'The multiplication of the paths of exchange will soon lead to its logical conclusion, and we will only see on the market those goods produced by the most miserable of peoples. The Chinese will become the world's best workers because they only require that their animal needs be met. Later, the worker, the engineer, the salesman, and the banker himself will be purchased on the open market. Then the banker of London, Paris, or Vienna, having made himself rich by putting his capital to work in China, will in turn face an unequal struggle against the Chinese usurer, who will not give himself the luxuries of a princely palace, teams of horses, parties, and the life of the rich. An irremediable decline awaits the economic order of the civilization of the West at the end of this path of freedom of labor, a path down which it is led by the teaching of the philosophers, the science of the economists, and the power of the capitalists.' -- René de La Tour du Pin, 'On the Corporate Régime' (1883), Critics of the Enlightenment: Readings in the French Counter-Revolutionary Tradition, C. O. Blum, ed., Wilmington, Del.: ISI Books, 2004, p. 326.
It is long past time to rethink the rules governing our political economy, from farming to heavy manufacturing, if wish to be more than paper pushers for giant international corporations or welfare recipients of giant governments. That is the direction we are moving unless we take the difficult steps needed to reintroduce morality into economics, so that small family farms and businesses can be secure in their property and livelihood from generation to generation.
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