Supply and demand is the basis of modern economics.

There is another simple rule that is just as basic to our society as supply and demand:

Punishment is cheaper than rewards. Any idiot can hurt somebody. It takes talent and work to make people happy. That is why Gangstah Rap is so popular with incompetent young people. They can only get what they want by simple-mindedly hurting people.

This is why Hell is so much more realistic to people than Heaven is. Everybody can imagine Hell. Nobody can imagine Heaven. You can visualize a hundred forms of agony. But how about permanent ecstasy?

In Gulliver’s Travels, Jonathan Swift talked about a society that did not so much punish people for crimes as it rewarded them for honesty. Nice idea. Why didn’t anyone try it?

Because it would be too expensive. Rewarding honest people would be costly to say the least. Hanging the bad ones was cheap. America has two million people in its enormously expensive prisons. But that is cheaper than rewarding the other two hundred and seventy million or so other Americans for not committing crimes.