Free Enterprise Suggests The Pursuit Of Happiness

“Create all the happiness you are able to create; remove all the misery you are able to remove. Every day will allow you, will invite you, to add something to the pleasure of others, or to diminish something of their pains.” 

Jeremy Bentham (1748 - 1832)

This is a person of optimism!

This is the optimism that comes with free enterprise!

In a free enterprise setting one is pursuing what one does best, what one wants to do, what makes one happiest.

Yes, there is risk involved. 
Yes, there is hard work involved.
Yes, there is the up and down of the business cycle.

But one is working for, wait for it - oneself!

One is working out of self interest!  

And as such, one is working for the benefit of others.  The free enterprise entrepreneur is trying to satisfy demand and need.  The free enterprise entrepreneur is trying to find a niche to fill, just the right niche, and fill it in a way it has previously not been.  Or with products that are newer or better.  

Whatever the demand is and whatever the niche is, free enterprise entrepreneurs create happiness for themselves and others, and remove misery from themselves and others, all while adding to the pleasure of others and diminishing something of their pains!

How do you feel when you purchase your first of a hot new product?  For instance, have your traded your "old phone" for a "smart phone?"  How did it make you feel to own and become a part of a new trend?

How do you feel when you do something for the first time?  Have you Skyped (see how that new noun is also used as a verb?) and if so, what did your first feel like?

And notice, the new things, the trendy things, the niche things that have filled a demand for you have contributed to your happiness and pleasure?  An entrepreneur somewhere, actually many, many of them, had innovative ideas that they put into practice and created that for you.  And since they have improved and improved it!

Their creation happened out of self interest (they want to improve their lives too) and you have participated in their ideas out of self interest (you ant to improve your life too).

And all of this happens outside the purview of gubment demand, gubment laws, gubment regulation and gubment windfall profit.  The gubment gets involved later.  The demands, and laws, and regulation and taxes happen AFTER THE FREE-MARKET CREATION.  Gubment sees the trend and sticks its nose into the tent first, following that nose with more and more of its body to the point that the free enterprise entrepreneur has to go about finding ways around the demands, the laws, the regulations and the taxes to keep from getting forced out of his own tent.

The gubment intervention works to stifle.  The gubment intervention makes the market less free.

Happiness is stultified, misery is imposed, pleasure is decreased and pain is not diminished.  Everyone has to work harder.  Surely this is opposite the principles suggested by Bentham.

And so, as we pursue free enterprise and our self interests, we do so for our benefit and the benefit of others.  

Free enterprise suggests the pursuit of happiness.  

We Americans feel that is an endowed and protected guarantee.