"…We have become a human community, WE MUST LIVE BY CONSENSUS OR DIE.* Only `pax planeta' will now suffice; only a return to the vision of the primacy of the United Nations in the global order will allow us the chance of a tolerable future. 

*Ed. Note: Is that meant to be an observation or a THREAT? Or a sneaky attempt at BOTH? 

"There is something shameful, even obscene, about the fact that, in the end-years of this century of dazzling progress and soaring affluence, some of it in the developing world, one in five of the world's people should be condemned to live in … absolute poverty. It is a cruel paradox that the number of people in poverty should be rising in a world that globalization has transformed, that freedom from want should remain unrealized for millions in a world in which the free market has so pervasively triumphed.**

"A key message of the latest Human Development Report is that THE GAP BETWEEN RICH AND POOR IN THE WORLD IS WIDENING EVERY DAY."  ---- excerpted from "A Vision More Compelling Now," The 15th Annual Attlee Lecture by Sir Shridath Ramphal (quoting Clement Attlee in part) at The Commission on Global Governance (to reform the United Nations), London, 18 February 1997 at http://www.cgg.ch/atlee.htm .  [Italics or CAPS added.] Ramphal was co-chairman of the commission.

**Ed. Note: There is something shameful, even obscene, about the fact that the percentage of the worlds' people living in the most desperate poverty can drop from 88% to about 20% in less than 2 centuries, and self-important busybodies like this are bent on destroying the very foundations of what made it all possible.
*

   "Ultimately it is only wealth that can reduce poverty." -- Thomas Sowell

  "If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the poverty and not the difference. Wealth is good.  ... wealth is not a world-wide round-robin of purse snatching, and ... the thing that makes you rich doesn't make me poor. ... Without Productivity, there wouldn't be any economics, or any economic thinking, good or bad, or any pizza, or anything else.  We would sit around and stare at rocks, and maybe later have some for dinner. ... Wealth is based on productivity, and productivity is expandable.  In fact, productivity is fabulously expandable."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich

"Look around: It just isn't true that countries get rich at each other's expense.Would America be better off now if Europe and Japan had stayed poor after 1945? Did its jobs migrate, its economy stagnate, leaving rising poverty and chronic unemployment? Not exactly: America thrived. One of the things that helped it after 1945 was expanding opportunities for trade with other rich countries. Americans would be worse off today if Europe and Japan had stayed poor. What's changed? Why isn't this still true? In my view: Nothing; it's still true. The faster India grows, the better off every other country will be... I do not regard the prospect of global capitalism as 'harrowing.'  I regard it as the best opportunity for relieving human misery the world has ever seen." -- Clive Crook, deputy editor of The Economist,in the February 25th, 1997 issue of Slate, in a letter to John Judis

  "I observed the talks and was shocked not only by the riotous atmosphere, but also by the protesters' misconceptions about trade, the WTO and the developing world. As an Indian national, I know only too well how lack of trade, investment and freedom keeps the world's developing nations in a state of perpetual poverty and environmental degradation. Sadly, the largely middle-class Americans who trashed Seattle last week had little if any comprehension of this fact." -- Barun Mitra, in a column in the Wall Street Journal 12-9-99. Mitra heads the The Liberty Institute, in New Delhi, India

 "The 'progressive' Left, even while wailing about international poverty, has long decried the Westernization of the 'developing world', the polite term for societies kept poor by socialist governments." -- from The Free Market Means Civilization by Lew Rockwell, President of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, originally published in Spintechmag.com,12-22-2000.

  "Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild in BIONOMICS: Economy as Ecosystem
 

"To get rich is glorious." -- Deng Xiaoping, former "Communist" leader, Peoples' Republic of China, trying to encourage entrepreneurs after giving up on a totally centrally-controlled economy

  "Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon

 "The market is not an invention of capitalism.  It has existed for centuries.  It is an invention of civilization." -- Mikhail Gorbachev, June 8, 1990

   "How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing." -- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich

  "In terms of natural resources, Africa is the world's richest continent. It has 50 percent of the world's gold, most of the world's diamonds and chromium, 90 percent of the cobalt, 40 percent of the world's potential hydroelectric power, 65 percent of the manganese, millions of acres of untilled farmland as well as other natural resources.  Despite the natural wealth, Africa is home to the world's most impoverished and abused people. Of the 41 black African nations, only three (Senegal, Botswana and Mauritius) allow their people the right to vote and choose their own leaders. Only two (Botswana and Senegal) permit freedom of expression and criticism of government policies. In countries like Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Mozambique, Sudan, Chad and others, ethnic genocide has taken the lives of untold millions of innocent victims. Slavery is still practiced in the Sudan and Mauritania." -- Dr. Walter E. Williams

