
highest things, in the light of which generally speaking worldly and economic things are
structured. Chesterton’s remark about a world in which giving was possible contains a whole
philosophic understanding of the right order of worldly things. We can have private property
or wealth and still be stingy or miserly. But we cannot have common property and still be
able to give a gift, even so much as a cup of water.
Entrepreneurship means the possibility of devising a system whereby people can have
pure water to drink and wash and water their lawns and at the same time provide a service
to each other and an income for themselves via the market. Politics means allowing these
systems to be put into effect at a reasonable cost. Ultimately, the poor are not poor because
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