An underlying fallacy of Socialism is the concept that poverty or at
least extreme poverty, can be banished from the world. It cannot. It is
impossible for the effective to produce and save as fast as the
ineffective will waste and destroy if they can get at it. No truth in
the Bible is more profound than the saying: The poor ye have always with
you."

The concept is based upon an unfounded belief in the competence of the
average man. He is not nearly so competent an animal as he has taught
himself to believe. We read our Nordau and with but the very slightest
ability to judge what he says we declare him a libeler. We read our Le
Bon and declare off-hand that it is absurd and wicked to say that the
crowd has no more sense than a flock of sheep. When we hear of an
alienist who cites the increase of murder, suicide and insanity as
evidence that mankind is losing its mental balance, we declare that the
man is crazy himself.

I do not say that such men are or are not right or anywhere near right
in the views they express, but I do say that they are writing in cold
blood in the light of a great deal of exact knowledge and certainly are
much better judges of the truth in those matters than most of us who
dispose of them so brusquely.

The fact is that man, like other animals, differs greatly in individual
ability but he differs from other animals in that the difference between
the most competent and the least competent is enormously greater than
such difference in any other species. The highest type of man is almost
Godlike in the scope and keenness of his intellect. The lowest type
reaches depths of degradation not touched by any other animal. There is