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.



Tuesday, November 11, 2014

Free Enterprise Provides Stuff You Do Need, And Plenty Of It

“I wanta buy stuff.  Stuff I don't need.  Stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it whether you need it or not.  Uncle John.”

John Steinbeck (1902-1968) - from The Grapes of Wrath

Does that quote not just comment on the human condition?  Is that not a great free enterprise quote?

Uncle John is just like the rest of us.  How many of us have stuff in our homes that we bought but don't need?  Buying it was a whim. It was an impulse buy.  

Notice how some things in stores are put right where you walk in or on the way to the cash registers?  The stores are hoping for impulse buying!  And they're good at it.

We all have our definition of rich.  Be it income or what is put away "in the bank," we all seem to have our definition of rich.

Reading this you might have yours, and I bet it differs from mine.  And the other guy's.

As to this being a good free enterprise quote, why not?  What does free enterprise do?  It provides opportunity to offer "stuff" - goods and services - to a market hopefully full of buyers who will want that stuff.

And sometimes the stuff is really dumb, or offered at a prime moment in time during which it would be purchased.  We look back on some fad purchases now and really wonder why.

Remember the Pet Rock?  Mood rings?  Go Go Boots?  Flower stickers?  Did you ever buy Sea Monkeys?  I HAD to have an ID bracelet in junior high school.  I still have it!  I'm going to bet, but don't know, that the multi-colored, cover-the-entire-body-with-tattoos fad will upset a lot of people in a few years who have them now.  Or the huge-hole earrings.

Some fad purchases seem to hang on.  Who doesn't have the big nose with black mustache and glasses combo?  Go on, admit it.

That's what free enterprise is all about!  The freedom to offer a good or a service and a free market responds.  Socialist-depressed societies don't seem to come out with too much of those faddish things.  They have enough problems coming up with enough basic consumer goods and services, like toilet paper, or healthy meat, or medicine.  There is no socialist world-wide contribution of inventions and improvements because there is little basic. When you can't provide the basics, how can there be contribution to the world?

Free enterprise provides stuff you don't need, "stuff settin' out there, you jus' feel like buyin' it."  Not only that, but

Free enterprise provides stuff you do need, and plenty of it.




Tuesday, November 4, 2014

Free Enterprise Is Founded Upon And Created By Freedom




Everything that is really great and inspiring is created by the individual who can labor in freedom.   

Albert Einstein  (1879-1955)

Einstein was visiting the United States in 1933 when Hitler came into power.  At that time many of the people of Germany thought their new Chancellor was a clown and a joke who would not get very far or be around for very long.  They were wrong.

Einstein read a different writing on the wall and was smart enough not to return to Germany, settled in the United States, and became a naturalized citizen in 1940.  Many German scientists fled Germany as well.  They had lost their civil service jobs, including teaching in universities.  Despite the huge brain drain it would cause, the new anti-Semitic laws forced them out of their jobs.  It's said that Germany lost 25% of its theoretical physicists, either through the legally-imposed exodus or because they left voluntarily and out of fear.  Some had to flee with nothing but their minds.

They, too, saw the same writing on the wall as Einstein and left seeking freedom.  It is interesting that few in politics saw what these scientists did. 

Freedom?  They left to seek freedom?  These were creative people!  They were well aware that it is a free society that produces an atmosphere conducive to creativity, and the development of intellectual property safe from tyrannical hands.  

Hence the quote above.

A free market is just as important to intellectual property as it is to any form of property and private ownership.  Private property is as integrated with freedom and free markets as it is with anything.  It forms the very basis of freedom.  

And economic freedoms are aligned and integrated with private property in all its forms as they are with anything.  They cannot exist without private property.

Free enterprise spurs free thinking, and creativity, and societal advancement.  

Free enterprise is founded upon and created by freedom.