Tuesday, November 18, 2014

Free Enterprise Creates More Efficiently, And More Cheaply, And More Abundantly

“Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself. The labor of his body and the work of his hands are properly his.”

John Locke (1632 - 1704)

Protecting the individual from tyranny and protecting individual rights is the very basis behind the idea which established the United States of America.

Private property, including the property of the person, is integral to that idea.

What is the point of coming up with an idea, developing it, creating a new product or service, and risking one's fortune to implement it into the market place, only to have it acquired and stolen by a tyrant?

And what if that tyrant is indeed the gubment, or gubment-sanctioned business?

This is the very basis of natural rights, God-given, Constitution-protecting, natural rights.  Life, liberty, pursuing happiness, self preservation and protection - natural rights.

Natural rights are natural!  They simply are.  They are not created by the human mind, or laws, or regulations, or somebody's idea of how others should behave.  They simply are.

Natural rights are also the very basis behind the idea of free enterprise and free-market economics.

We own our ideas, in the natural rights sense!
We own our liberty, in the natural rights sense! 
We own our persons, in the natural rights sense!
We own our happiness, in the natural rights sense!

They are private, they are protected, and they are God given.

Business works better when it is free to act.  Does that mean with impunity, stepping unfairly on any slower slug that gets in its way?  Of course not.

We are a society based on the rule of law.  Laws are to define limits, and provide guardrails preventing the over reaching of some who think it's their "right" to smash another.  We have no right to smash another.

There must be a careful balance, however, between those rights to act for oneself and those laws which limits such actions.  Some behavior is unnatural, and some laws which limit behavior are unnatural.  Laws should never be unnatural.  Laws can and should flow freely, naturally, and not be an unfair imposition of feelings.  If my competitor for a very similar product or service to mine is gathering more market share, I am in no position to demand a law to hold him back.  My competitor should be able to act freely in an environment so long as it is lawfully fair.

When gubments choose an industry for political gain (pick your industry) and support and sustain it, and at the same time prevent and hold down another industry of lesser political gain (pick your industry) it is not lawfully fair.  It is unnatural.  It leads to cronyism.  It is the beginning of tyranny, if not tyranny itself.

If one industry provides the same ends more efficiently, more cheaply, and to more people than another, the dictates of the natural course of property rights and God-endowed rights would say to go on!  What is gained by holding it back?

Free enterprise creates more efficiently and more cheaply, 
and more abundantly.



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