Thus said "Bryan Sant" on Thu, 26 Jun 2008 10:48:54 MDT: > I'm not aware of a pure data point to examine, however, whichever > society follows closest to laissez-faire prospers the most. History is > pretty clear on this. Consider the following:
While there are not likely any historical capitalist societies, at least not in the sense that we know them, there have been long periods in certain countries in which they lived essentially without government coercion. Interactions were voluntary and there was no central authority. I have read that at one point in time Celtic law had many properties of a society based upon contractual arrangements. Certainly concepts like those that influenced the drafters of The Declaration of Independence were radical in many ways. Indeed, the very concept that a people could live without a king and instead be ruled by ``laws'' was likely tossed out as absurd by many. But history will bear out your statement. Those countries with the most freedoms are also generally speaking the most wealthy and properous. Not only that, even the poorest of people in these countries is much better off than many in other less free countries. How many of you would like to move to Northern Africa? How many of you would like to have lived in Communist Russia? Indeed, it has been shown that Socialism [1] cannot function and the only reason why it has been able to survive is due to the fact that capitalism has existed in some form or another contemporarily. That's not to say that socialism, as practiced by people who voluntarily agree to do so, cannot work. The kind of Socialism to which I refer is the one in which the government controls the resources and factors of production to basically regulate and plan the economy. 1: http://www.econlib.org/library/Mises/msSContents.html Andy -- [-----------[system uptime]--------------------------------------------] 10:06pm up 1:06, 1 user, load average: 1.03, 1.10, 1.08 /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
