Letting the Pizza Grow
Friday, August 22, 2008
I have long been a fan of Don Boudreaux's letters to editors, which he frequently posts on Cafe Hayek. So little written, and yet so much conveyed.
A recent one addresses the income inequality issue:Who among us sends our children to school or to the playground with admonitions to begrudge classmates or playmates possessing nicer clothing or fancier toys? Who among us counsels our youngsters to form schoolyard coalitions for forcibly confiscating expensive sneakers and video games from 'rich' kids for "redistribution" to poorer kids? Who among us would not scold our children for such envy, and punish them severely if they participated in such thievery?
I am tired of people giving me the whole poor-are-still-poor-and-rich-are-still-rich drivel. Of course they are. That's how things work. Besides, why be bitter about someone else becoming richer, unless of course, he does it by harming others?
Children should avoid envy and learn to thrive by producing rather than by taking. The same is true for adults.
Also, aren't we all richer than we once were? I think its better to have unequal slices of a sufficiently bigger pizza, than to have equal slices of a small one.
And say what you may, all efforts to achieve equal distribution, are impediments to the pizza getting bigger at all. For it strikes at the very way it grows: by competition and proportionate rewards.
(To read what James Michaels thought of Nehruvian pizza cutting, head here.)
