An article by Yaron Brook, “Economic Equality Is an Immoral Ideal,” has been published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy. The article is based upon remarks made at the Federalist Society’s National Student Symposium, held at the University of Virginia in February 2016 on the topic “Poverty, Inequality, and the Law.”

Here are the first two paragraphs (with footnotes omitted):

Capitalism (political and economic freedom) causes economic inequality. Indeed, in most pre-capitalist countries in the world today, there is less inequality than there is in the United States, despite the United States’ ranking among the “most-free” countries in terms of economic freedom. But all of these pre-capitalist countries are dirt-poor. 350 years ago, the pre-capitalist West was also dirt-poor. There was equality — equality of poverty. One of capitalism’s great virtues is the fact that it has created inequality.

“What does that mean? It means that capitalism has allowed the creators of wealth to keep it. Capitalism has rewarded individuals based on their level of productivity. The more productive you are, the more you make; the less productive you are, the less you make. This is supply and demand and market forces at work. Capitalism in its pure form, in a free market — setting cronyism aside — is a system of earned inequality.”

Read the entire article here.