Friday, February 26, 2010

Dr. Boudreaux Hitting the Home Runs

http://www.pittsburghlive.com/x/pittsburghtrib/opinion/columnists/boudreaux/s_654772.html

"The Prosperity Pool is filled small drop by small drop. Countless people line the edge of the pool, each dripping in a drop or two of additional "water" -- additional prosperity -- from time to time.
Just as a single drop of water doesn't noticeably increase the level of water in a swimming pool, very few single drops of prosperity have any noticeable effect on the prosperity level. Had in-flight Wi-Fi never been invented and supplied, few people would have noticed.
Ditto for almost everything else available on the market -- new shades of paint color; improved quality of stereo speakers; better techniques for freezing food; slightly longer-lasting light bulbs; a new fusion cuisine; a more-efficient machine for weaving cotton; improved corkage for wine; better batteries for laptop computers.
The list is practically endless.
Some drops are large, such as the polio vaccine, Henry Ford's innovation for producing automobiles and the microprocessor. But the great majority of drops are tiny. These tiny drops, though -- just like each of the many tiny drops of water in a swimming pool -- combine together to produce a wondrous effect. That effect, in the case of the Prosperity Pool, is an enormously high level of material affluence.
Unfortunately, many people want the prosperity level raised noticeably by a few gigantic infusions. Because each of us individually, even large corporations, are small compared to the whole, no one of us can ever realistically hope to raise the prosperity level noticeably. As a result, too many of us believe that we don't "change the world" by contributing little drops. Each of us individually wants to make a big splash -- to make a move that raises the prosperity level in a way that grabs lots of attention.
This desire, although understandable, reflects ignorance of the only proven process of generating genuine, widespread prosperity. That process involves unleashing creative entrepreneurship to search for profit by figuring out ways to better please consumers -- a process that results in huge numbers of small drops of prosperity being added to the Prosperity Pool."

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