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 subhuman misery? History and,
specifically, the unprecedented prosperity-explosion of the nineteenth 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.
Poverty is not a mortgage on the labor of others—misfortune is not a mortgage
on achievement—failure is not a mortgage on success—suffering is not a claim
check, and its relief is not the goal of existence—man is not a sacrificial
animal on anyone’s altar nor for anyone’s cause—life is not one huge hospital.