Mark Finkelstein makes the point everyone should be making about inequality: It’s not really a problem.

This is an issue that was addressed ad nauseam at the IHS seminar I attended this summer. The question constantly surrounding economic issues was “what about inequality?” or, even worse, “what should we do about inequality?” My answer, of course, is “nothing”.

(As an aside, I must mention another memory of this year’s seminar, when one of the speakers - I cannot say which, of course, as the event was “off the record” - announced his desire to create a set of anti-intervention t-shirts with slogans such as “Something should not be done!” or “Don’t just do something, for God’s sake stand there!”)

Our obsession with inequality (at least as far as wealth/resources/etc. is concerned – and it almost always is) is based on one fallacious assumption: that wealth is a zero-sum game. By this logic, the only way to help the poor is to take from the rich. The rich must, in turn, be rich only because they hold an inordinate amount of the fixed sum of “stuff” on earth – not due to their own efforts.

Or, look at it this way: History is full of societies that have achieved almost total equality; The Soviet Union, Maoist China, post-revolutionary Cuba, and modern-day North Korea are just a few excellent examples. Marxism is an ideology based – at least in part – on the idea that inequality should be ameliorated by force, if necessary. It is also responsible for the loss of roughly 100 million human lives during the 20^th Century.

Seeking equality of results (as opposed to equality of opportunity, as outlined most famously in the U.S. Declaration of Independence) is a disastrous proposition. It is responsible for more human misery than Islamofascism and Nazism combined. Ironically, the acceptance of an unequal distribution of wealth across a given society as the natural state of human affairs is the only mindset that has ever allowed for the growth of an independent, self-sustained middle class. But it’s important to remember that this state of affairs is the result of pursuing the creation of wealth rather than an equal distribution of the wealth already present.

Or, to shorten the above into one short statement: If you want equality, move to North Korea and starve – you’ll be in good company. Otherwise, stay in the west and leave everything the hell alone.