Day 54:  Text #4: Capitalism vs. Archism -- The Wealth of Nations


The fourth book
of the five most important books in the history of America and Western Civilization is about

Capitalism

Capitalism or socialism?
This is the second great question of our age. It is a derivative of the first great question, Theonomy or Autonomy?

It's all about violence.

If you want to help the poor, can you justify the use of government violence, or must you rely on acts that come from the heart, voluntarily, spontaneously, or as a result of persuasion, education, enlightenment, and faith?

The Wealth of Nations

Many Americans today believe that the government produces wealth. Others want the government to redistribute wealth ("spread the wealth") to special interests -- the most special of all interests, of course, being "ME!"  Such people wouldn't even entertain the idea of abolishing the current tyranny, much less actively work toward that goal, because that which America's Founders described as "tyranny" many in our day would praise as a big benevolent brother. "The government can give us whatever we want if we just vote the most generous and compassionate politicians into office," they believe.

Those who disagree or resist will be wiretapped, arrested, fined, imprisoned, or executed.

Adam Smith would be appalled at such ignorance and immorality. Smith taught ethics at the University of Glasgow and wrote a Theory of Moral Sentiments. In the same year as the Declaration of Independence was written (1776), Adam Smith wrote a book entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, widely regarded as the first treatise on capitalism.

Capitalism is unquestionably one of the most important features of Western Civilization. Capitalist nations enjoy health and prosperity. Socialist nations enjoy sickness and poverty, to the extent they do not receive foreign aid or the fruits of capitalist nations.

"Capitalism" is the opposite of "socialism."

Socialist nations can't spread the wealth, they can only spread the poverty by compulsion and threats of violence. Socialism -- government intervention in the economy -- is not just inefficient and wasteful, it is immoral.

Smith's Wealth of Nations is not easy reading, but Samuel Adams and George Washington would insist that no true American can be without a basic understanding of capitalism and the laws of a free economy. Fortunately, in our day a more recent treatise on capitalism as been written which is wonderfully illuminating and readable:  Capitalism by Prof. George Reisman.

        

George Washington would assign Reisman's text to any American who wanted to become an extraordinary American. Consistent socialism is maximum government. We believe consistent capitalism is the exact opposite.

If you thought "Theocracy" was controversial, please have a seat. The odds are good that you are a victim of

The Biggest Government Lie in all of Human History.

George Washington was the father of a nation "under God" -- a Christian Theocracy. He was also the father of nation of "LIBERTY UNDER GOD." And if he could see the progress (and regress) of the last 200 years, he would advocate

100% pure laissez-faire capitalism

You might not be offended at that idea. Yet.

It means the absence of all socialism. Every trace.

If you think about that for a minute or two, you'll realize that another word for the complete absence of socialism is "anarchism."

That word is explosive. That's because you've been brainwashed. That's because you are a victim of

The Biggest Government Lie in all of Human History.

Pure capitalism is anarcho-capitalism, the absence of government force. Prof. Reisman disagrees with us, but his book will help us prove our point with credibility and impeccable logic. 

Are you a socialist or a capitalist?

You probably haven't even begun to answer this question.
 

Everybody talks about "smaller government." Everybody agrees that some government needs to be cut. How much? When and where do we stop cutting?

In 1776, America's Founding Fathers proposed a form of government which scandalized many. A government with NO KING.

It was unprecedented.

How can a nation preserve social order -- how can a government govern -- with no king? It would be like a headless horseman!

It got worse. America's government would be a government characterized by "the Consent of the Governed."

This turned the entire concept of "government" on its head. When the king has a "divine right" to govern his subjects, the subjects have no right to disagree with the king. Every decree of the king is assumed to be valid, even if the subjects don't like it. But in America, every action of the government would be presumed to be INVALID unless the governed consented to the government's act.

We The People would govern ourselves.

And -- We the People would govern the government.

We the People would tell the government how to govern!

Breathtaking.

It rocked the world.

