Human capital is the ability to create the material things that constitute wealth… A classic example: In the 1970s, Uganda decided that the Gujarati population, from India, were just too wealthy and controlled too much of the economy. The Ugandans expelled them and wouldn’t let them take their wealth with them. And so the Gujaratis arrived, mostly in England, destitute. Meanwhile, the Ugandan government had taken over all of this material stuff. A few years later, the Gujaratis were prosperous in England, and the Ugandan economy collapsed. Because they didn’t have people who knew how to do what the Gujaratis were doing. It’s also one of the problems of trying to finance things by confiscating the wealth of the wealthy. All you can confiscate is the material wealth. You cannot confiscate human capital.
true of all industrious human beings. there have been and will continue to be those who think they are entitled to fruit of the labours of others, I call them liberal socialists. every society has them and we tend to function in spite of them not because of them.
I wonder where mu comment went?
wow, one showed up with the other at the same time. mu of course was supposed to be my. does anyone else keep getting the timed out notice when they try and comment?
The same happened to Mennonites in Russia.
They were welcomed because of their work ethics then expelled because of their wealth.
Sowell raised this same point vis a vis the Chinese in southeast Asia in his book, “The Economics and Politics of Race”. De Soto also described the phenomenon in his book, “The Mystery of Capital”. Basically, the ability to create and accumulate wealth is dependent upon a combination of factors including a system of governance which permits and protects the creation and the ability to lever private wealth combined with individual entrepreneurial ability and effort. “The Rich” barring those who have inherited wealth e.g. John Kerry, Justin Hairdo or government kleptocrats, are simply those who have identified and implemented the methods to optimally create and lever whatever wealth they start with.
Confiscating wealth from the wealthy wether it be in Uganda, Zimbabwe or in the case of corporate wealth, Venezuela simply results in the short term possession of dead capital, i.e. material goods which quickly deteriorate and/or are consumed at which point the confiscators are back at square one and the creators of wealth have usually gone Galt. That this exercise is so often repeated is a tribute to socialists’ utter lack of insight and learning ability.
One family of the Ugandan exiles relocated to Swift Current and established Wheatland Machine Shop. A solid contribution to our community. Do we owe Uganda reparations?
One of my favourite stories about the loss of entrepreneurial know-how resulting from the expulsion of Uganda’s Indian community:
A men’s shop in Kampala run by an Indian family was given to a crony of the Amin regime. The new owner promptly started selling men’s shirts according to the “price label” on the collar: 14 shillings, 14 1/2 shillings, 15 shillings, 15 1/2 shillings, and so on.
Needless to say, the shop soon went out of business.
It is SO much easier to just blame “the rich”. If you won’t believe me … just ask; Adolph Hitler, chairman Mao, Stalin … Hillary Clinton.
Two brothers kicked out of Uganda were clients of my last employer. Arrived in the UK with £5 and the clothes they stood up in. Chatting to the finance director of their private company he estimated the value at £600 million. At the time, with the exchange rate, that was about a billion dollars.
First sentence, exactly.
Second sentence, correction if I may. Their wealth was confiscated and those that could or thought it best, left in the 1920s. Those that stayed suffered greatly for almost seventy years. Some were able to escape after WWII and most of the rest went to Germany around 1990. My grandfather had his farm confiscated and left in 1926. His two brothers and all his brothers-in-law all had their farms confiscated during the collectivization period 1929-31 and were sent to labour camps and almost all died there. My wife’s grandfather and his brother had their flour mill confiscated in late 1917, but had to stay and manage the place. Not long after they were warned by a radish that their names were on the list for the next morning. He helped them escape and they went to the Black Sea area and from there to Canada in 1923. Most of their male siblings died in labour camps.
So I can understand quite well what happened in Uganda and elsewhere, and if some get their way will also happen in Canada and the US.
We must clone him? That completely misses the point of what he’s saying. Suppose we did clone Thomas Sowell. What would we have? Another person with exactly the same DNA as Thomas Sowell, and none of the experience.