Private Property Does Not Drive Human Aggression

I have no concern with any economic criticisms of the communistic system; I cannot inquire into whether the abolition of private property is advantageous and expedient. But I am able to recognize that psychologically it is founded on an untenable illusion. By abolishing private property one deprives the human love of aggression of one of its instruments. This instinct did not arise as the result of property; it reigned almost supreme in primitive times when possessions were still extremely sc...

 The Privatization of Science

At this point the Wall Street lawyers and Strauss persuaded Eisenhower that the United States Bureau of Standards' scientists were in competition with private enterprise and must be curbed. Strauss assured Eisenhower that the corporations would take on all the bureau's discarded scientists. What the Wall Street lawyers' grand strategists realized was something momentous—to wit... that in the new 99.9-percent invisible reality of alloys, chemistry, electronics, and atomics, scientific and te...

 Knowledge Can be Transferred, but Not Wisdom

Positive, objective knowledge is public property. It can be transmitted directly from one person to another, it can be pooled, and it can be passed on from one generation to the next. Consequently, knowledge accumulates through the ages, each generation adding its contribution. Values are quite different. By values, I mean the standards by which we judge the significance of life. The meaning of good and evil, of joy and sorrow, of beauty, justice, success-all these are purely private convicti...