my comment on For the Love of Money - NYTimes.com, by Sam Polk:

It’s human nature to want more, and to attempt to receive it in the easiest ways. (Henry George expressed it: “The fundamental principle of human action – the law that is to political economy what the law of gravitation is to physics – is that men seek to gratify their desires with the least exertion.”)

But we don’t have to structure our economy to allow some of us to receive significant shares of the total production of society that they didn’t create, to steal from those who do produce, to privatize the value of natural resources or of that which the community as a whole creates.

It is easy to become addicted to taking for oneself that which others create. We imprison some people for it; others we permit to call themselves “self-made” men.

Asking some to share 25% with others, out of the goodness of their hearts, seems to be a very shallow substitute for restructuring the entire system.

Mr. Polk seemed to be on the right track when he raised the question, “ ‘But isn’t it better for the system as a whole? I asked. The room went quiet, and my boss shot me a withering look. I remember his saying, ‘I don’t have the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole. All I’m concerned with is how this affects our company.’ ”

We need the brain capacity to think about the system as a whole.

I’ve not found any analysis of “the system as a whole” that was more relevant and descriptive than that of Henry George.