Free Enterprise Encourages Everyone To Set And Achieve High Goals!

"The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving it."

Michelangelo (1475-1564)

This defines the human experience.

Some of us want to strive, and achieve, and learn, and grow, and progress, and provide, and earn, and experience, and fail, and fail again, and then succeed.

Some of us want none of that.  Some want life to happen to them, to unfold for them, to bring riches, to provide their wishes, to have the very best, and all when they want it to happen.  If it comes at the expense of another, or because of the work of another, or at the mercy of another -- the better!

Michelangelo sees danger in the latter regard.

But what does he mean by danger?  

Think about our society.  In our "compassion" for others, would Michelangelo see:

• danger in an ever-growing group that expects to receive from another ever-shrinking group?
• danger in "free" stuff provided by gubment?  (you name your stuff)
• danger in people thinking that what belongs to another really belongs to them?
• danger in an entitlement mentality?
• danger in a larger group that gets than gives?
• danger in groups that set goals so low they not only don't achieve much, but never change?
• danger in funded groups that derive power and control by organizing that thinking?
• danger in a political group that derives its power and control by organizing that thinking?
• danger in a gubment that promotes such thinking as "charitable" and "patriotic?"

Read his quote again.  What do you think?

If Michelangelo was the genius so many recognize him to be, what does this say about where our "advanced" society and its "leaders" are now?  How did Michelangelo set his goals?  Were they high or low?  Was his genius expressed in a narrow or broad sense?  There were huge political and religious statements made in his work, particularly the Sistine Chapel, intended to fly in the face of what was going on around him.  Did he shrink from making those statements?  Was he proud to display his accomplishments?

Free enterprise wants everyone to set, and achieve, high goals.  That is how it works!  Success in free enterprise comes in magnifying ones' talents and offerings, growing in importance, popularity, and achievement.  And free enterprise wants this tide to raise all boats.  Michelangelo would see no danger here!

Free Enterprise Encourages Everyone 

To Set And Achieve High Goals!

Free Enterprise Never Happens By Force

 "The government can supply no substitute for enterprise."

Calvin Coolidge (1872 - 1933)

And why should it?  Gubment cannot provide all it takes for people to dream, desire, create, self motivate, risk, strive, or work.

Work you say?  Free enterprise requires work?  Free enterprise requires self discipline, self motivation, and personal leadership?

Some definitions follow, gleaned from my old-fashioned Oxford Dictionary on the shelf over my desk.  I refer to it daily, often times many times a day.

Enterprise noun  1 a project or undertaking, especially a bold one.  2 bold resourcefulness.  3 a business or company.

Enterprising adjective  1 showing initiative and resourcefulness.

From the Latin prehendere - to catch or capture, to occupy, to seize or grasp, to take hold of.

But wait?  Didn't gubment take on the huge and bold projects of entering and developing space, or the interstate highway system?  Yes.  But it was all accomplished through private industry, individual thinking, the resourceful working together of thousands of entities and individuals.  These were engineering feats both.

How can free enterprise be legislated?  It cannot.
How can free enterprise be organized bureaucratically?  It cannot.
How can free enterprise practitioners all be made to be the same?  It cannot.
How can free enterprise be created by gubment edict?  It cannot.

Free enterprise never happens by force.

Entrepreneurs practice bold resourcefulness; show initiative; undertake personal plans; satisfy personal desires.  None of that can be organized by gubment.  Outcomes can never be legislated.  People will never all be the same.  One size seldom fits all, including the marvelous wonders put forth by infomercials.

People by nature will not, and cannot for long, be caged and produce their best by being boxed into tightly-defined behaviors!  And if they are by some tyrannical force or individual, the society will stagnate and putrefy.  We have seen that over and over and over.  Look around the world today!

Free enterprise never happens by force.

And when the independent, thinking people are so boxed in, what happens?  They find work arounds!  They alter their methods!  They will even go black market!  Rebellion!

How did our Founding Patriots deal with the Stamp Act?  In two ways - smuggling and revolt.

And they found the ultimate work around - they separated themselves.  And us.  Permanently from tyranny.  And permanently from a monarch who thought he, and his system, was the grantor of "rights."  The Founding Fathers were practitioners of free thinking and free enterprise, and all that the gubment, a monarchical gubment, tried to substitute for it.  They would not be subjected to force and they would not be subjects to force.  Again ...

Free enterprise never happens by force.

