Redistribution is a covert formula of state control that in its effect takes the sources of wealth out of society and dissipates it. It thereby furthers the dependence of everyone on the state with no incentive or hope of ever escaping from dependence on the next “Redistribution.” And each Redistribution will have a smaller and smaller pot to redistribute because the causes of the “surplus,” as Rousseau called it, is stifled by a theory of state benevolence that is based on the notion that the reason the poor are poor is that the rich are rich. All we need to do is take from the rich and redistribute it to the poor and everyone will soon be equally what? Rich? Hardly. The logical end of such thinking is that everyone will be equally poorer, equally dependent on a state that has undermined the real sources and incentives of wealth among its citizens. The only way to help the poor and middle classes is to allow the whole society to increase proportionately, not to take from the rich and give to the poor.

It seems rather amusing, in the end, that the two men perhaps most responsible for the rise of unlimited modern state power would advise against taxing those who are most likely to produce what is needed by any society, including the tyrant in his own pursuits. Whenever the “inhuman” appears, it almost always does so under the guise of doing good for the people who, in the meantime, find themselves more and more beholden to him who redistributes what they need. What is received appears as something due in justice because it was taken away from those who had too much of it. It also, transformed by the taxing power, appears as the “gift” of the benevolent government who is generously giving us what we need rather than relying on us to do it ourselves.