Free Enterprise Avoids The Tar-Baby.

“One day after Brer Rabbit had fooled him with a calamus root Brer Fox went to work and got some tar. He mixed it with turpentine, and fixed up a little doll that he called a Tar-Baby.   He put a straw hat on the Tar-Baby and sat her in the middle of the road, then hid in the bushes to see what would happen.
He didn’t have to wait long either, because Brer Rabbit soon came pacing down the road as saucy as a jay-bird. Brer Fox, he lay low.
Brer Rabbit come prancing along until he spotted the Tar-Baby. The Tar Baby, she sat there and Brer Fox lay low.
“Good morning,” said Brer Rabbit, “Nice weather we’re having.”
The Tar-Baby said nothing. Brer Fox laid low and grinned an evil grin.
Brer Rabbit tried again. “And how are you feeling this fine day?”
Brer Fox winked his eye slowly and laid low in the bushes, and the Tar Baby, well, she said nothing.
“How are you then? Are you deaf?” said Brer Rabbit. “If you are, I can shout louder.”
Tar-Baby stayed still, and Brer Fox, he lay low.
“You’re stuck up, that’s what you are,” said Brer Rabbit, “I’ll cure you, that’s what I’ll do.”  But Tar-Baby said nothing.
“I’m going to teach you how to talk respectable to people," said Brer Rabbit. ‘If you don’t take off that hat, I’m going to beat you up”.
Tar-Baby stayed still, and Brer Fox, he lay low.
Brer Rabbit keep on asking, and the Tar-Baby kept on saying nothing.
Presently, Brer Rabbit drew back his fist and hit the Tar-Baby on the side of the head. His fist stuck and he couldn’t get loose. The tar held him. But Tar-Baby, she stayed still, and Brer Fox, he lay low.
“If you don’t let me go, I’ll hit you again,” said Brer Rabbit, and with that he swiped again with the other hand, and that stuck. Tar-Baby said nothing and Brer Fox, he lay low.
“Let me go, or I’ll kick the stuffing out of you,” said Brer Rabbit, but Tar-Baby said nothing. She just hung on, and Brer Rabbit lost the use of his feet in the same way. Brer Fox, he lay low.
Then Brer Rabbit yelled out that if the Tar-Baby didn’t turn him loose he’d head butt her side-on. So he butted, and his head got stuck. Then Brer Fox sauntered out, looking as innocent as could be.
“Hiya, Brer Rabbit,” said Brer Fox. “You look sort of stuck up this morning,” and then he rolled on the ground, and laughed and laughed until he could laugh no more. “You’ll have to have dinner with me this time, Brer Rabbit. I’ve got some calamus root, and I won’t take any excuses.”

Joel Chandler Harris (1848-1908)

A rewrite of the Tar-Baby story, as told by Uncle Remus.

This is one of many metaphorical stories written by American folklorist Harris.  He wrote of his period, social circumstances, and many of his stories were very parable like.  As an teenaged apprentice on a Georgia plantation he learned many of the oral traditions of the African slaves he worked with.  And he recorded them and introduced them to American society with his books.

Are there things in this particular story for our era?  Do we have Tar-Babies in our midst?  What are some of the things our society has for us that might get us stuck?  How about:

1.  Entertainment?  Ask kids these days pop-culture questions or questions about things of import to us as citizens and which are they more informed after?  Try that with many adults!  What about video games and music?  How much time is spent honing one's ability through involvement there?  So many are stuck in that Tar-Baby!
2.  Cell phones?  Go anywhere, what are people doing as they are walking or standing or DRIVING!?  I go to the grocery store or a restaurant or stand in line anywhere and many are buried in their phones.  I drive down the road and other drivers are texting!  Wonderful...  So many are stuck in that Tar-baby!
3.  Lobsters?  Put a bunch of lobsters in a big bucket and if one tries to get out what do the others do?  They reach up to pull him down!  None can escape the others!  People can be like that.  "Geeks" are expected to try in school but pay for it socially.  But what of those others, not thought to be "geeky," who want to do well also?  How are they treated by the lobsters?  When some in certain groups want to do well in society and "succumb" to "the man," they are berated and name-calling results!  By whom?  The lobsters!  So many are stuck in that Tar-baby!
4.  The unmotivated and uninspired?  What generation hasn't had these?  But it seems so rife today among the young set.  Personal direction, if present at all, sometimes has tunnel vision with focus on fitting into some fringe aspect of society - gangs, clubbing, tattoos, weird jewelry, living forever in Mom's basement, and obtaining "free" entitlements.  And the trend toward legalizing "recreational" drugs isn't helping.  Using the word "recreation" to describe certain drugs is part of the lure!  There is benefit there?  So many are stuck in that Tar-baby!

