I recognize this is a much different piece than what is normally on my blog. Take these lessons to heart in the understanding that even with a TBI, you too can strive to prosper and make better the lives of others. Through tenacity, hard work and a firm understanding of your limitations, you can STILL strive to reach for the stars.
Economic Enlightenment for the Prosperity of Nations
Poverty, in terms of economic prosperity, in the world today is almost inexcusable with the amount of resources, information and our ability as humans to share that information. Yet, there are a plethora of countries in which their per capita income and/or gross domestic product (GDP) have averaged below the poverty line. This paper is inspired greatly by the book The Poverty of Nations, written by Wayne Grudem and will be taking the same stance as its author in the effort to bring prosperity to the destitute.
The appropriate goal of the poor countries of the earth: raise the GDP of impoverished nations. “…GDP is increased when a nation continually creates more goods and services that have enough value to be sold in the marketplace” (Grudem Poverty 48). GDP is the source of all monetary wealth received by a country. If a nation’s GDP is low, their citizens will likely be living in poverty. In nations like Afghanistan where there is very little export, minus oil which only benefits the top 1%, The people are left to live off the little offered to them by the land. This survival type of living only grants the bare minimum to survive, if survival is even achievable. Without increasing their GDP, those individuals will never economically prosper. In order for the GDP to increase, the individual per capita income of a majority of the citizens will need to increase. This means putting the citizens to work. Along with bringing more income, work provides people with a sense of purpose, encouraging them to work harder and increase the overall GDP of their country. The more GDP people produce, the more per capita income they have. It’s an upward spiral towards success.
In contrast, there are certainly a few inappropriate goals. First, dependence on donations from wealthier countries: “No poor nation in history has grown wealthy by depending on donations from other nations” (Grudem Poverty 65). By depending on help from other nations, the poor cannot produce their own wealth and are limited to the generosity of the donators. Developmental aid dependency is also assuming that those nations have legitimate, well-functioning, law abiding, local and national elites. Most, if not all poor nations are being snuffed out by the selfish elite who steal the donations for themselves. This is a flawed understanding of the causes of poverty. Not having per capita income isn’t the cause of poverty; it is a result of poverty. Foreign aid is not only a poor (see what I did there) goal, it is even an underlying cause of poverty. When corrupt governments receive more money, their unjust grip over their citizens tightens and by keeping their own people in poverty, the elite can steal even more donations and the downward spiral perpetuates. Because of this, “’Earned success’ is more important than money” (Grudem Poverty 74). Arthur C. Brooks, former professor of business and government policy at Syracuse University said, “Earned success means the ability to create value honestly – not by winning the lottery, not by inheriting a fortune, not by picking up a welfare check. It doesn’t even mean making money itself. Earned success is the creation of value in our lives or in the lives of others” (Brooks 71). Value is created by work, therefore, the best thing that developing nations can do is work to build, innovate and create.
Earned success is imperative to be a thriving nation. That being said, we can say that our second inappropriate goal would be redistribution of wealth from rich to poor. The rich of some nations abuse their government to gain wealth, especially communist countries like Cuba and North Korea. In these nations, the disparity of “wealth regarding housing, cars, shopping privileges at restricted stores, travel and vacation, and other protections” is the biggest difference (Grudem Poverty 75).
A third failed goal is dependence on natural resources. David S. Landes explains what getting huge amounts of gold did to Spain in the mid-1500s:
Spain became (stayed) poor because it had too much money. The nations that did the work learned and kept good habits, while seeking new ways to do the job faster and better. The Spanish, on the other hand, indulged their penchant for status, leisure, and enjoyment… By the time the great bullion inflow had ended in the mid-seventeenth century, the Spanish Crown was deep in debt… The country entered upon a long decline. Reading this story, one might draw a moral: Easy money is bad for you. It represents short-run gain that will be paid for in immediate distortions and later regrets. (Landes 173)
Landes continues and links the Spanish gold mistake to the modern Middle East where they rely too heavily on oil for their GDP.