Only a Theocracy -- a people "under God" -- can be trusted with self-government -- capitalism and a Free Market. And if religion and morality hold sway in a nation, then we can safely criticize America's Founding Fathers for replacing one government with another. They themselves taught us not to trust civil governments for social order, but to trust in religion and morality. If you're having second thoughts about enrolling in Samuel Adams Coaching, read the quotes on that page. Take a glance at the linked pages on that page. After reading the Bible, the Westminster Standards, the history of Theocracy and Western Civilization, and Reisman's treatise on Capitalism, you will be ready for the next paradigm.

It will be bigger than "consent of the governed."

If you and I don't follow the lead of George Washington, the next generation will be engulfed in socialism and the darkness of "false religions" (to use the words of James Madison, the "Father of the Constitution").

 


Just as we have definitely chosen to substitute a more modern treatment of capitalism for the one written by Adam Smith in 1776, we may also substitute a book that is even more easy to read (and shorter) than Reisman's book.


Healing Our World

In addition to the Bible, we're going to read an excellent book on how Christian Anarchism can be made practical in our "modern" world.

The book is called Healing Our World in an Age of Aggression. It could just as easily have been entitled, Healing Our World in an Age of Archism.

It makes a practical application of Christ's teaching:

Luke 10:25-29
25 And, behold, a certain lawyer stood up, and tempted Him, saying, Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?
26 He said unto him, What is written in the law? how readest thou?
27 And he answering said, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy strength, and with all thy mind; and thy neighbour as thyself.
28 And He said unto him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt live.
29 But he, willing to justify himself, said unto Jesus, And who is my neighbour?

Here is a summary of the book's contents:

Chapter 1: The Good Neighbor Policy

In Summary

  1. As children, we learned that if no one hits first, no fight is possible.
  2. Therefore, refraining from “first-strike” force, theft, or fraud, is the first step in creating peace.
  3. The second step is compensating others for any damage that we do.
  4. These two steps, honoring our neighbor’s choice and righting our wrongs, constitute the Good Neighbor Policy or the practice of nonaggression.
  5. Peace and prosperity are only possible when we are Good Neighbors.
  6. We can abandon the Good Neighbor Policy without even realizing it when directed to do so by an authority figure (archist).
  7. When we take from our neighbors what they won’t voluntarily give — at gunpoint, if necessary — we call it theft. When majorities take from minorities what they won’t voluntarily give — at gunpoint, if necessary — we call it taxation.
  8. Perhaps we don’t have peace in the world because we’ve abandoned the Good Neighbor Policy without even realizing it.

Chapter 2: Wealth Is Unlimited!

In Summary

  1. Wealth consists of goods and services. Money is only a claim check on existing wealth. (What is money?)
  2. Using resources in new and more productive ways creates wealth.
  3. Since creativity is unbounded, so is wealth.
  4. Countries that practice the Good Neighbor Policy create more wealth than those that don’t.
  5. The poverty of ancient times was largely due to violations of the Good Neighbor Policy, especially aggression by governments.
  6. The poor are harmed most by aggression and prosper most under the Good Neighbor Policy.
  7. The United States is the wealthiest country on earth because it practiced the Good Neighbor Policy for the longest time.
  8. By studying U.S. history, we can learn how a country can create great wealth and how it can lose that wealth by abandoning the Good Neighbor Policy.

Chapter 3: Destroying Jobs

In Summary

  1. In the marketplace ecosystem (also known as the free market), people with different skills find their job niche, just as different species find their niche in the environment.
  2. The marketplace is self-regulation and usually functions quite well without our interference.
  3. Attempts to correct marketplace imperfections with aggression do far more harm than good by destroying the jobs through which wealth is created.
  4. Immigrants to the United States in the 1800s overcame prejudice by offering employers a greater share of the jointly created wealth. Young Americans sometimes use the same technique to get that all-important first job.
  5. Almost everyone is able to create some wealth, so everyone can find a starting niche. As expertise improves, so do job opportunities.
  6. Wage controls intended to help disadvantaged people backfire by destroying their jobs. Instead of low wages, they end up with no wages at all!
  7. Because poverty is caused by lack of wages, rather than low wages, wage controls increase its incidence, especially for blacks and other disadvantaged groups.
  8. The marketplace ecosystem slowly but surely dissolves prejudice by rewarding with higher profits those employers who hire workers solely according to their productivity.
  9. After the Civil War, white landowners tried to pay blacks “slave wages.” Because the marketplace penalized such employers, many paid blacks more than they otherwise would. Prejudice was slowly but surely eroded by this natural process.