Free enterprise participants can't get stuck in Tar-babies.  They have to be on the move!  They have to be a vibrant part of the system!  For society to advance via free enterprise, for the general standard of living to improve via free enterprise, and for the economy to expand from here forward as it did in past decades via free enterprise, the populace (especially the rising generation) has to be educated, focused, goal-driven, moral and motivated!  There is no time for any Tar-baby that might be in the road along the way.  The enticing Tar-baby has to be avoided!

Free enterprise avoids the Tar-baby.

 

Free Enterprise Has Its Own Spirit And Energy

"...no people in the world have made such rapid progress in trade and manufactures as the Americans.  In the United States the greatest undertakings and speculations are executed without difficulty, because the whole population are engaged in productive industry, and because the poorest as well as the most opulent members of the commonwealth are ready to combine their efforts for these purposes.  But what most astonishes me in the United States is not so much the marvelous grandeur of some undertakings as the innumerable multitude of small ones. Almost all the farmers of the United States combine some trade with agriculture.  The Americans make immense progress in productive industry, because they all devote themselves to it at once; and for this same reason they are exposed to unexpected and formidable embarrassments. As they are all engaged in commerce, their commercial affairs are affected by such various and complex causes that it is impossible to foresee what difficulties may arise."

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
from Democracy in America, Book II, Chapter 19

Tocqueville was a classical liberal, the equivalent of today's political conservative.  He was sent by the French government to the United States in 1831 to study the prison system.  He spent two years, spending very little time doing that, and most of his time traveling the country and examining what made Americans, and their unique form of democratic exceptionalism, tick.

His book, Democracy in America, was the result of those travels, and was published in 1835.  I got it downloaded to my Kindle for free!  It is a GOOD read!

He saw Americans as basically agricultural, but with a free enterprise spirit and energy unrivaled in his European travels and experience.  Everyone was busy doing something!  Everyone was finding a niche, and pursuing it.  America, in his view and experience, was composed of "an innumerable multitude of small" businesses.  Its people were indeed pursuing happiness.  He was seeing private property rights at their best.  Americans were increasing in value, and passing that value along to the next generation.

Isn't that true today? 

The United States Constitution set up the perfect venue for the natural development of free enterprise.  Such freedoms, expressed as God-given and natural rights, were never before pursued so universally by a people.  This is the essence of the "rugged individualism" and "American exceptionalism" that we hear of today.  Such exceptionalism is NOT  that Americans are somehow uniquely exceptional.  Quite the contrary.  We are as ordinary as anyone else.  But when given the freedom to pursue unique talents and become unique individuals, and expressing ourselves via legally PROTECTED natural rights to do so, the nation flourished and became rich as its individual components, i.e.(id est, or "that is") its people, flourished and became rich.  The ordinary can indeed do extra-ordinary things.  This so-called political and economic "experiment" was TRULY EXCEPTIONAL.

SUCH EXCEPTIONALISM 

WAS THE TRUE GENIUS OF THE

 FOUNDING FATHERS!

Free enterprise folds naturally into this arena.  It is the mother's milk of individual freedoms and the pursuit of happiness.  It is, along with our other protected rights and freedoms, what makes this country tick.

FREE ENTERPRISE HAS ITS OWN

SPIRIT AND ENERGY. 

Free Enterprise Makes Natural Resources More Abundantly Available

"Because we can expect future generations to be richer than we are, no matter what we do about resources, asking us to refrain from using resources now so that future generations can have them later is like asking the poor to make gifts to the rich."

Julian Simon (1932 - 1998)

All this talk about using up our natural resources.

We hear it and hear it and hear it.

Who says we will run out of natural resources?  People who don't understand economics. Economics says that no natural resource will ever go to zero.  We will NEVER use up any natural resource to the point that there is no more of it.

What, then, is economics?  Economics is a social science that tries to understand all of the various processes that govern the production, govern the distribution, and govern the consumption of all the goods and services in a given economy.