The best comparison is with sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spain, cursed by east riches and led down the path of self-indulgence and laziness. So, with the oil-rich… These countries simply haven’t developed an advanced economy. Like the Spain of yesteryear, they’ve purchased the skills and services of others rather than learn to do things for themselves. (Landes 408)
Each nation needs to both learn and work for success, they cannot just buy the services of outside nations to do things for them out of laziness, or they will be doomed to be forever in debt and bondage the moment their natural resources are depleted. In observing countries like Saudi Arabia, Nigeria and Iran, it is arduous to come to view abundant natural resources as a blessing for developing nations. While resource wealth can be used wisely, it gives birth to the temptation of easy money and snuffs out industry: “The production of wealth from commercial enterprise born of risk taking and sweat encourages healthy government institutions and begets further wealth. The production of wealth from a limited number of holes in the ground, owned or controlled by the government, begets rent seeking and corruption” (Bernstein 289). In contrast, Norway is a fantastic example of a nation that has governed its abundant oil reserves well: “Norway has high levels of literacy, excellent elementary and secondary schools, clearly titled lands, protected property rights, and a culture of hard work and frugality. With all these factors, Norway has a very high per capita income (54,200)” (Grudem Poverty 81). Also, Norway didn’t try to conquer the world by spending all of its wealth from natural resources on a fleet of the most state-of-the-art war ships available at the time.
A fifth unhelpful goal is casting blame on elements outside of the nation. A victim mentality may be taken by a country that simply doesn’t warrant it. Large banks and corporations, rich nations and colonialists, or even the world economic system are not the primary culprits, albeit they are secondary offenders. Colonialism brought many positive and negative aspects to colonies that later became independent. Roads, railways, electricity, plumbing and other trademarks of an advanced society, were introduced by most of the colonizers. Rich nations may be giving poorer countries a bad deal and tricking them into debt for a profit; however, this would be the fault of the poor nation for accepting the deal and not seeking the furtherment of its own industry over the easy way out. Large banks and corporations are also not the cause of poverty:
Are these nations poor because the cost of servicing these loans is too high? The main point to remember here is that these loans represent assets that were transferred to the poor countries, not taken from them, and almost all of the loans were made at very favorable rates, far below the market rates for loans in ordinary international financial markets. The loans were presumably made in order to finance projects that would be profitable and would pay a substantial rate of return. (Grudem Poverty 90)
There is only one instance where an outside factor might be the primary cause of poverty in a country, when a nation is conquered and oppressed. An example of this cause of poverty was when Israel was besieged by the Midianites who are from the land now known as Palestine. The Bible in terms of its historical account, accurately describes what happened to ancient Israel:
“The people of Israel did what was evil in the sight of the Lord, and the Lord gave them into the hand of Midian seven years. And the hand of Midian overpowered Israel, and because of Midian the people of Israel made for themselves the dens that are in the mountains and the caves and strongholds. For whenever the Israelites planted crops, the Midianites and Amalekites and the people of the East would come up against them. They would encamp against them and devour the produce of the land, as far as Gaza, and leave no sustenance in Israel” (Judges 6:1-4).
Only when a nation oppresses another, like in the case of the former Soviet Union, following the second Great War, turning the surrounding nations into its slaves while the rest of Europe flourished, can a country rightly blame its impoverished state on something other than itself.
The query that needs to be answered if a nation wishes to be abundantly prosperous would be: what method brings the highest level of desire to make that method succeed and get people to think about how they can bring more/ new services and value? There are several different economic systems in the world today. Nations that follow communism are doomed to fail from the sheer lack of understanding human nature. Looking back to the USSR, China and Cuba, every example was taken over by an absolute ruler who selfishly took from everyone to have a lavish lifestyle. The USSR and China abandoned many of the core policies of communism for the abundance offered by a free market in capitalism. While using a successful economic system can bring a nation out of poverty, “we need to emphasize that the right kind of economic system does not by itself bring a nation out of poverty” (Grudem Poverty 107).
