Quote of the day—Raúl Ilargi Meijer

The inequality that matters most is not wealth, but power.

Power buys wealth infinitely faster than wealth buys power.

Raúl Ilargi Meijer
October 18, 2014
Wealth Inequality Is Not A Problem, It’s A Symptom
[Those that seem to be most concerned with inequality of wealth advocate for giving more power to political elites. Which, of course, makes the symptoms even worse.

I do wish I could escape to Galt’s Gulch.—Joe]

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3 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Raúl Ilargi Meijer

  1. There are two different kinds of power. We can call them creative and coercive. Ayn Rand might have called them economic and political, or capitalist verses communist, but they’re the same things no matter what words you attach to them.

    One buys wealth the honest way, by creating, finding or providing something and then trading it in open, honest, peaceable, voluntary exchange.

    Political, or coercive, power “buys” wealth in the same way a robber “buys” the contents of the bank vault, through some combination of stealth, deception, force, and threats of force.

    We must at all times be very, very clear on which of the two “powers” we’re discussing. All too often we tend to conflate the two to some extent. No Republican or Democrat alive would be able to fully distinguish the two, for example. They CANNOT afford to make a clear distinction. Their hands are far too dirty, and it would mean self indictment and worse yet, the wrath of their peers.

  2. That’s a great insight. An example where the two are muddled together (sometimes on purpose) is “capitalism” vs. “crony capitalism”. That choice of words makes it sound like the latter is a variant, or special case, of capitalism. In fact, it’s something entirely different and unrelated. Calling it by its older name (mercantilism) helps avoid the confusion.

    • I tired of the term ‘crony capitalism’ long ago. A more accurate term would be fascism. During the Bush years, The left threw the word around like crazy, when they had no clue of the word’s meaning. We were indeed moving down that road in terms of both state power, and the merging of business and state. Regardless of if you think it’s business controlling government or the other way around, it’s bad. It goes nowhere good. And all the complaining they did during the Bush presidency went out the window once they gained power. Almost as if they are perfectly fine with a fascist system, it would seem.

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