Читать книгу Financial Security For Dummies - Eric Tyson - Страница 21

The original 13 American colonies are a good illustration of the origins of governments and economies. The leaders of the individual colonies elected to federate — to enter into a contract to coexist as one nation — in substantial part to provide for their common defense, but defense wasn’t the only reason they federated. They federated also because they knew that each individual colony would be far more likely to survive and succeed if they cooperated, not only in their mutual defense, but also with regards to infrastructure, such as making it possible for their citizens, goods, and mail to travel easily between them and making it easy to transact trade using a common currency.

Since its inception, the United States of America has afforded its citizens the best environment in the history of humankind in which to achieve the fullness of their human potential. This requires high degrees of both personal and economic freedom, and the United States provides these through a democratic government, with strong protections for individuals, and through capitalism, which promotes competition between individuals and rewards the development of unique potential.

There's no way for any society to guarantee that every member's every need will be met every day. Capitalism is, far and away, the best way to guarantee the highest standard of living to the greatest number of people within a society. Capitalism accomplishes this by

 Empowering the vast majority of its members to be at least productive enough to meet their (and their dependents’) subsistence needs

 Empowering many members to be productive enough not only to meet subsistence needs but also to compassionately contribute to meeting the subsistence needs of the relatively few truly incapable members.

Consider that the United States, in just a couple of centuries, surpassed the standards of living of every other nation on Earth, including nations that had existed for hundreds, even thousands, of years prior. Capitalism did that.

Any other nation in human history that has achieved power comparable to that of the United States in today’s world — a lone “superpower” — has used that power to take freedom away from people, to conquer, and thereby to stifle the development of unique human potential. For most of human history in fact, most human beings have lived in conditions wherein whoever was physically stronger (individually or collectively) largely determined how much of their potential the collectively weaker groups/societies could develop.