The first impoverishing economic system is hunting and gathering. While hunting and gathering can keep people going for even thousands of years, it will not bring prosperity. Some countries in Africa use this system and we can see where it has gotten them. It goes without saying that this form of economy will allow survival, but not the abundant prosperity required to bring a nation from being a 3rd world land to a 1st world society. Just surviving is not a profitable venture.
The next economic meltdown of a system is subsistence farming. This is when each individual family is responsible for producing enough food to sustain themselves. “In Zimbabwe and other sub-Saharan countries, subsistence farming depends on natural rainfall, making agricultural activities extremely sensitive to environmental changes [3,4]” (Mubaiwa). While this can prevent starvation, it will not allow a nation to thrive, and we can look to Zimbabwe as a prime example. Nations that practice this form of economy often become subject to family related wars. Raiding and genocide have been influenced heavily by this type of economy. Thus, these people groups become poor both physically and morally.
Next in the line of atrocious economic ideas is tribal ownership. Tribal ownership is when a tribe or community of people own all of the land rather than the singleton. At first mention it doesn’t sound too bad: everyone owns everything together. But once human nature is accounted for: “The lack of private ownership, discussed in the next chapter, is the main problem. When no particular owner has responsibility for property, there is little individual incentive to improve or steward it. Simply put, people need to be able to own things” (Grudem p.114). People are lazy. If your neighbor won’t pick up your lawn while it’s yours, they probably won’t if it isn’t theirs too.
Another economic system that produces more impoverished people than healthy is mercantilism. This form of economy has one primary goal, which is amassing the wealth of the government. Adam Smith says in his book An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations,
Consumption is the sole purpose of all production; and the interest of the producer ought to be attended to, only so far as it may be necessary for promoting that of the consumer… But in the mercantile system, the interest of the consumer is almost constantly sacrificed to that of the producer; and it seems to consider production, and not consumption, as the ultimate end and object of all industry and commerce. (274)
Since all of the priority is given to the producer, the health, safety and overall wellbeing of the consumer is neglected, leaving the consumers dependent on the producers yet in a constant state of poverty, lest they also be producers.
The next in my list of bad economic systems is socialism/ communism. Socialism is when the government owns all means of production and as such, distributes it solely at its own discretion. With communism, Marx claimed that the worker was being cheated and that anything produced can be weighed in terms of labor hours, in other words, the amount of labor put into it. This mentality was used to abolish ownership of anything. A company couldn’t just own a building and rent it out for profit since that is against the value of labor concept. What neither of these seem to understand is that value is not determined by the number of hours labored but rather, it is determined by the inclination of the consumer. The biggest problem that communism and socialism face, however, is that if everyone is provided for equally and no one gets more for working harder, there is no incentive to innovate or even do any more than what is required by them. They wouldn’t get to experience the fruits of their extra labor. Communist governments also killed upwards of 100 million people in the twentieth century with China and the U.S.S.R being the main sources of death to their own people, having 65 million and 20 million killings respectively. In the former Soviet Union, their preferred WMD (Weapon of Mass Death) used during the Great Purge was the Gulag, a type of concentration camp which killed over a million people in a year. Anyone arrested was sent to a Gulag and all were subject to possible death, the most common of which is death by bullet: “’Between August 1937 and November 1938, about 1-1/2 million people [in the USSR] were arrested and perhaps 700,000 of them were shot’” (Weir). It is apparent that when a government is given too much power over its people’s lives, neither the government, and especially not the people are able to prosper.
