Soak the Rich
Advocates of capitalism are very apt to appeal to the sacred principles of liberty, which are embodied in one maxim:
The fortunate must not be restrained in the exercise of tyranny over the unfortunate.
— Bertrand Russell (1872 – 1970), Freedom in Society, Sceptical Essays, 1928.
Everything that is economically efficient is morally justified.
— Yegor Gaidar (1956 – 2009)
[Greed] is good.
Greed is right.
Greed works.
Greed … captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit.
Greed … for life, for money, for love, [for] knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind.
— Oliver Stone (1946), Wall Street, 1987.
Greed is never good.
— Linus Torvalds (1969)
[The inordinately wealthy] corrupt themselves by practising greed, and they corrupt the rest of society by provoking envy.
— Ernst Schumacher (1911 – 77), Small is Beautiful, Part IV, Chapter 5, 1973.
[The] chief business of the American people is business.
— Calvin Coolidge (1872 – 1933)
We're going to turn the bull loose.
— Ronald Reagan (1911 – 2004)
(Michael Kirk, President Trump, PBS Frontline, WGBH, 2017)
Thomas More (1478 – 1535):
I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; first, that they may, without danger, preserve all that they have so ill-acquired, and then, that they may engage the poor to toil and labour for them at as low rates as possible, and oppress them as much as they please; and if they can but prevail to get these contrivances established by the show of public authority, which is considered as the representative of the whole people, then they are accounted laws …
(Utopia, 1516)
Adam Smith (1723 – 90):
People of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices. …
It is impossible to prevent such meetings, by any law which either could be executed, or would be consistent with liberty and justice.
But though the law cannot hinder people of the same trade from sometimes assembling together, it ought to do nothing to facilitate such assemblies; much less to render them necessary.
(Book 1, The Wealth of Nations, Chapter 10, Part 2, 1776)
