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I believe liberal education and assurance of entitlement to one's own wealth is, on the whole, the greatest motivator of economic productivity. Give men the intellectual tools necessary to view their work as dignified and artful; assure them of their right to the profits thereof, and the result shall be sustained increase in wealth. Fear or greed may carry productivity forward in nervous spurts, but only those who are elevated to such views of individual human dignity are capable of the nobility of character which must stand in on behalf of the truly helpless minority in the world.
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I believe liberal education and assurance of entitlement to one's own wealth is, on the whole, the greatest motivator of economic productivity. Give men the intellectual tools necessary to view their work as dignified and artful; assure them of their right to the profits thereof, and the result shall be sustained increase in wealth. Fear or greed may carry productivity forward in nervous spurts, but only those who are elevated to such views of individual human dignity are capable of the nobility of character which must stand in on behalf of the truly helpless minority in the world.
One who denies his equal right to posses for himself what he has earned, cannot truthfully uphold the rights of other individuals who, by principles of equality, must then also be shorn of their right to possess. Such a man, if he may be called a man, can only support the faceless hive; a hive which, in human society, is always discovered to terminate in the oppressive interests of an oligarchy. Neither can a man who disbelieves his inherent right to personal wealth give charitably of his own. For in his mind nothing is essentially his by right, but only by grant of the State. If his property goes out to others, it is not charity on his part, but forfeiture; for in his mind the property was never his own to do with wholly as he pleased. If man's wages may be taken compulsively from him in part, why may they not be wrested from him in whole? What is the fixed moral principle by which any wealth is assured to men, if not that they earned it with their own hands? Men who are by nature entitled to only half their wage are only half-men; half-man is half another's beast of burden. In this case, goods which the State permits their beasts to retain are only muzzles meant to keep them plowing silently.
One who does not grasp in himself the power to posses that which is his can not deny himself, in the noble sense, for one cannot deny nothing. What more is he without essential rights? If he is merely a serf of the State, what honor is there in him bestowing that which is demanded? Brotherhood and love are then deformed to a kind of stoic duty. Nobility is stripped from the species. But one who believes all humans are fundamentally entitled to the fruits of their labors, seeing himself so providentially blessed with an abundance of talent and fortune, is more likely to esteem the basic value of his less fortunate brothers. When he gives to the needy, he does so willingly and thereby spreads a sense of benevolence more charitable and humane than the cant dutifulness which necessarily permeates collectivist and authoritarian methods of wealth redistribution.
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© Michael Spotts:. 2010
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By M. Benjamin Spotts:.
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Titus 3:3-8
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