Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Free Enterprise Blazes New Trails

"Do not go where the path may lead, go instead where there is no path and leave a trail."

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803 - 1882)

That is the essence of free enterprise.  That is the essence of capitalism.

Reorganization, innovation, change, creative destruction, recombination, new, entrepreneurship, divergence, pioneering, improvement, greater efficiencies, increased productivity, rising tide - could we go on?

Are there any ideas in there that conflict with the human spirit of freedom, growth, personal challenge, and personal leadership?

There is not.

And this is what Emerson suggests!

However, who is it that takes the arrows?  Those who lag behind?  Those who mimic, and the pirates?  The scammers who play off of what has gone before, making something "new and improved" but worthless?

No, the pioneers take the arrows.

When the pioneers succeed despite the headwinds and storms the market rewards them greatly.  When they do not succeed the market leaves them in a heap, and crushed.

Who but the free market pioneers will stick their necks out?
Who but the free market pioneers will take the risks of reputation and property? 
Who but the free market pioneers will devise and implement, organize and reorganize, and experiment, experiment and experiment until success rears its wonderful head?

Then why do so many others feel entitled to any gained and earned pioneer rewards?

Why do so many others feel to be given windfall profits?

Windfall profits you say?  Only the capitalists and free market titans earn windfall profits!

Not so and that is untrue.  Those who think that are falling prey to "progressive" thinking of the left.  The left would have us all think that windfall is defined as unexpectedly large profits, unfairly earned.

Any entrepreneur who hits it big might reap rewards that exceed dreams, but that does not make those rewards unexpected!  Why would anyone risk it all on an idea they did not think would succeed?  Entrepreneurs fill their tanks with plans and hopes, and struggle, struggle, struggle toward fruition.  These rewards are NOT UNFAIR.  THEY ARE EARNED.

When bureaucrats think it is their place to TAX those rewards at unfair rates the tax becomes an unexpected reward, AND REWARDS TOWARD WHICH THOSE BUREAUCRATS AND GUBMENTS DID NOT PARTICIPATE IN CREATING.

THAT IS A TRUE WINDFALL!

When gubments earn huge percentages of someone's sweat and equity, all earned and striven for, that in and of itself is, by definition a 

WINDFALL PROFIT.

Gubments benefit from windfall profits, entrepreneurs do not.  Entrepreneurs actually work for any profits.

Think carefully.  When free enterprise, entrepreneurial, hard-earned rewards are taxed, where would that money be better used:

By a business that uses the gain to employ more people and produce more of a wanted or needed product,
OR
by a gubment that has demonstrated historically its ability to waste, squander, misuse and misapply it?

Which raises a higher tide - The Invisible Hand Of the Market, or the Not-So-Invisible Foot of Gubment?

Which blazes new trails - The Invisible Hand Of the Market, or the Not-So-Invisible Foot of Gubment?

I vote for the Emerson model - blazing a new trail, 
lifting a greater number,
 and leaving a good mark.


No comments:

Post a Comment