Interest on machine-capital is part of an extra product which nature is made to yield by those men who are exceptionally capable of controlling her.
By capturing natural forces, one man of genius may add more to the wealth of the world in a year than an ordinary man could add to it in a hundred lifetimes.
The claim of any such man on the products of his genius is limited by a variety of circumstances; but, as a mere matter of abstract justice, the whole of it belongs to him.
Abstract justice, however, in a case like this, gives us no practical guidance, until we interpret it in connection with concrete facts, and translate the just into terms of the practicable.
THE SOCIALISTIC ATTACK ON INTEREST AND THE NATURE OF ITS SEVERAL ERRORS
The practical outcome of the moral attack on interest is logically an attack on bequest.
Modern socialism would logically allow a man to inherit accumulations, and to spend the principal, but not to receive interest on his money as an investment.
What would be the result if all who inherited capital spent it as income, instead of living on the interest of it?
Two typical illustrations of these ways of treating capital.
The ultimate difference between the two results.