Chapter 4: Eliminating Small Businesses

In Summary

  1. Self-employment provides another option for employees who are dissatisfied with their working conditions.
  2. Businesses that please their customers are rewarded by profit. Those that don’t please their customers suffer loss.
  3. Licensing laws stop entrepreneurs -- at gunpoint, if necessary -- from providing service to willing customers.
  4. Many licensing requirements have nothing to do with safety, because they are intended to keep the disadvantaged from competing with established workers. The poor have a difficult time climbing the Ladder of Affluence because wage controls keep them from being hired and licensing laws keep them from establishing their own businesses.
  5. Most people who get a foothold on the Ladder of Affluence are able to climb it. Indeed, someone on the lowest rung is just as likely to advance to the top as to stay at the bottom.
  6. Licensing laws impoverish all of us because the cost of enforcing them, lobbying for them, and supporting those who are forbidden to create wealth greatly shrinks the Wealth Pie. We get less than we otherwise would, even if our Piece is larger than that of our neighbors.
  7. Most poverty today is caused by licensing laws that inhibit the creation of wealth. Getting a business license, for example, takes hours in Hong Kong, weeks in New York City, and years in India. The gap between rich and poor is wider in nations with the most regulation.
  8. The damage done by licensing laws can be reversed. Every time we retire one regulator, we create more than 150 private sector jobs!

Chapter 5: Harming Our Health

In Summary

  1. Licensing laws designed to protect consumers actually cause harm. The number of service providers goes down, and prices go up. People either do without the service or try to provide it themselves.
  2. Consequently, states with stricter licensing laws for electricians have more accidental electrocutions; states with the most requirements for optometrists have more blindness; states with the most restrictive licensing for dentists have poorer oral hygiene.
  3. Likewise, licensing for medical doctors creates physician shortage and overwork, as well as higher prices. Innovation, especially in nutrition and alternative specialties, is compromised both by licensing and by use of taxes for funding research. Our nation’s health suffers as a result.
  4. The higher income that practitioners gain from licensing laws is more than offset when those unable to afford the higher prices demand tax-supported care.
  5. Certification provides a better way to insure quality while honoring the choice of each consumer (e.g., electrical equipment certification by Underwriters Laboratories [UL]).

Chapter 6: Protecting Ourselves to Death

In Summary

  1. If a loved one were dying, we’d never snatch lifesaving drugs from their grasp. Yet, we unwittingly do just that with FDA “consumer protection” regulation.
  2. The FDA’s mandate to approve only drugs that are completely safe and effective can be fulfilled only by approving no drugs at all. Because the FDA is unfairly blamed when drugs affect some people adversely, it drags out the approval process.
  3. Consequently, drug development time and cost has increased five-fold since the early 1960s without any improvement in either efficacy or safety. We pay five times as much for drugs as we should!
  4. The true cost, however, is measured in lives, as tens of thousands of people die waiting for the FDA to approve breakthrough drugs.
  5. The FDA limits the information that drug companies can share with doctors and consumers. Consequently, 10,000-100,000 Americans died needlessly from heart disease each year be­cause aspirin makers couldn’t advertise aspirin’s role in prevention; 25,000 children were born with preventable deformities because vitamin sellers weren’t permitted to advertise folic acid’s protective effects.
  6. The biggest cost of regulation, however, is the stifling of innova­tion that could transform life-threatening diseases (e.g., infec­tion) into a mild inconvenience.
  7. Innovation lowers the cost of health care dramatically. In the 10 years after its introduction, ulcer medicine slashed the cost of treatment from a $28,000 surgery to $140, a savings of 99.5%!
  8. When certification replaces aggressive regulations, prices drop, safety improves, and innovation thrives. More treatments be­come available, lessening the chances that quackery will prevail.

