Those who are constantly looking for the “root causes” of poverty, of crime, and of other national and international problems, act as if prosperity and law-abiding behavior were so natural that it is their absence which has to be explained. But a causal glance around the world today, or back through history, would dispel any notion that good things just happen naturally, much less inevitably.

Thomas Sowell, Ever Wonder Why? And Other Controversial Essays, New York, 2006, p. 3