Mary Ruwart

"Aggression hides in our culture under many names. Taxation is only an example, but one of the most widespread and uneconomical. If this concept seems incredible to you, consider the shift in awareness that it implies. Are we like children, accepting five pennies for our dime?"

"The marketplace has many similarities to nature's rainforest and oceanic ecosystems. Left to their own devices, the marketplace and the earth's ecosystems are self-regulating. Neither requires our forceful intervention to establish a holistic balance in which a diversity of complimentary niches can evolve. Aggression in the marketplace or destruction in a natural ecosystem upsets this balance. Some of the niches are destroyed along with their occupants. Diversity is lost."

"Wealth is created when we use existing resources in new ways. Since such creativity is virtually limitless, wealth is too."

"When we consider that resources will one day be mined from planets other than the earth, that matter and energy are totally interchangeable, and that basic chemical elements can be transmuted, we realize that resource seeds are so abundant that they do not impose practical limitations on the creation of wealth at all."

"In the marketplace ecosystem, interference usually means aggression-through-government. When we don’t like the outcomes that we get in the marketplace, we sometimes try to correct its ‘imperfections’ with laws that force our neighbors—at gunpoint, if necessary—to do things differently… Imperfections of the marketplace ecosystem are dwarfed by the havoc created by our well-meaning aggression."

"[M]ost poverty in the world today is caused by aggression, not ignorance. The illusion that aggression-through-government benefits the poor at the expensive of the rich is just that, an illusion."

"Many subsidized exclusive monopolies are public services. On average, we pay twice as much through our taxes for these services as we would if they were provided by the private sector."

"By making our police force an exclusive, subsidized government monopoly, we increase the cost and decrease the quality of protection, especially for the poor. By banning handguns, we disarm the disadvantage."

"Those too poor to own their own home pay no property taxes, but their rent reflects the taxes that the landlord must pay. The poor pay higher rents to subsidize inefficiency and waste."

"In the late 1980s, Soviets were allowed to keep the wealth they created by raising vegetables on their garden plots. Although these plots composed only about 2% of the agricultural lands in the Soviet Union, they produced 25% of the food! When Soviets kept the wealth they created, they produced almost 16 times more than when it was taken from them at gunpoint, if necessary!"

"As children relating to others, we learned a great deal about creating peace and prosperity. Most of us can remember Mom or Dad prying us apart from a playmate after we came to blows. ‘Who started it?’ often determined who received the most severe punishment. Even at a tender, we could see that if no one hit first, no fight was possible."