Originally Posted by StormanNorman

I think your synopsis is a little too simple and "cut and dried" for me, Teak. One of the most striking pictures I have seen of people working in the late 1800s was taken of this group of 12 year old boys that had been working in the coal mines. Their bodies look like those of 12 year olds; their faces looked like those of 40 year olds. Are they your examples of uneducated, lacking in imagination and drive, etc.?

Laisses-fair might be fine for those little pre-industrial towns that were their own little economies onto themselves. I don't think it works all that well in an industrial, global, and impersonal market....

If you want to live in a place where the very few own the the vast majority of the wealth, try Brazil, Colombia, South Africa, etc.