Lastly, and most prevalent in our own culture, the welfare state: when a nation provides “extensive benefits for its citizens from cradle to grave” (Grudem Poverty 126). This type of economic system, where the government is responsible for fulfilling, not simply protecting, human rights to things such as education, health care, jobs, plenty of time off, retiring early enough to enjoy old age and housing, has produced a cesspool of entitled whiners who encourage laziness. A prime example is England. During the enlightenment, free thinking and innovation was highly encouraged. Thanks to that era of great advancement and prosperity, the U.K became incredibly wealthy. With children being born into and living in that wealth all their lives, they started believing it was their government’s responsibility to take care of the people and let them live their wealthy lifestyles without work and innovation. Today, most of Europe is a massive welfare state as a result of that prosperity. John Mauldin and Jonathan Tepper, financial experts and author/ co-author of the book Endgame: The End of the Debt Supercycle and How it Changes Everything, expresses their concern with Europe’s debt crisis as a result of its welfare system:
We are coming to the end of a 60-year debt supercycle. Not just consumers but banks borrowed (and not just in the United States but all over the developed world) like there was no tomorrow… European banks still remain highly leveraged… why is Greece important? Because so much of their debt is on the books of European banks hundreds of billions of dollars… Except, now that Greek debt is risky. Today, there is some kind of bailout for Greece. But that is just a Band-Aid on a very serious wound. The crisis will not go away. It will come back, unless the Greeks willingly go into their own great depression by slashing their spending and raising taxes to a level that no one in the united states could even contemplate. What is being demanded of them is really bad for them, but they did it to themselves… But those European banks? When that debt goes bad, and it will, they will react to each other just like they did in 2008. Trust will evaporate… there are other countries in Europe, like Spain and Portugal that are almost as bad… (40-42)
These overwhelming amounts of debt built by government spending beyond its means will eventually lead to a massive increase in borrowing costs, rationing the available credit and that same limited credit being onerous for the average Joe to acquire in the first place. Greece, Spain and Portugal are singled out for their inability to pay their ever-stacking mountains of debt, but they are not alone.
If even the most developed countries are on the verge of collapse under the welfare state, then what was the economic system that brought them to such prosperity in the first place? The most successful, tested and proven economic system, which brought all prosperity in the entire free world, is the free-market system. Since all of the aforementioned economic systems have either failed or are on the verge of it, trusting in the one system which has proven to provide human prosperity on the greatest level is a no brainer. So, what is the free-market system?
The free market system is a wonderful, God-given process in human societies through which the goods and services that are produced by the society (supply) continually adjust to exactly match the goods and services that are wanted by society (demand) at each period of time, and through which the society assigns a measurable value to each good and service at each period of time, entirely through the free choices of every individual person in the society rather than through government control. (But this process needs some government regulation to prevent wrongdoing such as theft, fraud and breaking of contracts). (Grudem Politics 276)
The parallels between the economic freedom and an abundance of wealth in a society, even in today’s world, is apparent. The nations boasting the best per capita income ratios, also have the most economic freedoms worldwide. In 1776, Adam Smith explained why having market freedom begets economic plenteousness:
That security which the laws in Great Britain give to every man that he shall enjoy the fruits of his own labor; is alone sufficient to make any country flourish… the natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principal, that it is alone, and without any assistance… capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity. (Smith 581)
According to Wayne Grudem in his book The Poverty of Nations (134), in any free-market system, the rule of law is a necessity. Rules that protect economic freedom for all people within the nation must be in place. Protection from fraud, deceit, theft and even coercion need to be both established and enforced. The word free in the free market doesn’t just mean people can do whatever they want. Anarchy is not a solution to any economic problem. The very notion of a free market needs to be protected. That notion becomes infringed upon the moment free exchanges, agreed on by each party, are warped by stealing, cheating or outright lying to others, or when some people are not given the information required to make an informed decision.
Some may object to a free market system based on the idea that all economies are mixed with private and government property and power. This mistakenly assumes that all economic systems are the same by saying they are all mixed with different parts of each type of system melded together. If a free market nation has a portion of the produce being managed by the government, does that make them the same as socialism or communism? Absolutely not. The majority of choices made regarding production and consumption are still left up to the citizens and individuals within the country, not the government. The government simply plays a supporting role by protecting the process of production and consumption. As previously mentioned, the government does own a portion of business in the system; however, this is more of an anomaly, not in any way a decree. An example would be the United States government maintaining partial ownership of the postal service. By owning a part of the postal service, the government is able to ensure the safety of packages and mail, protecting the freedoms of businesses which require the use of that service. While the government may own a part of the business, their role is one of protecting citizen’s rights, not making a profit. Look no further than the debt to profit ratio of USPS, UPS and Fed Ex in the United States for an example.
