So Was Slavery

"Thus when people object, as they do, to me and others pointing out that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer - by commenting that wealth is not finite, that statist and globalist solutions and handouts will merely strip the poor of their human dignity and vocation to work, and that all this will encourage the poor toward a sinful envy of the rich, a slothful escapism, and a counterproductive reliance on Caesar rather than God - I want to take such commentators to refugee camps, to villages where children die every day, to towns where most adults have already died of AIDS, and show them people who haven't got the energy to be envious, who aren't slothful because they're using all the energy they've got to wait in line for water and to care for each other, who know perfectly well that they don't need handouts so much as justice. I know, and such people often know in their bones, that wealth isn't a zero-sum game, but reading the collected works of F.A. Hayek in a comfortable chair in North America simply doesn't address the moral questions of the 21st century...People tell you it's a tricky and many-sided subject. Yes, it is; so was slavery. So are all major moral problems. The fact remains that what is now going on amounts to theft by the strong from the weak, by the rich from the poor...If a police officer catches a thief red-handed, the officer doesn't need complicated arguments about the thief's motives...the important thing is to stop the thieving and stop it right away." -from Surprised By Hope by N.T. Wright