  "Another current catch-phrase is the complaint that the nations of the world are divided into 'haves' and the 'have-nots.'  Observe that the 'haves' are those who have freedom, and that it is freedom that the 'have-nots' have not." -- Ayn Rand

"What transformed the world of horse-drawn carriages, sailing ships, and windmills step by step into a world of airplanes and electronics was the laissez-faire principle." -- Ludwig von Mises in The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science

"Capitalism is not just a system for producing wealth. It is, above all else, a system based on the noblest moral principle: the protection of the individual's right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Free markets are founded on the individual's right to pursue a career, trade the products of his effort, and enjoy the wealth he has earned without having to seek permission from others or pay ransom for the privilege of living." --Robert W. Tracinski

"For years, statist development experts had sought top-down solutions, operating under the implicit assumption that poor people in the Third World were largely incapable of entrepreneurship. De Soto utterly rejected that patronizing viewpoint, and, beginning in his native Peru, focused on the lack of formal property rights as the source of poverty in poor countries." --Gene Healy

"The poor of India are far better off than they would have been if India’s economic liberalisation had not taken place, and there are far less of them than there would have been. This is not because they have died of starvation, but because of ... 'the explosive growth of the middle class'. Free markets aren’t magic, and past inequities don’t disappear as soon as the economy is opened up, but they are better than any alternative. ... One of the most pernicious myths of the last two centuries is of the unequal gains from capitalism. A landmark study titled 'Growth Is Good for the Poor', by David Dollar and Aart Kraay, surveys available economic information from 137 countries, over four decades, and demolishes the myth of the 'trickle-down effect'. In an open economy, wealth does not trickle down gradually from the rich to the poor simultaneously. Instead, 'incomes of the poor rise proportionately with average incomes'. Read the full report..." -- Amit Varma

 "Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon." -- Michael Rothschild     

 "Capitalism is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Any stray mediocrity rushes into print with plans to control the production of mankind -- and ... no one questions his right to enforce his plans by means of a gun." -- Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged

"Cuba's poverty is caused by the crackpot Marxist doctrines imposed by its sociopathic ruler and promoted by half the liberal arts professors on American faculties." -- David Horowitz 
.

  "Bad and discredited ideas, it seems, never die.  Neither do they fade away.  Instead, they keep turning up, like bad pennies or Godzilla in the old Japanese  movies." -- Murray N. Rothbard  

"Most elected officials cling to their ideological biases despite the real-world facts that disprove their theories time & again." -- Larry Kudlow
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"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
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   "Any fourth grade history student knows socialism has failed in every country, at every time in history." -- Vladimir Putin
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   "The study of history is a powerful antidote to contemporary arrogance. It is humbling to discover how many of our glib assumptions, which seem to us noble and plausible, have been tested before, not once but many times and in innumerable guises; and discovered to be, at great human cost, wholly false." -- Celebrated Historian Paul Johnson
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   "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." ~ George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1906
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   "When Western countries in the past were as poor as Third World countries are today, these Western countries nevertheless had one big advantage: There was no large and influential class of the intelligentsia to impede their progress with unsubstantiated theories and counterproductive propaganda." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell  

   "There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton   
 
 "Incessant preoccupation with statistical disparities is one of the luxuries of an affluent and sheltered life.  Do not expect someone who has ever had to go hungry to get upset because some people can only afford pizza while others can afford caviar." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell (who began life hungry)
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   "It is no crime to be ignorant of economics, which is, after all, a specialized discipline and one that most people consider to be a 'dismal science.' But it is totally irresponsible to have a loud and vociferous opinion on economic subjects while remaining in this state of ignorance."--  Murray N. Rothbard
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   "Our supplies of natural resources are not finite in any economic sense. Nor does past experience give reason to expect natural resources to become more scarce. Rather, if history is any guide, natural resources will progressively become less costly, hence less scarce, and will constitute a smaller proportion of our expenses in future years." -- Julian Simon
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   "It is your mind that matters economically, as much or more than your mouth or hands. In the long run, the most important economic effect of population size and growth is the contribution of additional people to our stock of useful knowledge. And this contribution is large enough in the long run to overcome all the costs of population growth." -- Julian Simon
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   "Wealth may provoke envy, but it seldom provokes the truly venomous levels of resentment provoked by achievement. There is no surer way for a minority group to become hated than to enter a country as destitute immigrants and then, through long hours of hard work, rise to a level of prosperity above that of the indigenous population." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
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  "Those who say that all cultures are equal never explain why the results of those cultures are so grossly unequal." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell

"Arnold writes: 'If you think that culture matters but institutions do not, look at North and South Korea. If you think that culture does not matter at all, look at differences among different ethnic groups within countries.'
"South Korea/North Korea per capita income ratio: 14.[14 to 1] (Source: CIA World Factbook)
"American Asian/American black average household income ratio: 1.9.[1.9 to 1] (Source: U.S. Census)

