While driving in my car by Seven-Eleven, I was wondering why after all of the great giveaways in Africa, Asia, and South America, with all of their land reform has kept them poor. (The argument of the socialists is that the U.S. is rich because it is lucky to have abundant natural resources.)

I then thought of the folks running the Seven-Eleven, who work all the time, and have saved to buy the inventory in their store and at their gas pumps. They came to Pennsburg because they thought our country was a better gamble than Africa, Asia, or South America.

I look on “profits” differently. Profit comes from creating something of value, not only for yourself, but rather for yourself and someone else. When you do that, you trade the excess with someone else who has managed to produce something extra.

The community grows. Hunters produce many pelts, fishers find many oysters, and toolmakers provide them the knives to skin the game and shuck the oysters. Then some ogre comes in and says he will kill some of you unless you give him two fingers of pelts, six and six fingers of oysters, half of your tools, but because he is nice, he will protect you from the wolves and the tigers, as long as you till the fields and are happy with your portion.

Everyone ceases to hunt or fish.

One becomes a shaman, who explains what has happened. He says that the ogre should have taken more pelts and oysters. The shaman becomes the first economic advisor to the ogre.

You made many great points, and tonight I wish I were in your class.

One book you should somehow provide a link to: Econoclasts: The Rebels Who Sparked the Supply-Side Revolution and Restored American Prosperity, by Brian Domitrovic (ISI). I’m going to order it from the Montgomery County Socialist Library, so they have to purchase it.

The review I read was in National Review, and it told of how Samuelson vilified Art Laffer to nuke Laffer’s professional career, but, more imortantly to preserve Keynsean and liberal orthodoxy.

It also tells of the meeting between Robert Bartley, Art Laffer, and Jude Wanniski.

Speedmaster and you should order the book through the public library and the university, respectively.

Until I read it, I will hold my recommendation for its inclusion in Rochester’s Econ 103.

Wintercow, I’ve lost your current e-mail addy. Please update me. The one in my address book is the .edu one. Thanks.

Of course you know this, but I have to say it anyway. If it was that easy, why can’t anyone just take any current business, and start doubling their prices tomorrow, making the owners quite rich, quite fast?