Chapter 7: Creating Monopolies That Control Us

In Summary

  1. We create the Pyramid of Power with successive layers of aggression-through-government. Each layer of aggression gives us less choice and higher prices.
  2. The first layer outlaws some goods and services;
    the second layer
    outlaws all but a single service provider to create a monopoly.
    The third layer
    of aggression forces us to subsidize the monopoly and
    the fourth layer
    forces us to use it.
  3. Rockefeller gained 90% of the oil refining market with innovations and low prices. The marketplace ecosystem made it impossible for him to raise prices and exploit consumers. However, the aggression of exclusive licensing allowed him to stop some of his strongest competitors.
  4. Bill Gates, like Rockefeller, gave consumers quality products at low prices. His competitors complained to the U.S. Justice Department instead of wooing their customers back with better service.
  5. Bell Telephone enjoyed a monopoly for many years because its patents gave it an exclusive monopoly. When the patents expired, Bell’s competitors brought phone service to the masses. When Bell regained its monopoly through exclusive licensing, the rate of phone installations plummeted.
  6. Deregulation returns control to the consumer. Service providers compete with each other to provide the highest quality, lowest cost service. Everyone wins!

Chapter 8: Destroying the Environment - Audio

In Summary

  1. Third-layer aggression forces us to pay subsidies, usually to exclusive monopolies created by second-layer aggression.
  2. Subsidizing these monopolies, usually government services, increases costs, encourages waste, discourages conservation, and destroys the environment.
  3. Federal and state lands, which cover over 40% of the United States, are maintained through subsidies. The natural process of homesteading is stopped -- at gunpoint, if necessary.
  4. Because the bureaucrats who supervise government lands do not profit by caring for them, special interest groups, such as loggers and ranchers are allowed to abuse them.
  5. When loggers and ranchers are allowed to own the forests and ranges, however, they take better care of the land.
  6. Similarly, when bureaucrats control our parks, they upset the ecological balance as they did in Yellowstone. Some states even subsidized bounties to kill hawks and other predators.
  7. Private parks, like Sea Lion Caves and Hawk Mountain Sanctuary, do a better job of protecting wildlife.
  8. When Ravenna Park was under private ownership, the giant Douglas firs were protected. A few years after the city took over the park, the beautiful trees were all cut down for cordwood.
  9. Since people protect the environment when they own a piece of it, privatizing our parks would ensure better care. When we end the subsidies that make parks and government monopolies possible, we get better service for lower cost.
  10. Privatizing government-owned services gives us more for less. Privatizing government-owned lands might even retire the national debt, while protecting our ecological heritage.

Chapter 9: Banking on Aggression

In Summary

  1. One example of fourth-layer aggression is the Federal Reserve, an exclusive, subsidized monopoly on currency issue. We are forced to use the Fed’s currency “for all debts, public and private.”
  2. When banks lend, they expand the money supply, causing inflation. When banks slow lending, the creation of money slows too, causing deflation. By manipulating the money supply, banks can control a nation’s economy.
  3. For example, the Second Bank of the United States, a precursor of the Fed, tried to create a depression when President Andrew Jackson refused to renew its charter.
  4. The Federal Reserve is subsidized invisibly by devaluing the currency through expansion of the money supply. Between 1933 and 2000, this “inflation tax” was more than 90% of all newly created wealth.
  5. People without property, such as the poor and those on fixed incomes, pay most of the inflation tax. At current rates, the inflation tax on retirees will cost them half of their purchasing power over the next 20 years.
  6. In essence, the inflation tax redistributes wealth from the poor to the rich.
  7. The Federal Reserve is supposed to protect us from booms and busts. However, highly regulated banking systems, like the Fed, have eight times as many crises as banking systems free from aggression.
  8. In the past, “free” banks expanded the money supply carefully since they, not the taxpayers, were obligated to make up any shortfalls. Consequently, prices were more stable as money and wealth creation proceeded at approximately the same rate.
  9. The marketplace is reacting to the inflation tax by creating alter­native currencies based on precious metals or work hours.

