The "Haves" Versus The "Have Nots"

The struggle between “haves” and “have nots” has existed since the creation of mankind, and every attempt, throughout the ages, to redistribute the wealth and the power, from the few to the many, has ended in utter and complete failure.  The indisputable fact of the matter is this; despite the principles and purposes of any cultural or political reorganization or revolution, the most energetic and ambitious among us will recapture the wealth and power within a generation or two regardless of the chosen ideology.  The fault lies not in the perfection of political ideologies, but in the fact humans are not equal in their physical, mental and emotional construct, and we are imperfect creatures.

It follows then that man’s struggle to exist is simply a repeating, eternal cycle between poverty and prosperity.  The perfect system cannot exist because the people are imperfect.  There will always be those who choose contrary or incompatible values and thus become either adversaries to or parasites of the system.  The question then becomes how best to modulate the cycle in order to lengthen the duration of prosperity and shorten the duration of poverty for the greatest number of people.  Utopia is simply a figment of wishful thinking, and as long as we allow guilt, anger, greed and jealousy to consume our thoughts and control our actions, the poor and disadvantaged will always be among us.

So, which modern economic and political system has actually provided the highest standard of living, for the majority of its citizens, for the longest period of time?  The obvious and correct answer is capitalism.  Yet, because of imperfect humans, there are those who would prefer to destroy the entire system because a small minority engage in manipulation and corruption.  It is interesting that we see the same consequences in bloated and corrupt bureaucracies, such as the Veterans Administration, but very few are calling for the elimination of these bureaucracies.

The inherent value of capitalism is its unique creation of a middle-class – without the incentive to create personal wealth, the middle-class would not exist under this or any other political or economic system.  While some of these wealthy individuals may be despicable human beings, their existence is necessary for the greater good of the economy.  Even the worst of the wealthy class serve the common good, albeit unintentionally.  Because they don’t keep their money buried in the backyard or hidden in a mattress, it is available to the economy through their preferred investments – it becomes the seed money for entrepreneurs and the capital for growing the business.  No amount of legalism, rulemaking or policy changes will eliminate the desire, in some, to excel and prosper in any system.  Their behavior will only change when it is in their best interest to do so.  The forces of wealth are no different than the forces of nature – we learn to live with the bad, knowing it serves to strengthen the entire system.