“The control of the production of wealth is the control of human life itself.” ― Hilaire Belloc
Property rights are human rights. A means of production and the ability to increase is an essential component of the rights God gave us summarized as life, liberty, and property. If a man does not possess the ability to produce something, he is being controlled by someone else.
“If we do not restore the Institution of Property we cannot escape restoring the Institution of Slavery; there is no third course.” ― Hilaire Belloc, The Servile State
If a man does not own his time and is prohibited from owning his home, he is a slave.
“Taxes reduce the production of what is taxed: industry, profitability, thrift, and investment. Subsidies increase the production of what is subsidized, and in the redistributive society that means idleness and parasitism.” — Herbert Schlossberg, Idols for Destruction
Communism does not produce anything other than lazy grifters on one end and lazy slaves on the other.
"Centering an economic worldview around consumption is man-focused in the most trite and simplistic of ways; but developing an entire ecosystem of thought and action around production, well that honors the human person, and opens the door to a sustainable, soul-giving eradication of poverty." — David L. Bahnsen, There's No Free Lunch: 250 Economic Truths
Free room and board sounds good until you consider the cell in which those are served. Prison gives a man a place to sleep and something to eat, but it does not give him much else.
"Properly understood, the case for capitalism is not a case for license or for laissez faire. It is a case for national wealth as a moral good; for the interest of the mass of consumers as the guide of policy; for clear and uniform rules of competition imposed upon all; for letting markets set prices, letting buyers make choices, and letting producers experiment, innovate, and make what they think they can sell -- all while protecting consumers and punishing abuses. It is a case for avoiding concentrations of power, for keeping business and government separate, and for letting those who can meet their own needs do so. It is a case for humility about our ability to know, and therefore about our capacity to do." — Yuval Levin
Allowing a man to make and spend his own money in order to feed, cloth, and house himself is the best for everyone in the world. A man in this position can make enough to take on a wife and kids. A man who cannot provide for himself cannot carry the load of another. He cannot be trusted to shoulder the weight of other's stomachs if he cannot meet the needs of his own.
"Each of the moral aspirations we hope for about our society, and each of the economic objectives we have in a free enterprise economy, are undermined by an overly cozy relationship with business and government, where the collective power of the state is allowed to pick winners and losers. Our case for a market economy is a noble one, but it is undermined from start to finish when we fail to condemn the insidious effects of crony capitalism." — David Bahnsen, There's No Free Lunch
Crony capitalism is the illusion of freedom. It high jacks the language of liberty in order to enslave men in a pseudo-socialist state of affairs.
“The trouble with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” — Margaret Thatcher
If men are not permitted to own the means of production, eventually you exhaust the means you have. Like the mongols or the locust, you can consume another society's production, but you cannot sustain a society. You leave the shell without planting the seed and you end up starving next winter or moving on to another productive place where you can rape and pillage its produce.
"Property rights are human rights." ― Douglas Wilson, 3 Reasons Why Socialism Should Not Be Considered As The Butterfly's Boots
Thou shalt not steal is not a suggestion, it's the law. Honoring another man's stuff, including his ability to make stuff, is how we honor our Father in Heaven and see His kingdom come here on earth as it is in Heaven.
"The reason why socialist governments have such an untrammeled record of abusing human beings is that they begin the entire process by denying one of the foundation stones of human rights, which is property. Pure and simple, without a deep respect for property that the government cannot touch, human rights declarations are nothing more than the flattering words that turkey farmers offer to the turkeys in the run up to Thanksgiving." ― Douglas Wilson, 3 Reasons Why Socialism Should Not Be Considered As The Butterfly's Boots
You cannot rob men of their right to own property without robbing that man's property. You cannot steal his dignity without stealing his productivity. Those who imagine themselves masters have no difficulty making slaves of their neighbors.
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