The Lair
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In the world there are many poor nations. If they don't have money, they must earn it or borrow it. So they go to richer nations and say: "We WILL earn it, but lend us some money right now to help us earn it, and we'll pay you back later". The richer nations think about this and say: "We want your people to do better and we want to help improve your life quality, so okay, we'll lend it". The two nations agree that the borrowing nation will repay the debt to the lending nation on a certain legal schedule.
The governments of the borrowing nations are corrupt or incompetent or unfamiliar with cause and effect in government economics. Mostly the borrowed funds are unrecoverable for any combination of those reasons. After a period of time the corrupt government officials run out of money, so they further oppress their people in order to steal the wealth of their nation, and they return to the gullible lenders who they hope will throw more good money after bad.
Very skilled at this game, the corrupt officials of the borrowing nation run around saying how destitute their people are, how short their life expectancies are, how poor their medical services are, and so forth. These corrupt officials need people in the lending nation to speak for them, and they play on the large sense of guilt for the quality of life that the richer nation's people enjoy so that they will become willing advocates of either lending the poor nation more money, or forgiving the standing debt.
This completely destroys the cause and effect relationship that should determine outcomes for all. The corrupt officials of the borrowing nation get more money and are rewarded for being corrupt. The people of the borrowing nation don't eat any better or live any longer or easier, and confirm that life is hopeless. The lending nation's people, who have created the wealth, are harmed by lack of due process protections against the theft of their wealth (via "taxes"), which was advocated by their nation's articulate supporters of the borrowing nation's corrupt officials.
These advocates are not generally the people who have created the wealth which they want to give to the corrupt officials. If Bill Gates wants to share his wealth with poor nations that's fine for him, we have no and should have no say in his decisions as to how he utilizes the wealth that he has created.
For the purposes of survival, man has learned to exchange things of value. If he had three spears and needed food, he might exchange a spear for food. It began in the exchange of physical goods for physical goods. Eventually this concept developed into the exchange of all work products, including goods, services and conceptual goods.
Precious things like gold or cowrie shells or other unusual items would become symbols of wealth (the cowrie shell has no intrinsic value, it doesn't chop down trees and it isn't edible). But because of the rarity of these items, they were accepted by the people as a store of value or a medium of exchange. Money is an agreed representation of value which makes the exchange of goods and services possible.
Money is used to reflect the value of things to society. This is what determines the size of paychecks, the price of a hamburger, the cost of a car, etc. If all one can do is dig ditches, then there is a good chance that one will not be paid highly because the supply of ditch-diggers is generally much greater than the demand for them. We use money to express social value of goods and services provided. The reason Tiger Woods is so well off is that society values the work he can do, work which nobody else can do. So he earns that wealth, just as Bill Gates does.
People that routinely create little or no value to society are most receptive to defective arguments which encouraqge the theft of wealth from the creators of that wealth for the purpose of "redistribution"- basically, for the leeches among society who cannot be bothered to create their own wealth or think it is 'below them' to have to do so, since it's so much easier to simply steal the wealth from others.
Greed is essential for survival. Greed motivates creative behavior- I want more, better, faster, therefore I will work harder. In a free market economy, this enhances the lives of everyone affected by the more, better, faster products of that 'greedy' person's hard work.