Chapter 10: Learning Lessons Our Schools Can’t Teach

In Summary

  1. The education monopoly is an example of fourth-layer aggression: a subsidized, exclusive monopoly that we are forced to use. Even private and home schools must abide by rules set by the school licensing boards.
  2. In the early days of the United States, when most education was private and voluntary, Americans were among the most literate nations in the world.
  3. Modern public schooling, however, has failed our children. Costs are twice that of private schools and test scores are lower. Drugs and violence are more prevalent in public schools as well. If schoolchildren rebel when forced into the one-size-fits all educational mold, they are given potent psychotropic drugs to quiet them. These drugs often have severe side effects, including violent behavior, in children.
  4. Black and minority children suffer the most in public schools. Consequently, parents will often go to great extremes, such as cutting back on groceries, to give them a private education. Private schools are better integrated than public ones, both in the classroom and in the lunch room.
  5. Public school teachers and members of the U.S. Congress send their children to private schools more frequently than the rest of the American public.
  6. Public schools are not legally obligated to teach our children. Private institutions, like Sylvan Learning Centers and Hope Academy, however, guarantee to teach students up to five times faster than public schools!
  7. A fully privatized educational system would teach our children better for less than half the cost in an environment that was safer and more integrated. Indeed, with Internet, educational cable TV, and advertiser-sponsored programs, even children who didn’t study could hardly help learning the basics!

Chapter 11: Springing the Poverty Trap

In Summary

  1. Poverty is caused by unemployment, which usually results from minimum wage and licensing laws.
  2. By trying to alleviate poverty with tax-supported welfare, we tempt the disadvantaged to accept an aid check instead of a pay check.
  3. Welfare breaks up the family by encouraging multiple illegitimate births and discouraging marriage.
  4. By the time young mothers realize that welfare is a dead-end, they are caught in the poverty trap. Entry level jobs don’t pay enough to support her many children, but while she is on welfare, no progress is possible.
  5. When welfare recipients are required to do community work, more than half get a job and get off the dole.
  6. In just four years, welfare reform in 1996 slashed black child poverty to the lowest levels ever seen.
  7. While tax-supported charity doesn’t help the poor, private charitable groups have been incredibly effective in helping the home less, the addicted, the criminal, and the illiterate. The most successful private programs accept little or no tax support. Indeed, their existence is often threatened by regulations imposed by bureaucrats. Even Mother Teresa’s helpers were put out of business in New York!
  8. An entire mutual aid network that once provided a social safety net for low- and middle-income Americans, survived both World War I and the Great Depression. Regulations, however, destroyed mutual aid.
  9. The human spirit is so generous that the time and money contributed by Americans exceeds the entire poverty budgets of federal, state, and local governments. Without the aggression-through-government that makes people poor, befriending leadership and charitable donations would be more than sufficient to care for the truly needy.

Chapter 12: By Their Fruits You Shall Know Them

In Summary

  1. Freedom from aggression-through-government is the most important determinant of a country’s rate of wealth creation.
  2. Since modern government can only collect the money it spends through taxation or inflation, government programs start with aggression.
  3. Consequently, as government spending increases, wealth creation decreases.
  4. When Sweden increased government spending from 31% to 66% for its social safely net, wealth creation plummeted from 4.9% annually to a mere 0.6%.
  5. Slowing wealth creation hurts the poor the most. Consequently, aggression-through-government is the poor’s greatest enemy.
  6. Most poverty in the world today is caused by aggression-through-government. When nations cut back on government spending, they automatically cut back on this aggression.
  7. The three countries that have slashed government spending in recent years (Ireland, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom) increased their wealth creation dramatically.
  8. Without aggression, we’d create wealth 3 to 18 times faster!
  9. When we recognize that we live in a win-win world, we no longer need to choose between our welfare and that of others, between what’s good for the individual and what’s good for society. Instead, we recognize that our mutual welfare rises and falls together.

