Stealing is a Bad Thing — Part 1

Why are some countries poor while others rich? That’s a more complex question than the question why a particular person is rich and another poor. The difficulty in the latter case arises because an individual is at the mercy of factors out of its control, while in the case of a collective, the collective determines its destiny through the choices it collectively makes.

There’s the problem of endogeneity when one considers the collective: society determines the environment, which in turn determines how the society functions. In this series, I will explore one simple idea, and it is this. Societies that steal are less able to produce the good society in contrast with societies that are in some sense honest.

The good society is one which is at the very least, not materially impoverished. I believe that theft is a factor in the poverty of societies. If indeed it is so that stealing is implicated in the poverty of nations, then it is possible for us to figure a way out of the problem. That we will see in the end.
Continue reading “Stealing is a Bad Thing — Part 1”