WE CAN ACTUALLY VOTE RICHES INTO EXISTENCE.
Our instructors say, "Government cannot legislate a single dollar into existence." Let us see.
While riding to market with a crop of potatoes, I am dispossessed. In the struggle a portion of the crop is injured. The highwayman, in escaping, lames the horses by overdriving. Instead of going to work the next day, in company with an officer, I start in pursuit. The robber, alert, removes to another state at an expense of half his booty. Whether successful or not, my time, the officer's time and the thief's time are all wasted, in addition to three-fourths of my product.
Now, my neighbors and I, who together make up the government, suppress brigandage. Instead of three fourths of my crop being wasted by struggle for possession, it is all sold the very day it is carted to market. Instead of exchanging my hoe for a gun and chasing another man, I plant another crop of potatoes. Instead of helping me in the chase the policeman grows a crop of his own, and the bandit, knowing beforehand that it is impossible to live by robbery, ceases to watch for possible victims and raises his own potatoes instead of taking mine.
Without proper governmental interference the three of us have only a portion of one crop of potatoes between us. AS THE RESULT OF GOVERNMENTAL ACTION, WE HAVE THREE FULL CROPS. THE GOVERNMENT, BY LEGISLATIVE "EDICT" OR "FIAT," if you please, CREATES TWO AND THREE-QUARTERS CROPS OF POTATOES. WE CAN VOTE OURSELVES RICH.
And of each dollar voted into our pockets, not more than fifteen cents will be stolen property reclaimed. The other eighty-five cents will be a new product, rescued from waste or destruction.
The saddest feature of our present industrial cannibalism is that where one dollar is stolen at least seven dollars are wasted. THE PREVENTABLE WASTES OF CIVILIZATION CAN MAKE EARTH A PARADISE.