Rockefeller, Sowell y la desigualdad

En este artículo sobre la desigualdad, obsesión de muchos intelectuales de mirada corta, Thomas Sowell dá ejemplos simples de como algunos millonarios cambiaron la vida y la riqueza de las sociedades a las que aportaron sus innovaciones.

Yet when the intelligentsia discuss such things as the historic fortunes of people like John D. Rockefeller, they usually pay little — if any — attention to what it was that caused so many millions of people to voluntarily turn their individually modest sums of money over to Rockefeller, adding up to his vast fortune.

What Rockefeller did first to earn their money was find ways to bring down the cost of producing and distributing kerosene to a fraction of what it had been before his innovations. This profoundly changed the lives of millions of working people.

Before Rockefeller came along in the 19th century, the ancient saying, "The night cometh when no man can work" still applied. There were not yet electric lights, and burning kerosene for hours every night was not something that ordinary working people could afford. For many millions of people, there was little to do after dark, except go to bed.

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What increased the wealth of society was Rockefeller's cheap kerosene that added hundreds of hours of light to people's lives annually. Edison, Ford, the Wright brothers, and innumerable others also created unprecedented expansions of the lives of ordinary people. The individual fortunes represented a fraction of the wealth created.

Visto y copiado de The Inequality Bogeyman, de Thomas Sowell.