Tuesday, October 9, 2007

A Society of Wealth Creators

The great strength of capitalism is that it is an economic system wherein everyone has the opportunity to be successful without ever thinking about the intellectual and cultural context that makes success possible. We don't have to know everything. We just have to know something useful to other people, and have sense enough to use it for our mutual advantage.

Unfortunately, an economy built on limited individual knowledge is also capitalism's great weakness. It leaves the system vulnerable to those who claim that their perfect knowledge or their theory of the will of history is more important than individual knowledge or the will of the individual.

If the individuals who benefit most from capitalism -- the wealth creators -- do not understand the intellectual and cultural institutions that make business possible, what chance do they have to withstand a steady series of attacks from the intellectuals, populists, collectivists, and religious extremists who want to bring capitalism and the life of the individual to an end?

That is why we formed the Bastiat Society: to educate other wealth creators on their right to the moral high ground, and on the intellectual and cultural institutions that are necessary for individuals to be successful. Our motto is "Those who work in freedom should know how freedom works."

We call on successful business people everywhere to join us in an organization unlike any the world has ever seen: a society of principled wealth creators, the benefactors of the human race, committed to reclaiming the moral high ground and the life of the individual.

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