The key to a successful free market is a proper foundation of laws which protect freedoms and the virtues required to establish those laws. Large corporations may be routinely scrutinized for taking advantage of the average Joe, but if they are not forcing (robbers), deceiving (loan sharks), or withholding information (insurance companies), then their rights should be protected just as any citizen. Just because someone has more money, it doesn’t mean they got it unjustly. In a free market, no one is forced to work, and no one is forced to accept any product, service or offer. The power is in the hands of the consumer. If a product doesn’t beat its competition, then the consumer will buy a better product elsewhere. This balance of power allows people to fight and make the better product or provide the better service. It encourages work to stay ahead and gives the possibility for any individual to climb the ladder and become successful. What if any company becomes too large and monopolizes a business? This is where the government is meant to step in and protect the freedoms of people who want to start their own company in any given field (minus the production of chemical weapons, which was banned by the CWC after the inhumane melting off of faces in WWI). Laws that prevent monopolies are already in place in the United States; however, they need to be modernized and fill in the loop holes in areas such as car insurance and health insurance. For the purpose of developing countries climbing out of the poverty swamp, education, hard work, freedom of choice and a law protecting those freedoms will be more than enough to carry them to success.
In order for a free market to take root, the freedoms of the producer, as well as the consumer need to be well established and guarded. The next question developing nations should be asking is, “What freedoms?” In order for the appropriate freedoms to be granted, “A government must be one that uses it’s power to the benefit of the people as a whole, not just for themselves and their friends” (Grudem Poverty 259). Following is a list of required freedoms that such a government will need to protect.
The first freedom required for a free market to work is the freedom to own property. If an individual or group wants to produce or sell a product, provide a service or make an offer of exchange, they need to first have their own place of business. Without this freedom, people will be forced to do business a certain way to comply with the regulations placed by the government to let them use the facilities or greatly limit the advancement of business as a whole (selling on the streets). People need the ability to sell, purchase and own their own land or place of business without unnecessary blockages by the authorities.
Second, the freedom of exchange. This should go without saying: a free market is entirely dependent on the freedom of the people to buy and sell stuff in exchange. If a person can’t buy, and material goods are issued by the government like in communism, then there can be no free market. On the reverse, if a person can’t sell, there would be nobody to use your freedom to buy from.
Third, the freedom of transit and transport. In other words, a person needs to be able to transport their goods or travel somewhere to buy something only sold in a certain location. An example of a very well-off business using transport is Georgia Peaches. Here in Minnesota, I can go to a grocery store and pick up a box of Georgia Peaches (GP) only grown in Georgia. Without this freedom, the products sold would be limited to selling in only one location. If GP could only sell peaches in Georgia, they would not be the multi-million-dollar company they are today. This freedom of transport is a necessity for a business to go from just getting by to a household name. On the reverse, the individual needs the right to travel anywhere within the country. With this freedom, consumers can take vacations to exotic places, a thing you cannot bring home with you to Minnesota. This also allows for the business of souvenirs to flourish. A person might get a shark tooth necklace from Florida, BECAUSE it’s from Florida, for a significant markup than getting one from home.
Fourth, the freedom of relocation. If a person can move anywhere within the nation, then they can barter for a better job. This causes many employers to improve life/ status for their employees in order to keep them from going elsewhere, which in turn incentivizes those employees to work harder to keep that job. In nations which use slavery as a means for their economic system, this freedom is not possible, making it impossible to have a true free market economy while also endorsing slavery.