Free Enterpise Is Not Unrestrained Intervention And Regulation

"Fortunately, political freedom and economic progress are natural partners.  Despite capitalism's lingering reputation as the source of all the world's evils, the fact remains that every single democracy is a capitalist country.  Half a century of economic experimentation proved beyond doubt that tyranny cannot yield prosperity. ... Socialism collapsed because it is a policy of unrestrained intervention.  It tries to fix what is 'wrong' with the spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon called capitalism.  But, of course, a natural process cannot be 'fixed.' ... Socialism is an ideology. Capitalism is a natural phenomenon."

Michael Rothschild

Isn't it common that the people causing the worlds' economic woes would blame the worlds' problems on what would cure them?

Well, they have to!  They must defend the ideology!

The template is set.  The printer's block is etched and permanent.  There will be no changes.

Never mind that the socialist ideology hasn't worked, isn't working now, and will never work.  They would simply say that conditions have not been "right" before.  Or the "right" people haven't been there to implement it properly.  Or it hasn't been done in the "right" way.  

So they have to try again.  And then again.  What else can they do?  What's left for them to do?  (no pun intended)

Why is it that capitalism, or free enterprise, or free-market economics - pick your term - is always found in societies where democracy is the dominant thinking?

Why is economic growth found in societies where democracy is the dominant thinking? 

Why are standards of living continually improving for the greatest number of people in societies where democracy is the dominant thinking?

The answer is simple, to all of those questions.  Free enterprise eschews control!  The CONTROL in free enterprise is, as Rothschild says, a "spontaneous, self-organizing phenomenon."

Statists cannot, SIMPLY CANNOT, have that!

To the degree that communities of people can self organize closes out opportunity for the "ORGANIZERS!"

That's right, the COMMUNITY ORGANIZERS.

A community organizer, and the thinking of such a one, is that self organization is simply wrong.  It is a wrong that needs to be fixed.  It must not be allowed to stand.  It needs to be "transformed."  And transformed by "the one!"

Transform means to reorganize something's shape into something differently shaped!  To go beyond it's present form!

Capitalism, free enterprise, free markets, and the like will always be around.  Why?  Because, as they are natural phenomenon, they have always existed!

Socialism, statism, community organization - again, pick your term - is someone's thinking.  It is not something that has always existed naturally.  Which is why it must be forced onto people with laws and regulations.  It must be forced into the thinking of little ones so they grow up with the thinking that it is truly natural.  And forced little by little, some freedom removed over here, some free thinking not allowed over there.  This word controlled, that word controlled, and this thought, and then that thought.  History is revised to fit into the "right" way of thinking.  Thought and speech given a highway, an approved highway, from which they cannot, MUST NOT, vary.

And viola!  We have utopia!  "Utopia" brought about by unrestrained intervention and regulation.

Such utopia is pure pap.  Empty, vacuous, desolate, hollow, vain, worthless and meaningless pap.

FREE ENTERPRISE IS NOT, NOT, NOT UNRESTRAINED 

INTERVENTION AND REGULATION!

The World Is Sick. Free Enterprise Is The Cure.

"The answer is free enterprise. Our economic system is what keeps Americans employed, clothed, housed, and nourished. That system makes it possible for every American to attain his or her dream of material or spiritual wealth. It truly makes ours the land of opportunity."

Thomas Boone Pickens, Jr.

That first sentence, "The answer is free enterprise," could be THE answer to so many questions!

Pickens, a free-enterprise entrepreneur if there ever was one, states a few of the unasked questions in the quote.

What's the best way to employ Americans?  (Or anybody)  The answer is free enterprise.

What's the best way to clothe Americans?  (Or anybody)  The answer is free enterprise.

What's the best way to house Americans?   (Or anybody)  The answer is free enterprise.

What's the best way to nourish Americans?   (Or anybody)  The answer is free enterprise.

PICK YOUR ECONOMIC OR NATURAL-RESOURCE PROTECTION OR PRODUCT-INNOVATION QUESTION IN THIS REGARD.  "THE ANSWER IS FREE ENTERPRISE" WOULD BE THE BEST ANSWER.  

If it has to do with the positive and progressive development of societies in particular and in general "the answer is free enterprise."

