Bauer criticised proposals for redistribution, which he argued rest on the belief that, as we are all 'basically the same', wealth differentials must reflect 'some perversion of the natural and just course of events by some malevolent force, in particular, the power of the rich to impoverish the rest'. … Bauer, like Mises much earlier, stressed the basic inequality of people, and of peoples, arguing that economic achievement depends primarily on 'aptitudes, motivations, mores and modes of thought and on social institutions and political arrangements'. Those who benefit from a market economy are those who are most adaptable, entrepreneurial, industrious, ingenious, thrifty, ambitious and resourceful, he claimed, while the 'less adaptable may go to the wall'.

Jessica Whyte, The Morals of the Market, loc. 407