Chapter 13: The Other Piece of the Puzzle

In Summary

  1. Righting our wrongs is the second part of the Good Neighbor Policy.
  2. TIT FOR TAT is a well-known social strategy that acts very much like the Good Neighbor Policy. In both computer tournaments and diverse situations of strife, it has proven effective in convincing aggressors to become peaceful and cooperative.
  3. In addition to our own experience as children when we re-created the peace by righting our wrongs, TIT FOR TAT’s record suggests that letting aggressors experience the harm that they have done is the best way to teach them to be Good Neighbors.
  4. When aggressors make their victims whole again, they experience the harm they have done to others. Restitution through productive work is the most successful rehabilitation known.
  5. Restitution also deters crime better than imprisonment. Japan has an extensive program of restitution and is the only industrialized nation in the world that has seen a consistent decrease in crime since World War II.
  6. Full restitution, which would include all the costs of trial and apprehension, would end the aggression of taxation that currently subsidizes these functions.
  7. When in doubt, erring on the side of forgiveness and contrition is less likely to provoke further aggression.
  8. When we used licensing laws and regulations in an attempt to stop individual aggressors, we slashed our wealth creation. When we substitute restitution for these laws, we will deter individual aggressors more effectively and increase wealth creation once again.
  9. Corporate irresponsibility would lessen if aggressors were required to right their wrongs. Forgiveness could only come from victims, not from an arbitrary limitation of liability by government.

Chapter 14: The Pollution Solution

In Summary

  1. Righting our wrongs is the ideal pollution solution. Restoring the person or property of another is so costly that it acts as an effective deterrent.
  2. Government officials are actually penalized if they try to protect the environment. In contrast, if they cause great harm, sovereign immunity protects them from personal liability.
  3. The Love Canal disaster happened because the Niagara Falls school board disturbed buried chemicals after repeated pleas by Hooker Chemical not to do so. When the chemicals caused skin irritation, Hooker was blamed, but the school board was not.
  4. Taxpayers had to pick up the bill for relocating residents. Hooker had to clean up the mess that the school board had made.
  5. When nuclear testing damaged rangeland and more than doubled childhood thyroid cancer in Utah, courts denied compensation to the victims because the U.S. government has sovereign immunity.
  6. The U.S. military is the greatest polluter in the world, but it rarely cleans up its mess. Sovereign immunity protects it from legal action.
  7. DDT saved millions of lives by nearly eradicating malaria in the Third World. The DDT ban killed millions of people in developing countries when malaria returned.
  8. Asbestos removal in schools, as ordered by the EPA, endangered our children by increasing airborne concentrations of this carcinogen for years afterward.
  9. All polluters, public or private, should compensate their victims.
  10. Restitution, by deterring pollution, will contribute greatly to environmental protection.

Chapter 15: Dealing in Death

In Summary

  1. Although people who rape, steal, and murder are clearly aggressors, people who use alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs peacefully in their own homes are not.
  2. Alcohol Prohibition failed to stop people from drinking. Organized crime thrived and the murder rate increased two and one-half times.
  3. The War on Drugs kills more than 10 times as many people as the drugs themselves by increasing homicides from turf wars, AIDS from shared needles, and accidental overdose caused by contaminated drug supplies.
  4. Because our police spend more time arresting pot smokers than thieves, murderers, rapists, and child molesters, crimes of violence increase when drug enforcement does.
  5. Mandatory minimum sentences for drug-related crimes have forced overcrowded prisons to release violent felons to prey on the innocent.
  6. The desperately ill are condemned to unnecessary pain and premature death because some drugs with documented medicinal uses are prohibited.
  7. Marijuana’s cousin, industrial hemp, may be the real target in the War on Drugs.
  8. In Amsterdam, where marijuana can be legally purchased, heroin addiction is dropping and pushers have left the schools. Cocaine and marijuana use by Dutch teenagers is only 10-40% of U.S. rates, depending upon age group.
  9. Even if everyone in the United States took drugs once they were re-legalized, the death toll would still be less than we have today from the War on Drugs.

