I don’t know why I do it, but evidently I sure do entertain people on Twitter.

Today I think I was up against a Marxist.

He said capitalism was bad, and then gave war as an example.

He said the banks were bad, and then criticized the fact that the printing press and the setting of interest rates were dominated by a select few.

Naturally, all these things are the very negation of capitalism, a system of freedom of commerce and private property.

He criticized capitalism for keeping us in poverty. My response: with extreme poverty down to 18% from 85% in 1820, capitalism is doing a lousy job keeping us in poverty.

So he just denied the statistics.

Then he decided he had to admit them, so he then said poverty was a relative concept.

That’s his way of evading my point: namely, that we all live at a material level that would have been unthinkable even to the very richest of ages past.

And I came back with this translation of “poverty is relative”: “Even when I have five yachts and you have six, I’ll still be complaining.”

Someone called that a cheap shot. No, just a logical application of “poverty is relative.”

Want a little fun? Check out my Twitter feed:

http://twitter.com/ThomasEWoods

A few other items:

(1) Next month we’re moving to central Florida. Looking forward to every aspect of it except the move itself….

(2) My friends at Sanebox.com keep on sponsoring the show, and I sure appreciate it. I use them myself to manage my insane inbox. They give you a 14-day trial to see for yourself how life can be without email overload, at sanebox.com/woods.

(3) I could use your input. You know my LibertyClassroom.com has a whole bunch of courses taught by solid libertarian professors that you can listen to whenever you want. Every month we also do a live session where you can ask questions of the faculty. We’ve been using Spreecast for this, but Spreecast is shutting down. Can anyone recommend another platform (other than Google Hangouts) where multiple faculty members can be on the screen at once and viewers can submit questions?

Time for dinner. Wait until you hear my interview with rapper Eric July, tomorrow.