The Sting

"Society is nothing more than a large group of single individuals. In order to understand society you must understand how a single individual thinks and acts. Since you are an individual, if you understand what motivates you, you can understand society. Let us return to the island.


Once cast onto your deserted island, all you need do to raise your standard of living is work hard and create more wealth. The more wealth you create, the higher your standard of living. As your work improves your life, you will be stimulated to work even harder. Successful effort begets more effort. But it works the other way, too. Anything that destroys or steals away your wealth or anything that causes you to abandon your labors and thus reduces production, will cause your standard of living to fall. If you try to grow a vegetable garden and the wild pigs keep breaking down your fence and eating your plants before you can harvest them, you will shift your labor away from growing the vegetables and devote it instead to either doing battle with the pigs, building stronger fences or doing something else that yields greater wealth for the effort involved. The theft of your plants by the pigs could lead you to give up gardening altogether.

In the same way, if other people rob you of the fruits of your labor, that, too, will discourage you from continuing to work. Again, you will be forced to devote your energy to defending your property and that will take away from the time you have to produce. Moreover, if someone is successful in stealing from you, that person will have no incentive to produce things himself and thus his production will fall. Theft destroys your incentive to work, as well as the thief's.

The important conclusion to be derived from this is that theft ultimately results in lower production and thus in a lower standard of living for the average member of society. This is the most important conclusion that you will get from this book. If you understand it - really understand it - that understanding will alter almost every economic action you take. Theft is not a moral problem; it is a practical problem. Theft destroys production and everyone, even the thief, eventually loses."