Want To Change Society?

"Business is society's change agent."

Peter Drucker (1909 - 2005)

Peter Drucker is one of the most read, followed, best known and influential thinkers and writers on the subject of management practices and theories.

Anyone who has had any class at all in management theory or science has studied Drucker in one way or another.

His statements are short and to the point.  He used anecdotes effectively.

He was a student of economics and said, "While all of the other students were studying the behavior of commodities, I was studying the behavior of people."

Drucker's real aim was to find ways to bring out the best in people and how organizations can create a sense of community and cohesive group behavior.

I still refer to his 1973 book Management:  Tasks, Responsibilities, Practices all the time. 

So, as a student of economics, if business is society's change agent, it would follow that if one wanted to effect societal change in a positive way one would focus on how to encourage and facilitate business.

• Gubment cannot create jobs, but gubment can create an environment that encourages job creation.
• Gubment can certainly destroy jobs through practices that eliminate sector structures and stultify business development and innovation.
• Gubment can tax and regulate business in such a way that scarce resources are developed, managed and fashioned in the most efficient and profitable ways.
• Gubment can get out of the way of business and let the nature of the American spirit of free enterprise explode as it is so capable of.
• Gubment politics should remain in the gubment sector and not extend into economic activity by favoring or disfavoring certain businesses.
• Gubment can provide incentives to risk taking by not punishing success once risk rewards are realized.
• Gubment so often acts without thinking which leads to failures in policies that it then tries to "fix" by ... adding more gubment without thinking.  This, of course, preserves and enlarges gubment (the true aim of bureaucracy), but does not enhance society.

So why not encourage societal change by encouraging business?

It would be too simple to use the word "politics." 

How about political philosophy?  Which political philosophy?  

That which would NOT discourage free enterprise, voluntary exchange, billions of unseen but interactive steps that work together to bring the simplest of goods and services to our availability. 

Those unseen but interactive steps could otherwise be called "The Invisible Hand."

The economy doesn't need a management expert like Peter Drucker.

No business executive can manage the economy.
No professor can manage the economy.
No bureaucrat can manage the economy.
No elected official can manage the economy.
No group of economists can manage the economy.

The economy can manage itself!  And it will, and society will change, if it is allowed to act for itself. 

What spurs economic activity?  Business!!  Business truly is society's change agent!