Wealth is created. No special conditions are needed for it to emerge—least of all “natural resources.” On the contrary, things become resources only in the process of wealth creation, when it becomes clear they can be put to use. Human beings themselves are an inexhaustible source of wealth. And if any conditions are needed for wealth to grow, they are quite simple.
First: do not stand in people’s way as they search for goals and means to pursue. Second: do not stand in the way of exchange. Third: exchange must be voluntary. Fourth: money must serve as a medium of exchange as effectively as possible.
The implementation of these principles in our country is, to put it mildly, deficient. More precisely, they are implemented in reverse. The state knows better than we do what we should be doing and how. It graciously permits us to act. Obstacles to exchange appear at every turn. Voluntary relations with the same state are out of the question. And as for the medium of exchange that they print by the wagonload—that is simply out of the question. And the most terrifying thing is that nobody speaks or thinks about this.
Dear Ukrainians! We are poor because we do nothing. We do nothing because we have a state sitting on our heads that won’t let us take a single step, let alone appropriate everything we produce. It begins to rob us already at the stage when the thought occurs to us to do something. The state sits there because we ourselves are convinced that if something has increased somewhere, it is because something has decreased somewhere else. And so, one must monitor fair distribution—how can one do without the state? Nobody here indicates even by a word, or half a word, or a thought that wealth can grow and that it must grow. We only divide. We complain that prices are rising. Of course they will, if nobody does anything.
Of course, we are the same people as everyone else, and human nature is the same everywhere. We, like the rest of humanity, create wealth from morning to night. The question is only that there is little of it, it is becoming less and less, and this is becoming more and more noticeable. The reasons here are exclusively subjective, just as wealth itself is subjective. We simply need to understand that we are speaking prose—to finally notice and evaluate our own activity and understand that no other source of wealth exists. And for this, we need to relate to reality differently. As long as events like the recent state attack on the “Petrovka” market are perceived as “ah, the profiteers will steal even more for themselves,” rather than as a national tragedy, things will not improve.