Key word:  govern.  The key word everyone forgets is govern!  There are true laws in the social science of economics!  For example:

• There is the law of supply and demand.  If supply does this, demand will do that.  They reach an equilibrium point.  If someone tries to force a change in the supply or demand of a given good or service, they will each respond, and perhaps in ways not anticipated.  It's a law.  You can count on it.
• There is the law of diminishing marginal utility.  Sounds like a fancy, schmancy term, but it isn't.  Marginal utility is the gain from an increase or the loss of a decrease of something.  The marginal utility of something, its usefulness, can diminish if there is too much of that something.  If I have a small garden that needs water, there is great usefulness to a first bucket of water.  Maybe a second or a third bucket is just as useful, but the one millionth bucket certainly has no use whatever, and is detrimental.  It's a law.  You can count on it.
• There is the law of rent.  The economist David Ricardo demonstrated that rent is among the most firmly established laws of economics.  Rent, essentially, is the economic advantage, or disadvantage, of using a given thing productively.  That thing might be land, labor, or even capital.  Using a given factor of production, let's say a farmer's capital, like a wagon, to haul his hay from the field to the barn may not produce much capital gain for the farmer.  But on days not needed for hauling hay, if the wagon was dressed up and put at the side of a busy road, and used to sell produce to passersby, the wagon's value increases, and returns that value to the farmer.  Ricardo said that is rent.  It's a law.  You can count on it.

See the very first post on this blog, written in August of 2011 entitled:  Free Enterprise At Work.

So what is this idea that a given natural resource would never be used up?  Is Julian Simon crazy?  Jean-Baptist Say said much the same thing, known in economics as Say's Law.  Basically that law is that a buyer's ability to buy is based on the buyer's successful past production for the marketplace.  Resources, therefore, are never used up - substitutes will find a way.

So, the question was asked, is Julian Simon crazy?  No, far from it.  Nature utilizes this principle itself!  What if a natural disaster like a forest fire caused by lightning or a volcano like Mount St. Helen blows up and destroys the natural forest nearby.  What happens?  Nature rebuilds itself.  It takes time.  But it rebuilds.  (The same thing would happen to a jungle where all the trees are cut down by a lumber company.  It will rebuilt itself.  It takes time.  But it rebuilds.)

What happens if an oil company uses up all the oil it can get to in a given drilled hole?  The hole might be abandoned.  But what happens over time?  Over time many things can happen.  Free enterprise  will create new technologies to come forth that help the oil company get more oil out of the same hole.  (Happening now.)  Or free enterprise  will find new ways to go get any oil that may be in a given area.  (Happening now.)  Or free enterprise  will design new techniques to get oil from the area that could not previously been derived, like from inside the surrounding rock.  (Happening now.)  Or free enterprise  finds cheaper and cheaper ways to create oil synthetically from other materials.  (Happening now.)

Or, theoretically, all of the oil in the world becomes so scarce and becomes so expensive that substitutes are developed that are cheaper and the expensive oil that remains is never used up.  Free enterprise  will always find those substitutes!  That is, if people and markets are free.

The Dr. Simon comment above is simple.  It is a free enterprise  comment!  Where free enterprise  exists markets have grown, those societies have gotten richer, and the people living there have enjoyed higher and higher standards of living.  Where free enterprise  does not exist none of that is encouraged.

Look around.

Free enterprise makes natural resources

 more abundantly available 

and future generations richer.

Free Enterprise Does Great Good To The People

"There have been abuses connected with the accumulation of wealth; yet it remains true that a fortune accumulated in legitimate business can be accumulated by the person specially benefited only on condition of conferring immense incidental benefits upon others. Successful enterprise, of the type which benefits all mankind, can only exist if the conditions are such as to offer great prizes as the rewards of success.

The captains of industry who have driven the railway systems across this continent, who have built up our commerce, who have developed our manufactures, have on the whole done great good to our people. Without them the material development of which we are so justly proud could never have taken place."

Theodore Roosevelt (1858 - 1919)

The term "Robber Baron" is an interesting one.  Of course it's a term intended as a slant, intended as a swipe at reality, and intended as a means to sway readers of history away from capitalism as a viable form of economic development.

But how did the west, how did the United States, grow so rich, and so fast?

Because monopolistic capitalists preyed on the poor and built huge business entities by suppressing all advantages to the ignorant and the slow?

No, not really.  Were there abuses, a word used above by Mr. Roosevelt?  Certainly.  There always are.  And the gubment provided a backlash toward what they perceived as monopolistic growth by trying to crush it with antitrust legislation.  What that succeeded in doing was breaking up a whole into smaller parts which each grew larger than the previous whole.  But that is another story.