The deriders of capitalism and free enterprise deride it with such phraseology as "unbridled capitalism," "unrestrained capitalism," "unfair," "fat capitalists getting rich off the backs of the poor," "cronyism," "good old boys club," "obscene profits," "materialistic," "money hungry," "trickle-down economics," "a new tyranny," "dehumanizing," "exclusive," "unequal," "unethical," "fat cats," "monopoly" and "monopolistic..."   These and other creative, but misapplied, terms go on and on.

The anti-capitalists are always coming up with new derisive names.  Name calling is a sure sign of weakness.

•  Free enterprise is voluntary!  
•  Free enterprise does not compel!  
•  Free enterprise sees to it that people, that is consumers and users of goods and services, come first!
•  Free enterprise defends rights, and private property, and intellectual property, and contracts!  
•  Free enterprise punishes the scammers, the thieves, the lawless, and the fraud.
•  Free enterprise works!

Compare free enterprise to the other economic systems that have cropped up throughout history.  How does it compare?  How do these wondrous other "market-managing" systems stack up against free enterprise's efficient and productive Invisible Hand?  The other systems are all left, to use the immortal Reagan words, to the "trash heap of history."

There is no such thing as unbridled or unrestrained capitalism.  Gubments have always intervened and always will.  Ours is a society governed by the rule of law, at least it should be.  Law that is not imposed tyrannically, but fairly, balanced, blindly and beneficially.

But the Invisible Hand of the market place will weed out the cheaters.  And very effectively.

Yet gubments, and the tyrannical, and the dictatorial, and the statists, and those who want to CONTROL, all keep going back to socialism, and back to socialism, and back to socialism, ad nauseum, because?  Because the new proponents of socialism think they are smarter than all those who have tried it before and failed.  The new proponents are wizards and wonders.  They will try it again.  They will not give up.

And what is the definition of insanity?

Ayn Rand referred to capitalism and free-market economics as "the unknown ideal."  Perhaps unknown, but certainly worth striving for and achieving! 

Look around the world and the disease, the laziness, the utter and unbelievable poverty, the dirty water, the unkempt and untapped natural resources, the waste, the lack of productivity, the ignorance, the hopelessness of masses of people -- should I go on?

The world is sick.  Free enterprise is the cure.

Free Enterprise Offers The Cheese To The Second Mouse

“It's true that the early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.”

Charlemagne (742? - 814)

 Is this not the way of free enterprise?

Innovation is one of its hallmarks!  An entrepreneur with a great idea has the wherewithal to introduce it into the product market.  It takes off.  He changes it, improves it, and and sometimes continually creates new from old.

But so do others!  The original idea or product might be common for some time.  Then someone comes along with a transforming change.  That is changed again, and again, and even again.

Joseph Schumpeter called this process "creative destruction."  Capitalism and free market economies are rife with creative destruction!  Innovation!

The early bird truly gets the worm in free enterprise.  And there is room for others.  Sometimes the original idea does not take hold, but someone comes along with an improvement (the second mouse taking the cheese, so to speak) and runs with it!

What is the most famous product essentially creatively destroyed and changed for the better?  

The telephone!

We all know that Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone.  But the sounds were very faint in Bell's version.  And even fainter over longer distances.  Edison improved on that.  He introduced a telephone with a "Carbon Button Transmitter."  With this device the telephone user would speak into one part of the phone and listen with another.  Edison's separate receiver used a small chalk cylinder, which created much clearer sound!  This separation of speaking and hearing method is still used today!  Bell and Edison later combined their efforts to form the "United Phone Company," and what had made both men very rich made them both very richer!

Free enterprise still works like that today.  It always has and it always will.

All products have a life cycle, called by economics the "Product Life Cycle."  Products grow in usage, slowly or quickly, but eventually reach a point of saturation or leveling off of sales.  Some companies deal with this with the old "New and Improved!" technique.  These tweaks work especially well with products everyone needs - like soap or razor blades.  A fleck of blue in the soap here, another really cool blade there, and the product cycle begins anew.  

The biggest thing that changes product life cycles may be innovation.  Not mere improvements, but change, like the telephone or typewriter.

The original telephones and typewriters are dead and gone and now are treasures for collectors.  I still have my college typewriter!  But while the idea for each has changed little, the products themselves have altered radically.  Slowly the word telephone is being replaced with the more generic "phone," or more recently "smart phone."  And the beat goes on!

Charlemagne had it right!  Free enterprise can happen for the first or second or more, but it happens!

FREE ENTERPRISE REWARDS THE EARLY BIRD, BUT OFTEN OFFERS THE CHEESE TO THE SECOND MOUSE!