Fifth, the freedom to export and import from other nations. The more people involved in the exchange of value, the more potential for juxtapositionleverage. A prime example of a country whose economy failed because of the neglect of this freedom is 16th century Japan. Niall Ferguson, a professor of history at Harvard University and author of the book Civilization: The West and The Rest, says in his book,
While the English aggressively turned outwards… the Japanese took the opposite path, with the Tokugawa shogunate’s policy of strict seclusion (sakoku) after 1640. All forms of contact with the outside world were proscribed/ as a result. Japan missed out entirely on the benefits associated with a rapidly rising level of global trade and migration. The results were striking. By the late eighteenth century, more than 28 percent of the English farmworkers diet consisted of animal products; his Japanese counterpart lived on a monotonous intake, 95 percent cereals, mostly rice. This nutritional divergence explains the marked gap in stature that developed after 1600. The average height of English convicts in the eighteenth century was 5 feet 7 inches. The average height of Japanese soldiers was 5 feet 2.5 inches. (45)
With the current average height of Japanese men at 5’ 7” and the free market society they live in today, it is safe to conclude that the 17th and 18th centuries of isolation in Japan were a cause of their smaller-than-life stature. Japan is also a fantastic example of what happens to a nation when they go from an impoverished state to one flourishing with the free market system, implementing all of the freedoms listed in this paper.
The sixth freedom is the ability to start a business. Any country with the goal of increasing their production of goods and services will need to rely heavily on businesses. Businesses sell an overwhelming majority of goods across the world, as well as pay the bulk of wages paid to workers, not governments, not charities, not churches, but businesses. Since the world’s economy relies so heavily on big and small businesses alike, the freedom of people to start new businesses and continue to run them is imperative to the health of any striving economy. This freedom must also be applied to everyone. While many won’t be able to succeed with their business, the harder working and more desired businesses will succeed based on the level of support they receive from the consumers. This makes companies work hard to please the consumer and when the consumer is not pleased, the success of the business or company will waver. This incentive for business owners to constantly improve their products for the consumers to willfully buy the products offered and the success it gives birth to is apparent in today’s world. This is a multifaceted factor however and requires policing to protect citizen’s rights. The NY Post reported in 2004 about the SUV rollover crisis:
The Explorer Sport Trac two-wheel drive was slammed as the vehicle most prone to rollover, with a likelihood of 34.8 percent. It was given only two stars out of a possible five. Another Explorer, the four-door, two-wheel drive version, was tied for second worst among the SUVs studied. It was given three stars and a 28.3 percent chance of flipping – tied with the Mercury Mountaineer, GMC Yukon and the Chevy Tahoe. Safety experts concluded years ago that SUVs are more prone to roll than passenger vehicles in single-car crashes.
This crisis was something that Ford knew about as well as the consumer, yet they were still one of the most purchased vehicles. In these instances, it is perfectly within the government’s jurisdiction to protect the citizen’s right to life and enforce regulations accordingly on the production of the SUVs. Thanks to the relationship the U.S government has with its citizens, one of protecting their rights and freedoms, Ford motors went on to greatly improve the safety of their SUVs and pickup trucks, after over a decade of legal disputes and botched tests regarding the stability of the vehicles during moderate-speed turns that is. Bottom line, freedom to start and own a business is imperative to a free market.