The brilliant organizers of the American industrial revolution did so because they took advantage of new business organization techniques, and took huge risks.  They developed technologies and utilized natural resources to such an extent that out of nothing that previously was they created a vibrant something!  Not only did their businesses (and industries) grow, but all of the ancillary businesses (and industries) grew as well.   Think, for example, of all the towns, and businesses in those towns, that sprung up because of thousands of miles of railroad tracks that connected left to right, and up to down?  Goods and services could move from place to place, and thrive.

These Business Barons took advantage of free-market economics, which they called "enterprise," and combined it with the politics of freedom and rugged individualism, attracted a work force made up of natural-born citizens and immigrants who came to share in this growth, and utilized the diversity of skills (not heritage) and knowledge and energy of this work force, so well that these Fortresses of Free Enterprise made lives better for everybody.  They were EXCEPTIONAL at it.

If these immigrants were so badly mistreated why did so many keep coming for decades to take advantage here of what they could not take advantage of from where they came?  These immigrants kept coming because the word got out!  It was better here!  Was the work hard?  Yes.  Did they deal with personal and religious prejudices?  Yes.  Was there severe mistreatment at times?  Yes.  Was the life easy?  No.  But opportunity was in abundance, and futures were staked.

No group of men, these Business Barons, put a bigger stamp on the cultural and charitable and educational institutions in our society.  They established museums, art galleries, cultural halls, theaters, schools and universities, libraries, church buildings, orchestras, and other social and educational entities in virtually every city in which they prospered.  Indeed, no group of men in history has contributed more to these kinds of social things, and in particular to charities, than this group of men.

These so-called "Captains of Industry" created extraordinary economic privilege for all.  And how?  By employing an uncommonly forceful defense of laissez faire gubment policies and the protection of private property rights to form these new economic systems.  The means of finding, developing, producing, combining, transforming, manufacturing, transporting, communicating and financing a nation's natural resources came to be.  This is what T.R. meant by "material development" in the quote above, about which "we are so justly proud."

And the west, and the country, and the people, grew rich.  Let's keep it that way.

Free enterprise does great good to the people.

Free Enterprise Encourages The Proliferation Of The Extraordinary

"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men.  No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man."

Elbert Hubbard (1856-1915)

While describing himself politically as an "anarchist and socialist," Hubbard apparently understood that free enterprise is the way to go in business!

Going into business with John D. Larkin, he helped to found The Larkin Soap Company in 1875.  The company was innovative in many way, including being one of the pioneers in the mail-order business.  This method of sales soon became known as "the Larkin method."

The Larkin method involved two things - door-to-door sales and mail-order sales, both of which had "premiums" attached.

A premium consisted of soap which came in its own box.  They produced three soaps - a so-called "Sweet Home" yellow laundry soap and a bathroom soap, called Oatmeal Creme.  A color picture of the company's logo came in every box, and a certificate for a free gift.

The premiums soon became an important part of the business.  Hubbard proposed making the mail orders smaller, offering only three cakes of soap.  The premium that came with the next  order of bath soap was a handkerchief, towels with the laundry soap or one-cent coins.  The soap packages were sold for 10 cents, so this amounted to a 10% premium.  The idea took off.

Soon the Larkin Company became one of the first large-scale manufacturers to eliminate their wholesalers, retailers, salesmen, and brokers.  This was quite innovative!

Hubbard then introduced a "combination pack" and a $10 box of soaps.  It contained enough laundry and bath soap to last a family about a year.  The $10 was roughly the equivalent of one week's pay.  So the  premium included with the purchase amounted to $10, and could be redeemed for any of the then hundreds of products in the Larkin catalog.  The Larkin idea crystallized into a company motto:   "From Factory-to-Family: Save All Cost Which Adds No Value."  Selling the products directly to the consumer like this the savings could be passed on to the consumer, so purchasers felt like the products were "free."

Further, the Larkin Company introduced cooperative buying clubs, and consumers felt a part of the family.  Called "The Larkin Club," soon it allowed consumers to purchase products on an installment plan, with interest attached, and you can see the development of what is so common in today's business environment.  Small Larkin Clubs developed in towns and neighborhoods where 10 families could each contribute a dollar to join their own little club and enjoy club savings and their own special club product savings and premiums.

