I have heard enough from Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama about the debts entrepreneurs owe to the rest of us.  The fact that we did not dismiss this nonsense out of hand says poor things about our abilities to reason and our senses of fairness.  Since the idea keeps lingering, however, my outrage has finally prompted action: venting uselessly on a blog no one reads (in fairness, because either the posting intervals are measured in parts of a year, not parts of a week, or the writing is evaluated in terms of rotten produce hurled).

Let us begin with the idea that the rest of us build transportation networks or public educational systems (I say “educational,” because the amount of education involved often varies) for the benefit of businesses.  We build them for our benefit.  There are two fallacies here: that the rest of us do not benefit from transportation networks or education, and that businesses are not part of us.

That is, the road a business ships their goods on benefits me.  In the first place, it benefits me because they ship their goods on it—and that means those goods are in markets.  Because of those roads, I can access those markets, and can get the necessities—and even the luxuries—of life with far less time, trouble, and expense.  Businesses could well decline public roads, and build their own.  The cost of that, however, would be reflected in the goods they were selling, and I would be able to afford a lot less of them, lowering my standard of living.

Moreover, I would not be able to use those private roads without paying a fee.  That is, in the second place, I benefit from roads regardless of whether businesses ever use them or not.   Public roads are paid for with compulsory fees, but I don’t have to stop and pay them every 3 miles.  (The fact that they are bundled with other services masks the cost and allows the provider to extract rents a competitive market would not, but that’s a story for a different time.)  I haven’t done the exact math, but I’m pretty sure the gain in time and efficiency to the rest of us—those of us going to work, to visit family members, to church, to shop—makes the utility of public roads to non-businesses a fairly safe assumption (or at least, not an heroic one).

The same, of course, is true of education.  Though misguided administrators have often tried to appeal to the utility to business of an educated workforce, that is far from the only justification for public education.  It has utility—or at least, offers utility—to all students, as humans and as citizens, aside from roles as workers or entrepreneurs.

Which brings us to the second fallacy.  Entrepreneurs are part of society, too.  They helped pay for those roads and teachers with their taxes, too.  Even corporations, those fictional legal individuals who are not part of society, helped pay for those goods and services with the taxes they paid.   They can hardly be said to still owe the rest of us when they were part of the “us” who paid.

In fact, let us look at this a bit closer.  If businesses have used these endowments to produce socially useful things (and if we voluntarily purchase them, we must believe they increase our well-being in some facet), what’s your excuse?  Everyone (or more than nearly enough so) has access to these endowments, on the same terms.  If these variables are so important, why haven’t more of those who enjoy them made such productive use of them?

This is what puts the lie to the “you didn’t build it” nonsense.  If these are key factors in success, they are publicly and broadly available ones. In other words, they do not vary between highly productive and less productive citizens (for example, politicians).  One need not have a great deal of instruction in methodology to understand that constants cannot explain variation.  Since the same elements are present in successful and non-successful cases, they cannot explain the variation.  So why have you, Ms. Warren and Mr. Obama, not created successful businesses?

Let us go one step further.  You did not build those roads or schools, either.  What gives you the right to then make a claim on others for their building?  You probably paid less than most of the businesses you’re attacking, but they belong equally to all citizens, including entrepreneurs.  You have no greater claim to them, or to speak for them, than any other.  In fact, there’s a good chance you have less.

In fact, let’s turn your logic on the publicly-owned resource you’ve made careers from.  Taxes are what pay for your government programs (and your government salaries).  You didn’t build that government, you didn’t fund those programs.  Businesses pay the incomes that government taxes; businesses create and sell the goods and services that government taxes.  The one thing you’d have left without businesses—property—would be worth a whole lot less without them.  Without businesses, you wouldn’t have the public treasury that fuels your activity.

So don’t you owe them something?  Let’s start with an apology.