What private property does is connect effort to reward, creating an incentive for people to produce for more. Then, if there's a free market, people will trade their surpluses to others for the things they lack. Mutual exchange for mutual benefit makes the community richer.
Conservatives say if you don't give the rich more money, they will lose their incentive to invest. As for the poor, they tell us they've lost all incentive because we've given them too much money.
Property rights can improve a woman's ability to stand up to violence in the home. You might think education and employment are important because they give women exit options, but property is as well. Give women equal property rights to inherited land, then they have an asset they can take out of the marriage. This gives husbands strong incentives to not beat them.
If the Scottish want to break away, I shall stand on Hadrian's Wall with a teary handkerchief, and say: 'Good riddance to the lot of you, and take your stupid bagpipes with you.'
Well, I didn't read My Day by Eleanor Roosevelt very carefully. I was away during a lot of that, in the war and so on. She was not all that good a writer. She was a little bit on the banal side, and you know, what happened, and then this happened, and then that happened... But I will say this. She got very well paid for it.
If I have enough money to support myself, I'll just give stuff away. I just, I want people to see it and I want to be able to do this for a living, you know what I mean? So it's just a balance. If I'm not doing well for five years, then I'm selling stuff, but if I'm doing well and I can afford to give stuff away, I'll always do that.
When I'm writing a song, it's just me and the songwriters. Then when the song is done, there are publishers that hear it, then people in my management, then my wife and my boys and my friends, and if they're all lovin' it, it's kind of withstanding all the criticism I need.
We want property, but property restored to its proper limits, that is to say, free distribution of the products of labour, property minus usury!
Even on just the career level for your average officer, there's no incentive to end the wars. There's not even an incentive for these think-tank guys to end the wars. They would never admit it and say, "Oh, how could we at the Center for a New American Security not want the wars to end?" Well then, why the hell are you continuing to promote strategies that will keep us fighting for years?
If you're a movie star, you get the girl, you lose the girl, and then you get her back. But if you're a character like me, you lose the girl, then you get another one, then you get another one, then you lose them all, then you lose your life.
The very foundation of private property and free contracting wears away in a nation in which its most vital, most concrete, most meaningful types of private property and free contracting disappear from the moral horizon of the people.
I never thought of myself as being a good songwriter. There are a ton of other people that are good songwriters, but I don't think I'm in the club. What I do well is perform, sometimes sing pretty good, and accompany myself well and arrange fairly well.
If you can give away free music, you can give away free electricity, free water. Those tiny jabs at a larger infrastructure are what make revolutions.
The best works do not necessarily get to auction. I like to draw, so maybe I give you a little drawing. And then eventually it ends up at auction. And then critics say, 'Oh, that's a bad drawing!' Well, I didn't say it was so wonderful.
Well, you can't throw heavy, analytical, thought-provoking songs at people 24/7. It's been my experience over the last 20 years that on a rare occasion, in a live setting, if you can slow people down to listen to two good ballads, then you're doing pretty good. Then throw a tempo at 'em. Then have fun.
If the majority of people said I did something wrong, then I must be wrong, and I will think 'I didn't even mean it like that, why are you treating me like this?' But if a lot of people say that I'm wrong and it's not good, then it must be not good. I will say, 'Okay' and then tell myself that this cannot happen again. I have to grasp it and change it for the better.