"From a global standpoint, it sure looks like economic policy (a term I prefer to the vague 'institutions') matters a lot more than culture." -- Bryan Caplan

See: "where the mainstream development economists' writings drip with condescension for the apparently helpless poor, Bauer's words glow with good will and respect. The inhabitants of the developing world are people, he reminded us. They need freedom too." HERE.
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"The idea that foreign aid is a route out of poverty and political instability is not only bankrupted but a cruel and evil hoax as well." -- Dr. Walter E. Williams

"Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries." -- Douglas Casey

"If concern for human poverty and suffering were one's primary motive, one would seek to discover their cause.  One would not fail to ask : Why did some nations develop, while others did not?  Why have some nations achieved material abundance, while others have remained stagnant in sub-human misery? History and specifically the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the 19th century would give an immediate answer : capitalism is the only system that enables men to produce abundance - and the key to capitalism is individual freedom." -- Ayn Rand, "Requiem for Man", Chapter 24 of Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal

"The benefits of securing the freedom to create wealth are significant -- especially for the poor. 'In nations in the top fifth of economic freedom, the average income of the poorest 10 percent of the population was $6,877 compared to just $823 in the least free nations,' according to the 2004 Economic Freedom Report, which ranks 123 countries on such policies as taxation, property-rights protection, and freedom to trade internationally. The report also shows that poor countries that embrace economic freedom accumulate wealth  faster: From 1980 to 2000 poor countries whose economies were relatively free of government interference had economic growth rates of 5.2 percent per year, compared to 3.4 percent for all economically free countries." -- Gabriel Gasave

http://freedomkeys.com/gap.htm
"Western civilization was the child and product of reason -- via ancient Greece.  In all other civilizations, reason has always been the menial servant -- the handmaiden -- of mysticism.  You may observe the results.  It is only Western culture that has ever been dominated -- imperfectly, incompletely, precariously and at rare intervals -- but still, dominated by reason.  You may observe the results of that." -- Ayn Rand
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   "Today, in the Twenty-First Century, an age of jet aircraft, personal computers, wireless telecommunications, laser surgery, and incipient space travel, the mentality with which many presumably educated, intelligent people approach matters of economics and business is, however astonishing it may seem, still that of the Dark Ages."-- George Reisman
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   "Most Americans living below the official poverty line have air conditioning, microwaves and VCRs. About half have a car or truck. Moreover, most of the people in the bottom 20 percent of the income distribution in 1975 have also been in the top 20 percent at some point since then. ... People who are genuinely poor all their lives still exist, but only about 3 percent of the American population remains in the bottom 20 percent for as long as a decade." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
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 "Not understanding the process of a spontaneously-ordered economy goes hand-in-hand with not understanding the creation of resources and wealth." -- Julian Simon
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   "America's abundance was not created by public sacrifices to the common good, but by the productive genius of free men who pursued their own personal interests and the making of their own private fortunes." -- Ayn Rand

   "Scratch the surface of an endemic problem -- famine, illness, poverty -- and you invariably find a politician at the source."--  Simon Carr, in his review of The Mystery of Capital by Hernando de Soto

  "You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil.  Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil." -- Walter E. Williams

  "From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently.  Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either one or the other, but not both at the same time." -- F. A. Hayek
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  "If welfare and equality are to be primary aims of law, some people must necessarily possess a greater power of coercion in order to force redistribution of material goods. Political power alone should be equal among human beings; yet, striving for other kinds of equality absolutely requires political inequality." -- Tibor R. Machan in Private Rights and Public Illusions
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   "There is all the difference in the world between treating people equally and attempting to make them equal." -- F.A. Hayek

"Here is a truism about the wealth of nations: Zero-sum games do not increase it. Historically, the welfare of the poor always--always--depends on putting people in a position where their best shot at prosperity is to find a way of making other people better off. The key to long-run welfare never has been and never will be a matter of making sure the game’s best players lose." -- David Schmidtz
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   "...the question becomes, are you going to have everyone play by the same rules, or are you going to try to rectify the shortcomings, errors and failures of the entire cosmos? Because those things are wholly incompatible. If you're going to have people play by the same rules, that can be enforced with a minimum amount of interference with people's freedom. But if you're going to try to make the entire cosmos right and just, somebody has got to have an awful lot of power to impose what they think is right on an awful lot of other people. What we've seen, particularly in the 20th century, is that putting that much power in anyone's hands is enormously dangerous." -- Thomas Sowell, in an interview in Salon11-10-99
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   "The idea that 'the public interest' supersedes private interests and rights can have but one meaning: that the interests and rights of some individuals take precedence over the interests and rights of others." -- Ayn Rand
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   "So many idealistic political movements for a better world have ended in mass-murdering dictatorships. Giving leaders enough power to create 'social justice' is giving them enough power to destroy all justice, all freedom, and all human dignity." -- Thomas Sowell
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   "Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state.  That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell  

