Monday, September 28, 2009

WHAT'S IT REALLY ALL ABOUT?

Let's say I want to start a business.

I think of a good idea, perhaps a product that I think people will feel like they just have to have.

Sitting down with my trusty calculator I discover that I don't have enough money to purchase the equipment to manufacture the product or to pay workers to produce it.

So my good idea must just languish in philosophical purgatory until either someone else thinks of it who does have enough money to produce it or I lose interest and go do something else.

But wait!

There are some people I've talked to who also think it is a good idea, but don't have the time or desire to produce the product themselves.

They could help me get my business started in exchange for a share of the profits, with the understanding that if it produces the goods and people like and want the goods, the business will make enough money to give them a good return on their investment.

They are willing enough to take the risk to invest in my business in order to receive a financial blessing from it in the future.

I, in turn, use their money (and mine) to produce the product and lo-and-behold the product catches on and people all over the world clamor for it, buying it as fast as my company can produce it.

WOW!

If I can increase production, and if the sales continue, my little company will make more money, show a bigger profit, and my investors will gain an even greater dividend.

So my company grows and soon it is as big as Microsoft and I am as wealthy as Bill Gates.

Now, there are those who think that should be against the law.

They think that if I have a good idea I should submit it to the government and they should take the resources of all of the good citizens, help my company grow and take the proceeds and divide them among the populace so that everybody benefits from my business.

Then the government tells me what the limits are on what I can earn from my business and once I reach that figure, I can earn no more. But my business can continue to grow and the overage spread among the populace so that once more everybody benefits.

Problem.

I don't have a desire to work hard enough to produce a product from which I can gain no further benefit.

So, I slack off and just do what the government says I have to do.

My business stagnates, the government gets mad at me and tells me they will take over my business.

Since they are neither equipped to conduct my business nor knowledgeable enough to run it, they sooner or later decide that it wasn't that great of a business anyway and just walk away from it.

See...I know that is all very simplistic and that a lot of factors were left out, but it serves to illustrate what is happening in our country.

The phrase "FREE enterprise system" doesn't mean it does not cost anything, it means the system if free from government interference.

Well, don't recent events prove that more government regulation is needed?

Absolutely NOT!

It proves government interference CAUSES problems.

Well, don't recent events prove that greed and corruption will take place.

Sure.

They will take place no matter who is in control.

Don't be so stupid as to think there is no government corruption.

Think Charles Rangel, Barney Frank, Tip O'neal, Chris Dodd and friends.

There is a statue that stands in New York Harbor called the Statue of Liberty.

Our Pledge of Allegiance ends, "...with liberty and justice for all."

See, we are a liberty based society.

As a liberty based society, the bad apples eventually weed themselves out and the good apples rise to the top.

The more "control" that seeps into the system, the more ambivalence over what is right and what is wrong takes over, and the more bad apples appear.

The best thing for the country would be for government form what it is supposed to form, to establish what it is supposed to establish, to insure what it is supposed to insure, to provide what it is supposed to provide, promote what it is supposed to promote and to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and to our posterity.

When that happens, just sit back and watch the economy take off again!

4 comments:

shoprat said...

While you are absolutely right, you will never convince the know-it-alls on the left of that fact.

Bryan said...

"The more "control" that seeps into the system, the more ambivalence over what is right and what is wrong takes over, and the more bad apples appear."

How big do you think that orchard is now? :0)

ablur said...

Very nice and very well written. You are dead on.

The problem is fairness. We are in a society where people think fairness is everyone getting the profits not everyone doing the work.

Until people take responsibility for their inaction we will suffer.

Joe said...

shoprat: Well, I can try...one lib at a time.

Bryan: It's a BIG orchard.

ablur: Thanks. Do you think it was fair?