Thursday
(0)"It is a irresistible to note that nearly everyone, including the wealth creator, is inclined to see the world of inner being, of the heart and soul, as being at odds with the commercial. Wealth creators seem shy of their success. It is often said that the Englishman has always preferred to be seen as a gentleman than as a creative, industrious or commercial person."
Richard D. North, Rich is Beautiful, (page 199).
That is a thought provoking thought. Whilst I see no need for a wealth creator to even come close to apologising for his success that last line about the Englishman preferring to be seen as a gentleman does have me wondering.
Posted by Bernie at September 29, 2005 07:12 PM
Without the wealth creators we would still be subsistence farmers at best. However we are taught that wealth creation is exploititive, which u=is why we struggle as a nation.
If only we were still the despised nation of shopkeepers
Posted by srs at September 29, 2005 07:50 PM
Probably something to do with the love of money being the root of evil, I suspect.
EG
Posted by Euan Gray at September 29, 2005 09:30 PM
A landed proprietor who tends his acres and its people faithfully is more creative, industrious and commercial than 99% of the higher serfs toiling for they know not what ends in globalised corporations or State bureaucracies. The strongest of all society's little platoons is the country estate: in better days, a self-sufficient world of shared faith, interlocking specialisms and understood duties and privileges which also generated the main artistic heritage of this nation.
Our peaceful green and pleasant land was an interlaced series of thousands of such little geodesic worlds: the closest *practical* approach to libertarian desiderata we have ever attained. Once the dead end of 'wealth creation', waste and pollution is universally recognised, let us hope that Britain, which led the world into industrial revolution via the success of its agriculture-- for it was the despised gentleman who started the ball rolling-- will be the first country to find a new dispensation that replaces the brittle, unsustainable regime of contract with that of good old status. May the impertinent and oppressively impersonal tyranny of the bureaucrat be replaced by the easy yoke of the godly squire and the comfort of knowing one's place.
Posted by Luniversal at September 29, 2005 11:30 PM
Rand very clearly diagnosed this moral inversion in conventional culture a half century ago.
As in the animal rights discussion in the adjacent thread, we routinely allow those who hate and despise the creative and industrious aspects in the human consciousness to set the agenda for ethical discussions.
The mystics of muscle and of spirit have not cooperated all these centuries without effect.
Posted by veryretired at September 30, 2005 01:45 AM
Luniversal, this is the first time I have read reference to wate and pollution. Bravo. These are the things that will do for us if we don't change. Wealth creation without waste and the poisoning of the water we drink and the air we breathe is what we all should aspire too, in a non collectivist way of course ;-).
Posted by gravid at September 30, 2005 01:55 PM
This is because they do not have a propper attitude about the virtues of selfishness...
td
Posted by Tony Di Croce at September 30, 2005 03:21 PM
