On Poverty & Economic Means

Poverty is a social evil that should not exist in this age of technological and social human achievement. Humanity has now the means to organise human effort in a structured manner and focus that energy into creating abundance from even the most meager resources.

Poverty is about the willingness of man to help other men. The world has enough to offer fulfillment to mankind. It is not about the scarcity of wealth, but the unlimited greed of man, of the will-to-power of man over other men. 

The history of the world is a study of the struggle of societies making a living, a contrast of means: of violence of man against man, and peaceable exchange. It is only through peaceable exchange has man found the key to bring prosperity to all, to alleviate poverty and bring about abundance.

Man has found that through the process of voluntary, mutual exchange that the productivity and hence, the living standards of all participants in exchange will increase exponentially. Through this path men have learned how to avoid the "jungle law" of fighting over scarce resources so that A can only acquire them at the expense of B and instead multiply those resources enormously in peaceful and harmonious exchange. This is the "economic means" of acquiring wealth and alleviating poverty: one of production and exchange.

The other way is simpler in that it does not require productivity. It only requires the forcible seizure of another's goods, money or services by the use of force, violence or the threat of violence. This is the method of which the great German sociologist Franz Oppenheimer called "the political means" to wealth. This is the parasitic method, for instead of increasing production it subtracts and even discourages it. It lowers the incentive of people to be innovative, to be creative and productive. This is the method of the State, of centralised government. This is the misguided policy of taxation, of the so-called taking from the rich to give to the poor. For it is in this taking, this "political means", is the community damaged for all. No solution is this to the problem of poverty for through this policy of forcible seizure of taxation is the productive incentives of man destroyed: one is punished for being able to produce under the guise of a distribution of wealth of which the State has no actual right to determine to allocate.

In turn, the "political means" of taking from A to give to B is not the solution for a prosperous life for man in the world for it destroys, it does not create. It subtracts and does not add. Only the "economic means" of peaceful exchange between free peoples, unhindered by the whims of those who call themselves "the State" can result in prosperity for all.