Book excerpt: In every country of Europe and America, there is a remarkable fraction of the adult population (sometimes near 50 per cent) whose needs are met with taxpayers’ money. This situation is so common, and we are so used to it that nobody dares to propose an alternative. On the other hand, the State creates unproductive jobs for certain classes of people and makes itself the protector of specific sectors of the economy when companies risk insolvency. We are talking about the transfer of wealth from the people who create it to pure consumers of resources. The later ones we call free-riders. This book treats this matter in connection with the electoral process, the abusive stretching of well-established political concepts, the use of pseudoscience, and the alliance between free-riders and rent-seekers. For sure, it is doubtful that it will be possible to feed such a sizeable inactive population for a long time. However, the author abstains himself of any proposal for a change. His only aim is to explain how we arrived at the present situation and where the foundations of the current equilibrium stay.