It is not about how many friends you have. It is about the meaning and depth of those friendships. A small handful of genuinely caring friends who would come to your aid in your time of need is more valuable than the most precious rubies and gems. No man is an island unto himself. We humans are social creatures. We strive for connection and companionship above all else. What better way to express this brotherly love than to trade with our fellow men and women?
We thrive on improving each other’s lives through specialization and the division of labor. The Free Market is the fullest expression of love for our fellow brethren. When you love your neighbor you do not seek to rob him through taxation, strangle his business through onerous regulations, or encumber his freedom through a myriad of burdening arbitrary man made laws. Desiring absolute freedom for oneself must necessarily entail desiring absolute freedom for one’s neighbor. Moral reciprocity and a deep respect for the life of another is the foundation of virtue and integrity. I hope you all find your tribe of deeply caring confidantes. It makes this dance of life all the more pleasurable.
Many people enjoy looking down upon other people who choose to partake in the Black Friday sales. This is a tragic reflection of supercilious conceit that some who earn more currency have for those who earn less. It is an unnecessary and thoroughly harmful abhorrence of those who seek to enrich their lives through purchasing goods and services in an attempt to improve their lives. Regardless of one’s income level, we all seek to improve our lives through the patronizing of businesses of our choosing. That people of all different earning ranges can advance the quality of their lives in this manner is the wonder that the market economy brings to humanity.
While it may be true that some of this repugnance may stem from the fact that many of those people are on State subsidized welfare programs, this is a thoroughly separate issue as the presence of violently redistributed stolen State funds fundamentally distorts market signals. The fact that entrepreneurs and business owners can be so efficient with their business as to provide such steep discounts is testament to the daily miracles that the market economy showers upon its consumers.
If you truly feel pity for those who earn less, do not display this so shamefully with your condemnation of days during which they can partake in the cornucopia of the market economy. Instead devote your energies to helping them further improve their lot by educating them, donating to them, or by opening a business yourself. Add to the accumulated wealth of the world. It is easy criticize and destroy. It is far more difficult to create and innovate. Pay your respects to the magnificent wealth you have inherited from your forefathers. It was amassed through great toil and industry.
“Why do you talk about philosophy, morality, and economics? They are just theoretical and abstract. Why don’t you talk about reality!? That’s what matters!”
All individuals act based on a particular set of morals and code of ethics. I want to know what your code is. What morals do you hold dear? What principles would you risk life and limb to protect? What are you passionate about? What do you love? If you truly love something you must love it more have than you love yourself. You must be selfless and devoted to the thing you love.
To appeal to people’s actions without attending to their moral compass or code of ethics is endeavoring to move the statue by pushing the shadow. The thoughts that originate in the mind are always the source of action we see in the real world. Thoughts and beliefs are always more powerful and dangerous than any gun, tank, or bomb. It is the human beings that wield such things that bring about consequences in the real world. Human beings powered by erroneous belief system are what pull triggers in unprovoked attack. Human beings hijacked by misguided belief systems are what detonate bombs designed to maim and destroy innocent men, women, and children.
If you truly wish to affect reality thereby improving the world, it is absolutely imperative to discuss philosophy, morality, and economics. More lives can be saved by empowering hearts and minds than by taking away all of the guns from soldiers and law enforcement officers. We differ from the beasts in that we possess the capability of critical analysis and logical deduction. To act without employing this most defining characteristic is to reject that which makes us human beings. Savage beasts act based on primal instinct and emotional ferocity. Civilized human beings act based on sophisticated principles and dignified morality. Celebrate your heritage with enthusiastic vigor!
He that always gives way to others will end in having no principles at all.
The true measure of a civilization is the piecemeal accumulation of wealth that can only occur when peaceful individuals are able to trade and interact unhampered. Currency and money are not wealth. They are the conduits through which true wealth can be accessed and acquired. A pile of gold coins on a desert island is useless because they cannot buy anything of value. When there is nobody to trade with money becomes useless. Their function is apparent only when entrepreneurs create and innovate wondrous things that lift us out of poverty and raise the standard the living of humanity in very real ways. Take away the currency or money and people will use something else to trade in.
In order to destroy wealth one must destroy factories, medical technology, industrial machines, combine harvesters, tractors, excavators, 18 wheeler trucks, trains, cargo ships, cars, computers, smart phones, houses, electricity, indoor plumbing etc. Do that and you will plunge humanity into a most abysmal and wretched dark age that no wanton conquerer in history has been able to achieve. The painful reduction in the standards of living of billions of people will be acutely felt as lifestyles become downgraded to that of the common folk of centuries past.
Technology is a tool that humanity has marvelously wielded to attain unprecedented levels of prosperity and comfort. It is the application of the faculties of logical deduction, critical analysis, creativity, and imagination that has placed human beings far above his animal brethren. The knowledge and wisdom procured by our forefathers is the most valuable treasure we have inherited. May your existence add to the heirloom wealth we pass on to our progeny.
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
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