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Quote by Hendrith Smith

“When our money is pooled together, we can do more good in the world. As spiritual people and conscious people, we can leverage our combined monetary power to have a greater influence on the economy and make it better reflect our values. At the same time, it can be profitable for each of us independently. There’s power in pooling capital. And that’s part of what we do at Mayflower-Plymouth.”

Quote by Hendrith Smith

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Hendrith Smith

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“Now, the use of culture is that it helps us, by means of its spiritual standard of perfection, to regard wealth as but machinery, and not only to say as a matter of words that we regard wealth as but machinery, but really to perceive and feel that it is so. If it were not for this purging effect wrought upon our minds by culture, the whole world, the future as well as the present, would inevitably belong to the Philistines. The people who believe most that our greatness and welfare are proved by our being very rich, and who most give their lives and thoughts to becoming rich, are just the very people whom we call Philistines. Culture says: 'Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it?”

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Book:Culture and Anarchy
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“Hunter-gatherers are generally spared opportunistic leadership because the gap between rich and poor is so narrow—not surprising in economies that don't use currency or stockpile food. As soon as food can be monopolized, though, hunter-gatherers become just as unfair and stratified as everyone else. Archaeological evidence from across the Pacific Northwest indicates that some Native communities figured out how to restrict access to riverine salmon fisheries and quickly institute a powerful elite that built large houses, kept slaves, and passed wealth from generation to generation. But most Native peoples lived off the land in a way that could not be monopolized. A survey of several hundred tribes native to North America found that nearly 90 percent of the ones with no large food surpluses also had no political inequality. Conversely, social stratification was found in almost 90 percent of tribes that did stockpile food or monopolize its production.”

WealthDemocracy
Book:Freedom
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“The distribution of income in a society is called the 'Gini coefficient,' named after an Italian sociologist named Corrado Gini, who published a paper on the topic in 1912. A society where one person earns all the money and everyone else earns none, effectively has a Gini coefficient of 1.0; and a society where everyone earns the same amount has a coefficient of zero. Neither is desirable. Moderate differences in income motivate people because they have a reasonable chance of bettering their circumstances, and extreme differences discourage people because their efforts look futile. A study of 21 small-scale societies around the world found that hunter-gatherers like the Hadza—who presumably represent the most efficient possible system for survival in a hostile environment—have Gini coefficients as low as .25. In other words, they are far closer to absolute income equality than to absolute monopoly. Because oppression from one's own leaders is as common a threat as oppression from one's enemies, Gini coefficients are one reliable measure of freedom. Hunter-gatherer societies are not democracies—and many hold women in subordinate family roles—but the relationship between those families and their leaders is almost impervious to exploitation. In that sense, they are freer than virtually all modern societies. According to multiple sources, including the Congressional Budget Office, the United States has one of the highest Gini coefficients of the developed world, .42, which puts it at roughly the level of Ancient Rome. (Before taxes, the American Gini coefficient is even higher—almost .6—which is on par with deeply corrupt countries like Haiti, Namibia, and Botswana.) Moreover, the wealth gap between America's richest and poorest families has doubled since 1989. Globally, the situation is even more extreme: several dozen extremely rich people control as much wealth as the bottom half of humanity—3.8 billion people.”

WealthFreedomDemocracy
Book:Freedom
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“It's tempting to imagine that economic injustice destabilizes societies to the point where they collapse and have to reform themselves, but the opposite appears to be true. Countries with large income disparities, such as the United States, are among the most powerful and wealthy countries in the world, perhaps because they can protect themselves with robust economies and huge militaries. They're just not very free. Even societies with income disparities that are truly off the chart—medieval Europe had a Gini coefficient of .79—are relatively stable until a cataclysmic event like the plague triggers a radical redistribution of wealth. During the last decades, progressive reforms have reduced the Gini coefficient—and stabilized the economies—in many Latin American countries. From every standpoint—morally, politically, economically—such reforms are clearly the right things to do. But throughout the great sweep of human history, egalitarian societies with low Gini coefficients rarely dominate world events. From the Han Dynasty of Ancient China to the Roman Empire to the United States, there seems to be a sweet spot of economic injustice that is moderately unfair to most of its citizens but produces extremely powerful societies. Economist Walter Scheidel calculates that 3,500 years ago, such large-scale states controlled only 1 percent of the Earth's habitable landmass but represented at least half the human population. By virtually any metric, that's a successful society. 'For thousands of years, most of humanity lived in the shadow of these behemoths,' Scheidel writes. 'This is the environment that created the 'original one percent,' made up of competing but often closely intertwined elite groups.' The question, then, is how do ordinary people protect their freedom in the face of such highly centralized state control?”

WealthFreedomDemocracy
Book:Freedom
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