Catalog offerings expanded to include "pure" foods, glassware, leather goods, pottery and furniture.  This became a huge part of the marketing plan and helped the company survive the economic downturn of 1893.

The company peaked in sales in 1920, to an eventual low in 1939, and done in by the depression it ceased operations in the 1940s.  Among the corporate changes it introduced to its employees, and American business, included paid vacations, a thrift plan, life insurance, medical benefits for illnesses, tuition for attending night school, free coffee, lunch, and an annual summer picnic.  It even created its own chapter of the YWCA in 1905.  Quite innovative!

No anarchy or socialism here!  The success of mail order as a marketing idea was soon picked up by many other companies.  Its other ideas are rife in our modern marketing and sales companies.  Elbert Hubbards' ideas and innovations extraordinarily changed the business climate nationwide.  His statement above rings true today, for people and machinery.

Free enterprise encourages the proliferation

 of the extraordinary.

Free Enterprise Is The Natural Course And Cannot Be Resisted

“We may brave human laws, but we cannot resist natural ones.”

Jules Verne (1828-1905)

If we humans are about nothing less we are about defining our behavior.

We love to create rules and laws.  We love to create standards and practices.  We love to have blueprints, and designs, and boundaries, and on and on and on.

And why not?  Things often work much better when organized and when expectations are set.

But sometimes human laws overwhelm us.  They can impose difficulties and create minutia and complexities that are hard to understand and hard to keep up with.  And then we can be punished for not understanding or knowing the laws!

But we trudge on.  As Jules Verne says, we "brave human laws."  

Some of what the Founding Fathers suggested, and tried to define and defend with a document, was that there are certain natural laws that tyrants for thousands of years tried to ignore.  And they imposed themselves, or their system and methods, on their populace, creating subjects, slaves and set ups that were (or are) contrary to natural law.

The American Revolution was not a war.  It was the statement that we were setting up a society as far from that previous, expected tyranny as possible.  The American Revolution set up systems conforming to natural laws of freedom, where such laws provided guardrails and were yet freeing at the same time.  They set up expectations where the citizenry could act more freely, without being acted upon.  They set up a legal system where laws were not based on whims but ethics and are moral codes.  They set up an economic environment that promoted free enterprise and voluntary exchange.  And they set up a government that is representative, defined by the rule of law, and which decentralized power equally among different branches.  They set up a gubment that was LESS about force and coercion and MORE about an endowment of natural laws and rights.

Hence, the American Revolution was more about individual rights and limitations on gubment, a gubment that did not force but where individuals could grow and become and multiply their talents.  The American Revolution was an idea that was exceptionally different than anything that had previously been experienced by mankind.

AND IT HAS WORKED.

This has been referred to as American Exceptionalism.  And, according to Jules Verne's thinking, such laws cannot be ignored.  They cannot be trifled with.  They cannot be overcome without an eventual revolution.  We humans cannot resist them.  Therefore ...

Free enterprise is the natural course of the human experience 

and cannot be resisted.

Free Enterprise Is An Endowment That Eschews Statism And Tyranny

 "I believe that without free enterprise there can be no democracy."

Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

While free enterprise and democracy are very different, with one being an economic system and the other political, they are not exactly oil and vinegar.

Both are based solidly in the camp of individual freedom and individual responsibility.  Both eschew tyranny, soft and hard tyranny.

This was no accident.  The Founding Fathers knew what they were doing.  How could they devise a political system, with the exceptional ideas of individual rights and limited gubment, and then incorporate some form of socialistic, controlling, regulatory economic system?  While that may be a form of "mixed economy," it was not what they had in mind.  Necessarily!

The idea was freedom!  The idea was natural (God given) rights!  The idea was no tyranny!

THE IDEA WAS EXCEPTIONAL!

This is where "American Exceptionalism" comes from.  It is not the thought that Americans are somehow exceptional to others in the world.  Or that we are smarter, or better able to do things, or able to grow an economy with historic success.  Those who deride American Exceptionalism as something untoward or arrogant simply don't understand it, or pretend not to.

Our country's founding was exceptional in that it was the first time in history that "rights" did not flow down at the whim of, or dictate of, or good graces of, a tyrant!  Our founding was the recognition of the endowment of natural (God given) rights!

And Eisenhower nails it.  Neither free enterprise or democracy would exist without the other.  Each plays into the other.  Each contributes to the success of the other.  They are oil and vinegar that work well together in the tossed salad of our society.

