TOS Blog: Daily Commentary from an Objectivist Perspective

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

“If You’re Looking for Brains, Just Stop at Israel”

Posted by Gideon Reich at 5:12 pm ET

Azrieli_Tower_and_FlagIf productiveness in the face of difficult obstacles is a virtue, then Israel is indeed a virtuous country. Bloomberg reports that during the last decade, despite two wars (Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008) and on-going security problems, Israel’s stock exchange had the highest percentage return among twenty-four developed-nation exchanges, beating Hong Kong, which came in second, and Norway, which had the highest total return.

“Israel is an exciting place to invest,” Michael Steinhardt, the former hedge fund manager who produced returns averaging 24 percent a year over almost three decades until he retired in 1995, said in a telephone interview from Fisher Island, Florida. “The country is surrounded by enemies, it’s always on the edge of extinction, but it expands and prospers.”

The source of Israel’s success? The Israeli’s use of their minds. As Warren Buffet said, “If you go to the Middle East and you’re looking for oil, skip [Israel]…. If you’re going looking for brains, just stop at Israel. You don’t have to go anyplace else.”

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Image: Creative Commons by Fipplet

Posted in: Business and Economics

Comments are welcome so long as they are civil.
  • Anonymous

    Do you think the fact that everything in Israel is controlled by about sixteen families might have something to do with the exponential growth? The thouasands of Ukranian prostitutes and all the unemployed Ethiopian jews living in their segregated ghettos tell a much different story of this libertarian utopia following objectivist theory than this little puff piece shows. Your article actually resembles the propaganda used to convince the European jews to get on the trains to the death camps by offering them a free vacation home or what ever the incentive of the day was.