Few of us really feel the passion or the drive to do anything of longstanding worth. We mostly want to try to get by with as little effort as possible; we want to get through school without thinking, we want to get through work without producing, we want to get through life without living. This may be the common condition of mankind, but this dose not have to be the condition for us. We must become stalwart scholars, we must become powerhouse business leaders, we must elevate our lives from our petty, selfish slums and rise to a higher plane of greatness.
For anyone who wishes to do this, I would recommend you start (or include) a brilliant work written by Frédéric Bastiat around the same time Marx was producing many of his works on communism in 1850. This book is simply titled, The Law. In this book Bastiat address the critical political questions and conditions. This is what he said of the idea of increase:
"Self-preservation and development
is the common aspiration of all men, in such a way that if every
one enjoyed the free exercise of his faculties and the free disposition
of their fruits, social progress would be incessant, uninterrupted,
inevitable.
But there is also another disposition which is common to
them. This is to live and to develop, when they can, at the
expense of one another."
(https://mises.org/library/bastiat-collection)
Mankind innately wants to become better. The question is in what manner this will be achieved; will it be through the noble refinement of hard work? or through ludicrous looting and "living at the expense of others?" The choice is entrusted to us to pick the former, for, in the latter lies the most abject barbarism.
Let us all go forth to increase our faculties, gifts of speech, power, capability, capacity, wherewithal, means, wits, reason, and intelligence. Let us do so honestly and on our own dollars. Freedom to do these things without coercion or violence is the definition of freedom itself.
Mankind innately wants to become better. The question is in what manner this will be achieved; will it be through the noble refinement of hard work? or through ludicrous looting and "living at the expense of others?" The choice is entrusted to us to pick the former, for, in the latter lies the most abject barbarism.
Let us all go forth to increase our faculties, gifts of speech, power, capability, capacity, wherewithal, means, wits, reason, and intelligence. Let us do so honestly and on our own dollars. Freedom to do these things without coercion or violence is the definition of freedom itself.
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