Sure prior to the Founding Fathers such ideas as natural rights flew around.  The great  philosophers of the Enlightenment - Locke, Hume, Kant, Montesquieu, Hutcheson, Hegel and Hobbes - all wrote about free, unalienable and natural rights, recognized natural rights, and wished for societies that enjoyed natural rights.  All these philosophers were read and understood by the Founding Fathers, and particularly their great fan Thomas Jefferson. The thinking of these philosophers found its way securely into the founding documents of the American Enlightenment, and American Exceptionalism.

These philosophers discussed individual freedoms, and individual rights, and unalienable rights, and natural rights.  They DREAMED of the society our Founding Fathers put together.  They would have loved to live here and enjoy what we enjoy.

And so, we, as citizens who have this great endowment bequeathed to us, have more to do than simply complacently enjoy our abilities to do and to become.  We have a DUTY to promote our endowment of rights, to defend our endowment of rights, to teach our endowment of rights as well as live our endowment of rights.  We need to meet HEAD ON the challenge of the statists who want to dismember our rights one by one; dismember our freedoms one by one; dismember and squash our desires, and abilities, and creativity and motivations, and if they can one by one.

The Founding Fathers would see statism as tyranny.  We should too.

FREE ENTERPRISE IS AN ENDOWMENT THAT ESCHEWS STATISM AND TYRANNY.

The Exceptionalism Of Freedom Is Not Understood By Dictators

 "The state is no organism capable of bringing either moral or material improvements to the populace, but merely a vehicle of power for men and party and power."

Niccolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)

If gubment isn't a vehicle of power, what is?

Therefore, such power would attract what types of people, those who would "lead" a gubment?

Power is not what defines the "exceptionalism" of America. 
Power is not what defines the "exceptionalism" of the Founding Fathers.
Power is not what defines the "exceptionalism" of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights.

The "exceptionalism" of our great country, and the philosophies behind its establishment, is not that we as Americans are more exceptional than other peoples, or our country more exceptional than other countries.

The "exceptionalism" of the United States of America lies in the idea that the individual reigns - freedoms endowed to the individual; rights endowed to the individual; abilities to act and not to be acted upon by a tyrannical gubment or dictator endowed to the individual; a free-enterprise approach endowed to business philosophy that allows businesses to serve their constituencies and grow.

Indeed, the "exceptionalism" of the United States of America is that its gubment is limited by a set of rules designed to control its behavior and protect the individual, and the rights endowed to these individuals by their Creator.  Those rules, and those limitations, are encased in the U. S. Constitution.

And the great precedent for the leaders of this "exceptional" realm was set by none other than George Washington.  His greatness in this regard was recognized then and is still recognized now.  And while perhaps recognized by, it is not understood and would not be approved by the doctrine we now call Machiavellianism. 

And it was recognized by Washington’s contemporary leader and his greatest adversary, King George III. The king asked his American painter, Benjamin West, what Washington would do with his presidency after  winning independence from his dictatorship. West replied, “They say he will return to his farm.”

Incredulous, the monarch retorted, “If he does that he will be the greatest man in the world.”

I suggest that Machiavelli's most recognized work, The Prince, would not have advised that move to Mr. Washington.  It would have advised Washington the consolidation of his power, advised his personal decisions as to what groups in, and parts of the "organism" of, his gubment be fed and nourished (or eliminated), and advised his personal management of the "organism's" growth.

The Prince would not have suggested a precedent that limited the future contributions of the leaders who would follow.
The Prince would have suggested a precedent of slash and burn of political opposition.
The Prince would have suggested a precedent that "the people" (whom it would not have referred to as "the people") be controlled with high taxes, freebies, increasingly-crushing regulations of its behavior in personal life and the market place, and any other way(s) necessary to grow the organism.
The Prince would have advised unlimited, instead of limited, and ever-growing bureaucracy.

The "organism of gubment" is not, as Machiavelli suggests, capable of doing most things for the population that the population cannot do for itself - as he says, "its moral and material improvements."

The "organism of gubment" is instead LIMITED by such words as "form," "establish," "insure," "provide," "promote," and "secure."  See and read the Preamble to the Constitution, which enumerates these LIMITATIONS in only 52 words.  And then the definitions are laid out, and SIMPLY!

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Fifty two words Niccolo Machiavelli might never have understood.

The exceptionalism of freedom is not understood by dictators.