The seventh necessary freedom is freedom from excessive government control. While some government intervention is important for the protection of the citizens, too much interference will lead to a major loss of morale for businesses and lead to a collapse of the system. One way that a government can be too involved in businesses is taxation. While some taxation is good and will help the government protect the rights and safety of business owners, too much will cause people to give up on the idea of having a business. The green new deal is an example of a government that is far too involved in the free market process: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., floated a 60 to 70 percent tax rate on the richest Americans in an interview with CBS News’s ‘60 Minutes’ that was released Friday, arguing higher taxes on multimillionaires could help pay for the ‘Green New Deal’ she and other left-wing members of the Democrat Party have proposed” (Stein). This much of a tax rate on anyone will prevent them from wanting to succeed past a certain threshold, limiting the amount of prosperity that a nation can experience. If all citizens are allotted a chance to become wealthier than they already are, it encourages them to do more to benefit the economy by benefiting themselves. By having a reasonable % tax rate that doesn’t discourage success or overwhelm the tax payer, the government income will go up as the business income does. Value can be created. There is not a limited amount of value that can go around. The more a business can create value, the more value there is to go around. This truth is the reason for the success of the wealthiest nations today. When taxation exceeds a certain point, it limits the success of the entire economy and jealousy of the rich by the less well-off isn’t a good enough reason to oppress any businesses. Excessive government interference can extend beyond taxation as well; however, it is the most common form of government overreach in a free-market economy. One example of such an overreach is the Roman empire:
Indeed, it is not too much to say that oppressive taxation eventually led to the fall of Rome to the barbarians. How so? In the early Republic, the small citizen farmer served-without pay–in the military as a patriotic duty. He was the best fighting man in the world. But in the last century of the empire uncontrolled tax evasion became rampant and the quality of the legions changed. The frontier garrisons were composed of overpaid misfits from Italy and self-seeking barbarians. Conscription was used as a tax dodge. The city of Rome fell because it could not defend itself against a third-class military force. (Adams)
In a free market economy, the government truly must be by the people for the people and not by the rich for their own selfishness. This requires the government to be hands off when it comes to the people’s individual freedom, so long as that freedom is not impeding the rights of others.
The eighth freedom is the exemption from demands for bribes. A common flaw of humanity, as you see repeatedly in this paper, is selfishness. Poor nations ruled by governments with too much power and not enough freedom of the people commonly practice bribes for civil services. The economic success of the modern world is largely a product of Judea-Christian values and teachings. While all of the surrounding countries practiced bribery and abandoned the rule of law in favor of the rich, ancient Israel taught: “You shall not pervert justice. You shall not show partiality, and you shall not accept a bribe, for a bribe blinds the eyes of the wise and subverts the cause of the righteous. Justice, and only justice, you shall follow, that you may live and inherit the land that the Lord your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 16:19-20), “And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the clear sighted and subverts the cause of those who are in the right” (Exodus 23:8). When a bribe is accepted, it is in favor of someone who committed a wrong against either another individual or against society itself. This kind of selfishness that goes over the rights of the community causes the public to lose confidence in the authorities’ ability to govern and leads to chaos and anarchy.
There are several other freedoms which are important for a free market society to succeed. I will list the remaining freedoms without going into depth for each one of them as this paper would be way too long. 9.) Freedom for a person to work in any job, 10.) Freedom of reward to workers, 11.) Employers right to hire and fire, 12.) Right of management to hire and promote based on merit, 13.) Freedom of the use of energy, 14.) Change and modernization, 15.) Freedom to seek and acquire information and education, 16.) All people to be educated, 17.) Freedom of men and women, any ethnicity, race or religious belief, 18.) Freedom to advance social status, 19.) Freedom to peruse wealth legally, and 20.) Freedom of religion. These freedoms are named specifically for their imperative nature and the dependency any free market has on them.
If these goals, values and policies are upheld, as well as the refutation of the opposing goals, values and policies, any impoverished nation can bring itself out of a state of poverty. The real challenge after that is maintaining its prosperity and placing policies which block the tendency to backslide the way the modern west has backslidden to the pre-enlightenment period, a period where policy was and is now decided based on feelings rather than reason. The goal of continuous creation of value rather than being robin hood is how a poor society might have the chance of growing rather than stagnating progress or the reduction of products of value. While many may think that the separation of church and state is paramount and unwavering, one of the most impactful reasons for the prosperity of any prosperous nation today is Christianity. A proper respect for the teachings which lead to the prosperity of nations like the United States, England and virtually every other prosperous nation is vital. As such, these goals, values, policies and even teachings should all be at the forefront of every nation striving for greatness.
Works Cited
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Brooks, Arthur C. The Battle: How the Fight between Free Enterprise and Big Government Will Shape Americas Future. Basic Books, 2011.
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