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Michael Perelman appears horrified by the Smith quotes he reproduces. I think they are
quite prescient.  So is Smith's acute observation:
 
"It is only under the shelter of the civil magistrate that the owner of the valuable
property, which is acquired by the labour of many years, or perhaps of successive
generations, can sleep a single night in security.  He is at all times surrounded by
unknown enemies, whom, though he never provoked, he can never appease, and from whose
injustice he can be protected only by the powerful arm of the civil magistrate continually
held up to chastise it" (WN, 2: 232).
 
Look around the world. You will find that societies or countries in which private property
is less secure do less well in material wealth accumulation than in those where private
property is more secure. And the security of private property extends beyond protection
from the thief at night to confiscatory or redistributive taxation and the erosion of
wealth through monetary inflation.
 
It seems to me that one needs often to evaluate with real-world experiences statements
with which one may feel uncomfortable in order better to appreciate them. Without such
evaluations one may continue to be locked up in the idea that capitalism is an evil
economic system as compared with one in which the state does the stealing allegedly on
behalf of the poor.
 
James C.W. Ahiakpor, Ph.D. 
California State University, Hayward 
 
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