Chapter 16: Policing Aggression

In Summary

  1. Private police cost half as much as public police, yet deliver up to seven times faster response times. Crime drops as much as 95% because of their preventive procedures.
  2. Private police have no sovereign immunity, are not funded by taxation, and focus on aggressors. Because they themselves are Good Neighbors, they are less likely than government agents to create tragedies like Waco and Ruby Ridge.
  3. Guns save 400 times more people through self-defense than they accidentally kill.
  4. In Orlando, Florida, rape plummeted 87% when women were encouraged to train with firearms.
  5. Homicides dropped 30% and rampage shootings fell 78% when states permitted concealed weapons.
  6. In Britain and Australia, gun crime increased 40-300% when firearms were banned.
  7. Under U.S. civil asset forfeiture laws, property can be confiscated on suspicion alone.
  8. American juries have the right to judge the law as well as the guilt or innocence of the defendant. However, judges often tell juries otherwise.
  9. If police stopped chasing pot smokers and speeders, they could spend four times as much time apprehending violent criminals.
  10. Private highways have one-third fewer accidents than the U.S. interstates.
  11. The poor benefit the most from private justice.

Chapter 17: Healing Our World Is Inevitable

In Summary

  1. The Good Neighbor Policy, honoring our neighbor’s choice and righting our wrongs, creates harmony and abundance in our city, state, and nation.
  2. Becoming Good Neighbors promotes our own individual health and happiness as well.
  3. Suspiciousness, hostility, cynicism, and blame -- Type A or aggressor behavior -- alter our body’s biochemistry, predispos­ing us to cardiovascular disease.
  4. Similarly, Type C or victim behavior -- frustration, helplessness, giving up, and resignation -- predispose us to cancer.
  5. Much of our society is caught in a destructive A/C loop, alter­nately becoming victims and aggressors through the guns of government.
  6. Type S or self-actualized people focus on changing themselves rather than others. They are neither victims nor aggressors and reject aggression-through-government. Type S individuals live longer than Type A or Type C individuals.
  7. The thoughts that precede aggression estrange us from the rest of humankind, sabotaging the happiness that we hope to gain from our actions.
  8. Even those who gain money and power through the guns of government eventually recognize that aggression sabotages their own health and happiness and reject it.
  9. Because our health and happiness depend on our becoming Good Neighbors, we will all abandon aggression one day. Healing our world is virtually inevitable.

Chapter 18: Beacon to the World

In Summary

  1. Excessive government regulations and licensing laws greatly limit wealth creation, causing widespread poverty and suffering. Some 50-80% of the people in Third World nations create their wealth illegally.
  2. Legally owning a home in Third World countries is virtually impossible. For example, in Peru, obtaining legal title to land requires 728 steps. Consequently, most houses in poor nations are built without clear or formal title.
  3. The land and homes of the world’s poor are worth almost $10 trillion, but because they don’t have legal title, they cannot access this equity.
  4. Most U.S. foreign aid is squandered by Third World despots. Rather than using the money to help the poor or build their economies, they use it to increase their own wealth, power, and prestige.
  5. Because bureaucratically managed loan funds are usually wasted, borrowing leaves only crushing debt in Third World Nations.
  6. High tariffs and import restrictions in developed countries keep poor nations from becoming self-sufficient.
  7. Trade barriers designed to protect jobs in developed countries backfire to destroy jobs instead.
  8. The only poor nations that have grown rich in the past few decades are those that have lowered tariffs and increased their trading volume.
  9. To become wealthy, poor nations need only follow the example of Hong Kong and become Good Neighbors. By getting rid of stifling regulations, formalizing the property of the poor, and ending tariffs and import restrictions, they can go from abject poverty to First World affluence in a few short generations.

Chapter 19: Is Communism Really Dead?

In Summary

  1. Communism has killed more than 100 million people in the twentieth century, all in the name of compassion.
  2. Many people view communism as obsolete, even though it is openly practiced in a variety of countries, including China.
  3. Communism is simply aggression-through-government taken to its ultimate extreme.
  4. The communist vision is the whole of humankind sharing like one happy family -- at gunpoint, if necessary.
  5. Because communists use aggression as their means, poverty results. People who can’t keep the wealth they create don’t create much. Shortages of food and medicine were so common in the Soviet Union that life expectancy there declined while it rose in other nations.
  6. Communism encourages resentment, hate, and animosity. Psychological development is hindered. The environment is destroyed.
  7. The Communist Manifesto of 1848 outlines a 10-step plan for converting the developed nations to socialist states. The United States and other Western nations have implemented at least 8 of these 10 planks.
  8. The real communist threat stems from our belief that aggression serves us. Our military might cannot protect us from ourselves.
  9. When we recognize that love must precede sharing, we realize that honoring our neighbor’s choice is the first step to implementing the ideals of communism without its horrors.

