Government Devoid Of A Capital Charge

A government  stripped of the right to confiscate wealth and savings would leave the world a far better place.

Gary Marshall | June 16, 2026

The many and varied thinkers and practitioners of economics and finance, perhaps distracted by the ubiquitous phantom of the “deficit” and public debt, have missed the greatest obstacle to freedom and wealth in any society: the atrocious waste and destruction of large fractions of the community’s productive resources as measured in labor, material, and equipment. That government squanders such precious and transformational resource caches with inexplicable impunity amid heedless populations is as bewildering to me as the failure to comprehend the true nature of the deficit.

Savings are the true life blood of any economy. They are the stock of goods produced in excess of costs or needs by the calculating, energetic, and industrious. Such stocks are often converted into their monetary equivalent and referred to as capital. Imagine a baker temporarily leases a facility and produces 10 loaves of bread, nine sold to cover the costs and wages of his operation, the remaining one representing his savings or capital. The greater this stock of retained production, the greater one’s wealth and capital for use in other valued economic endeavors.

In deciding upon which endeavors to pursue, one invariably employs some form of Cost and Benefit analysis, a tool used daily by people to make responsible and prudent financial decisions in the allocation of scarce resources. There are always costs in the things that we do and there are always benefits. If the fully examined and accounted cost of performing an action X is greater than the benefit of performing X, no rational person would execute X. Thus, the baker could sell his retained loaf and use the capital to upgrade or expand his operation in pursuit of greater returns, or he could choose to loan the money to another in expectation of its eventual return with a suitable reward in interest.

Thus, corporations and individuals perpetually risk their capital or the borrowed capital of others in new or existing ventures when expected rewards outweigh costs and risks. If failure should occur, survival may not be guaranteed. This is the marvel of the capitalist system. The........

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