I just read a blog where a guy in his 20's is bemoaning that he got a college degree and then decided to work for an NGO or the like doing some sort of charity work in the third world, and that job, as important as he thinks it is, doesn't pay much. Now one might say, "See, feeding starving people is important work, the free market system doesn't value the right things."

But I, a free market advocate, would respond, "Maybe the market works just fine, and knows that an entrepreneur who discovers a way to make corn grow in arid environments will help far more starving people than you could in a lifetime of your charity work." It's a simple and fairly obvious fact that one person who dedicates their self to helping people one person at a time is going to have a far smaller impact on world hunger than someone like the president of the World Bank, one of whose missions is to make capital available to poor entrepreneurs in developing countries.

This problem relates to issues I have with a lot of people who aren't terribly educated on economics. Sure, it's nice to see the immediate gratification of feeding a starving person, but if you want to fix the problem, and not just work on the symptoms, you need to enact real change, and that means forgetting the feeding one person crap and immediate gratification. That means helping start wealth-creating businesses and ways for people to earn their way to food.

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.... Sure, it's great to take money from rich people to give to poor people, to create entitlements, etc. But when those rich people decide to stop earning money because they have no incentive to do so since the government takes their money, or the money the government uses to give to poor people dries up.... That's when our country turns to hell. I would rather have a small percentage of poor people always in our society than destroy a lot more lives by giving those poor people money. No system currently invented will make everyone wealthy, but free market democracies seem to have the fewest poor people combined with the most productivity and innovation of any system out there. Maybe someone will come up with something better someday, but for now free market democracy is the best way to go.