Chapter 20: Making Our Nation Safe and Secure

In Summary

  1. The Communist threat posed by the Soviet Union was a consequence of our domestic aggression (taxation and banking regula­tions) rippling outward into the world.
  2. By similar means, Washington D.C. has helped to empower virtually every threat to U.S. national security in the past 50 years, including terrorists Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.
  3. U.S. intervention in the Third World often causes a great deal of death and suffering. The result: animosity toward Americans.
  4. Because of biased reporting, Americans are often unaware of what is done in their name.
  5. New findings suggest that both Pearl Harbor and the 9/11 attacks were provoked by aggressive U.S. foreign policy.
  6. Because the military-industrial complex profits from war, it encourages conflict. As President Eisenhower warned us, we need to be vigilant.
  7. If the 9/11 terrorists wanted to destroy our freedoms, we are playing right into their hands with the USA Patriot Act, secret military tribunals, and torture of suspects.
  8. By ending foreign aid and the drug war, we can deplete the cash flow to would-be dictators and terrorists.
  9. Trade turns enemies into allies by increasing the wealth of both nations (e.g., Japan). Trade with every nation may be the best deterrent of all!
  10. Privatizing defense can be an effective, economical, and innova­tive alternative to a tax-supported military.
  11. Good Neighbors make few enemies. In the rare instances when defense becomes necessary, their superior wealth-creating abilities give them a strategic advantage over their adversaries.

Chapter 21: A New Age or a New World Order?

In Summary

  1. A world government would resemble the governments of today and thus would most likely be an instrument of aggression.
  2. The things that we want global government to do (prevent overpopulation, protect endangered species, prevent global warming, create a single global currency, and end war) are best accomplished by simply becoming Good Neighbors.
  3. As countries grow in wealth, their birthrate declines. Because the Good Neighbor Policy enhances wealth creation, it both destroys poverty and controls population naturally.
  4. Private ownership of the world’s fauna promotes biodiversity and protection of endangered species on land or in the sea much better than governmental bans on hunting or habitat destruction.
  5. Global temperature and its measurement are so complex that we can’t be sure that warming is occurring or what might cause it. Even if global warming becomes a problem, restitution would reduce the use of harmful products.
  6. Multiple currencies provide an important check on inflation by central banks. A single, global currency would give the people who control it more power than any ruling elite has ever known.
  7. World government is more likely to be a forced union than a voluntary one. Consequently, its consummation will more closely approximate rape than love.
  8. The Good Neighbor Policy is more effective in creating a world without borders than global government is. Indeed, there are no borders without aggression to erect and maintain them.

Chapter 22: How to Get There from Here

In Summary

  1. Although the world seems to be moving away from the Good Neighbor Policy, appearances can be deceiving. In 1750, no one thought nations could survive without monarchs. During the next two centuries, however, much of Europe began dethroning or disempowered their royalty.
  2. Europe wanted the prosperity of the United States and so voluntarily imitated it. Catalyzing change can sometimes be as easy as setting an example.
  3. By ending aggression-through-government, we can create a world of universal harmony and abundance. Nothing will reform government as quickly as making elected and appointed officials personally liable for any damage that they do.
  4. When we are tempted to use taxation or regulation to temporarily relieve suffering caused by aggression, let us remember the devastating impact -- long lines and rationing -- that subsidies have on health care. Trying to solve the problems caused by aggression with more aggression is a cure worse than the disease.
  5. A number of organizations actively promote the Good Neighbor Policy, usually under the label “libertarian,” from the word “liberty,” as in free from aggression-through-government.
  6. You can use the research done by these organizations to increase your understanding of the Good Neighbor Policy or become actively involved in its promotion.
  7. You are the best judge of how your talents can help create a non-aggressive world. No matter how small you think your contribution is, it most likely will have a major impact. Each link in the chain is vital.
  8. Please accept my gratitude for helping make our world a better place!