.    "I consider socialism an obscene ideology, doomed to end in either total self destruction or total dictatorship." -- Pamela Hemelrijk, Leiden, Holland, April 3, 2004.04.16   

Professor R. J. Rummel, who keeps track of such things, now estimates that in the 20th century 262,000,000 people were murdered by their own governments.  And all these horrors were perpetrated by collectivist governments for the alleged sake of "the proletariat," the "master race," and especially, "the greater good." None were done by countries based on individualism.  See:  http://tinyurl.com/RJRummel

   "All socialism involves slavery." -- Herbert Spencer

"Many Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action. They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof. Morgan O. Reynolds
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  "There is no error so monstrous that it fails to find defenders among the ablest men." -- Prof. John E. E. D. Acton
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  "The secret dread of modern intellectuals, liberals and conservatives alike, the unadmitted terror at the root of their anxiety, which all of their current irrationalities are intended to stave off and to disguise, is the unstated knowledge that Soviet Russia [was] the full, actual, literal, consistent embodiment of the morality of altruism, that Stalin did not corrupt a noble ideal, that this [total control of all human activity and the brutalizing and murder of millions of citizens] is the only way altruism has to be or can ever be practiced." -- Ayn Rand
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   "The Nazis are well remembered for murdering well over 11 million people in the implementation of their slogan, 'The public good before the private good,' the Chinese Communists for murdering 62 million people in the implementation of theirs, 'Serve the people,' and the Soviet Communists for murdering more than 60 million people in the implementation of Karl Marx's slogan, 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.' " -- Rick Gaber

   "No amount of IMF, World Bank and other handout interventions can bring prosperity to repressive nations." -- Walter Williams, here

"You can bet the rent money that whatever politicians do will end up harming consumers. ... Economic ignorance is to politicians what idle hands are to the devil.  Both provide the workshop for the creation of evil." -- Walter E. Williams
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  "When will the world wake up and realize that most politicians, especially in the poorest countries of the world, are nothing more than glorified gangsters who view government as simply a fiercely-guarded monopoly on every form of compulsion and extortion to be perpetrated in a specific geographical area?  Why do you think the largest amounts of 'foreign aid' extracted from the gullible diplomats of wealthier countries wind up in those politicians' pockets or Swiss bank accounts, despite all the virtuous-sounding rhetoric?" -- Bert Rand
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  "How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing."-- P.J. O'Rourke in Eat the Rich
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"This government never furthered any enterprise but by the alacrity with which it got out of its way." -- Henry David Thoreau in his essay, "Civil Disobedience"
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"I own I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive." -- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 12/20/1787
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"The trick, of course, is that doing nothing in the public policy world allows much more to be done in the real world." -- Thomas Hazlett in the March, 1997 issue of Reason
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"Government does not cause affluence.  Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else." -- P.J. O’Rourke
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"The only justifiable purpose of political institutions is to assure the unhindered development of the individual." -- Albert Einstein
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"One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain." -- Dr. Thomas Sowell
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"Many Western journalists, in contrast to revolutionaries, do not treat ideas seriously, and therefore fail to recognize the power of ideas in action. They don't realize that chaos and brutality must accompany a determined effort to implement ... thorough-going socialism." -- Prof. Morgan O. Reynolds

"No 'middle class' worth the name aspires to economic benefits without bothering to acquire the skills to produce the wealth to make those benefits sustainable." -- Holman Jenkins
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"To embrace a collectivist system ... and thereby jeopardize sustained economic growth, inevitably misallocate scarce resources, and almost necessarily perpetuate destitution, hardly merits moral acclaim. Indeed, intellectuals in general and church leaders in particular who bewail the continued existence of poverty absolutely defined, and who state that they yearn for a world in which the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, and the destitute housed, yet who ceaselessly undermine the very system which, to date, has best done what they claim to value most, are, surely, moral imbeciles." -- The Reverend Doctor John K. Williams

"Capitalism is not an 'ism.' It is closer to being the opposite of an 'ism,' because it is simply the freedom of ordinary people to make whatever economic transactions they can mutually agree to." -- Dr.Thomas Sowell

"Socialism in general has a record of failure so blatant that only an intellectual could ignore or evade it." -- Thomas Sowell

"Anything other than free enterprise always means a society of compulsion and lower living standards, and any form of socialism strictly enforced means dictatorship and the total state.  That this statement is still widely disputed only illustrates the degree to which malignant fantasy can capture the imagination of intellectuals." -- Lew Rockwell