Robert Higgs  – Thursday, November 03, 2016 – FEE

contest is under way in the world between the forces of creation, improvement, and progress and the forces of destruction, spoliation, and retrogression. This contest has been going on for thousands of years, and except during brief interludes the negative forces always kept the positive forces firmly in check. Roughly 200 to 300 years ago in Western Europe and some of its overseas offshoots, however, the positive forces began to outpace the negative ones, and economic progress slowly became more or less the long-term norm, eventually propelling first Europeans and ultimately most populations in the world to much higher levels of living and economic well-being. Scholars continue to debate precisely what brought about this Great Enrichment.

The efforts of private inventors, innovators, investors, and workers created the process of normally positive economic growth.

We know for certain, however, that the negative forces did not disappear. They were merely outpaced or circumvented most of the time in more and more places. The efforts of private inventors, innovators, investors, and workers created the process of normally positive economic growth. But government officials, regulators, influential busybodies, and misguided ideologues always tried to put obstacles in the positive path—always, of course, for what struck them as the best of reasons. They even fancied—at least in public—that they were making a positive contribution to the process, although owing to their lack of understanding of sound economics, they usually did nothing of the sort even when they really were trying.

In any event, a great variety of special interests always understood that if they could capture the powers of government to back their schemes of enrichment and empowerment, they could make themselves better off at the expense of everyone else. So with the spread of “democracy,” the plunder that had previously been confined to a much narrower set of plunderers was made much more comprehensive, giving rise to the real war of all against all. Of course, this ceaseless political war-making wreaks havoc with the creative forces that private individuals and organizations are exerting, and sometimes it overwhelms them completely, as during serious business contractions and great wars…. read more at:

https://fee.org/articles/humanitys-long-fight-for-freedom/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+FEE-Freeman+%28Foundation+for+Economic+Education+-+The+Freeman+Latest+Articles%29