An envy-ridden moral code

Melissa McEwen on Shakesville alerted me to an article in Forbes. It was bad enough to read McEwen's few choice paragraphs from the Forbes article. I read the first paragraph there and couldn't bring myself to read the rest. The Forbes article is by Harry Binswanger and his one line summary is "I defend laissez-faire capitalism, using Ayn Rand's Objectivism."

From what I glean from the first paragraph and McEwan's excerpts is that because Henry Ford (for example) created the Ford Motor Company and came up with the idea of the assembly line, he gets all the credit -- and profit -- and the workers should be grateful he gave them a job. The 1% should be thanked and honored by the 99%, not ridiculed.

On to a couple choice paragraphs:

There is indeed a vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity: the Internal Revenue Service. And, at a deeper level, it is the monstrous perversion of justice that makes the IRS possible: an envy-ridden moral code that damns success, profit, and earning money in voluntary exchange.

An end must be put to the inhuman practice of draining the productive to subsidize the unproductive. An end must be put to the primordial notion that one's life belongs to the tribe, to "the community," and that the superlative wealth-creators must do penance for the sin of creating value.

Sheesh, absolutely no concept of community, no concept of justice, and no concept that such great wealth is made possible by the workers and by what we do together (such as government provided infrastructure). Binswanger's moral code? It's based on greed and power.