Private Wealth Quotes
Like many ideological political philosophers who developed a following, she tended to exaggerate many of her points and to ignore additional factors. While individual businessmen and politicians pursuing their self interests were certainly necessary for America’s great growth and success, they were not sufficient. Many of the founding fathers sacrificed their fortunes and in some cases their lives to gain American independence. And the sacrifice of millions was necessary in many conflicts were those who fought were rarely enlarging their own fortunes. And equally important factors of American success were the collective action of communities creating schools, roads, bridges, canals. The driver of the businessmen to move into critical areas was the government subsidizing the railroads, proving the telegraph useful, developing the national highway system and the Internet. Most of the great universities and research centers were created as government, charitable or religious institutions where personal profit was not a factor. It is that combination of private and public, self serving and communitarian drives, secular and religious that have created modern America. Many people in Rand’s ere did not credit the private, self serving contributions of many great men, and Rand led the movement to remind all of that critical factor. In the process of making her good point, she tended to ignore the other factors.
The problem he described in 1938 was “solved” over the next decade, but then arose again with the advent of the “military industrial complex” during the Eisenhower administration. Reform made things better and then it began to emerge again in the latter part of the 20th century. This problem seems to go through cycles of abuse and reform.
In modern America, there are two political views of this notion. The one held by a narrow majority of the population is Trenchard’s quotation taken literally. Their view is that there is no way to maintain liberty if there is too wide a wealth gap between the rich and the rest of the population. The second variant, held by many conservatives, limits the equality to equality of opportunity. They are loathe to take any position that says that any gap between the rich and the remainder of the citizens might be too large. They would particularly disagree with the first sentence of this quotation. Another consideration is that this quotation does not even consider what became a major problem in the American Democracy—the ability and propensity of the very rich to bribe legislators and officials and/or make “campaign contributions” to obtain favorable treatment and/or “access”.
The socialist extremists wanted the state to own all the major businesses which would be operated without a profit allowing more money to be paid to the workers without any price increase for the consumer. Yet, many of them wanted the innovation and other virtues of the private sector and few were ready to take on the political chaos that would be involved in eliminating private ownership of businesses. Crosland forced them to logically accept the concept of profits as desirable for the society.
