I have heard enough from Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama about the debts entrepreneurs owe to the rest of us.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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).<\/p>\n
Let us begin with the idea that the rest of us build transportation networks or public educational systems (I say \u201ceducational,\u201d because the amount of education involved often varies) for the benefit of businesses.\u00a0 We build them for our benefit.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n
That is, the road a business ships their goods on benefits me.\u00a0 In the first place, it benefits me because<\/em> they ship their goods on it\u2014and that means those goods are in markets.\u00a0 Because of those roads, I can access those markets, and can get the necessities\u2014and even the luxuries\u2014of life with far less time, trouble, and expense.\u00a0 Businesses could well decline public roads, and build their own.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n Moreover, I would not be able to use those private roads without paying a fee.\u00a0 That is, in the second place, I benefit from roads regardless of whether businesses ever use them or not.\u00a0\u00a0 Public roads are paid for with compulsory fees, but I don\u2019t have to stop and pay them every 3 miles.\u00a0 (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\u2019s a story for a different time.)\u00a0 I haven\u2019t done the exact math, but I\u2019m pretty sure the gain in time and efficiency to the rest of us\u2014those of us going to work, to visit family members, to church, to shop\u2014makes the utility of public roads to non-businesses a fairly safe assumption (or at least, not an heroic one).<\/p>\n The same, of course, is true of education.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It has utility\u2014or at least, offers utility\u2014to all students, as humans and as citizens, aside from roles as workers or entrepreneurs.<\/p>\n Which brings us to the second fallacy.\u00a0 Entrepreneurs are part of society, too.\u00a0 They helped pay for those roads and teachers with their taxes, too.\u00a0 Even corporations, those fictional legal individuals who are not part of society, helped pay for those goods and services with the taxes they paid.\u00a0\u00a0 They can hardly be said to still owe the rest of us when they were part of the \u201cus\u201d who paid.<\/p>\n In fact, let us look at this a bit closer.\u00a0 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\u2019s your excuse?\u00a0 Everyone (or more than nearly enough so) has access to these endowments, on the same terms.\u00a0 If these variables are so important, why haven\u2019t more of those who enjoy them made such productive use of them?<\/p>\n This is what puts the lie to the \u201cyou didn\u2019t build it\u201d nonsense.\u00a0 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).\u00a0 One need not have a great deal of instruction in methodology to understand that constants cannot explain variation.\u00a0 Since the same elements are present in successful and non-successful cases, they cannot explain the variation.\u00a0 So why have you, Ms. Warren and Mr. Obama, not created successful businesses?<\/p>\n Let us go one step further.\u00a0 You did not build those roads or schools, either.\u00a0 What gives you the right to then make a claim on others for their building?\u00a0 You probably paid less than most of the businesses you\u2019re attacking, but they belong equally to all citizens, including entrepreneurs.\u00a0 You have no greater claim to them, or to speak for them, than any other.\u00a0 In fact, there\u2019s a good chance you have less.<\/p>\n In fact, let\u2019s turn your logic on the publicly-owned resource you\u2019ve made careers from.\u00a0 Taxes are what pay for your government programs (and your government salaries).\u00a0 You didn\u2019t build that government, you didn\u2019t fund those programs.\u00a0 Businesses pay the incomes that government taxes; businesses create and sell the goods and services that government taxes.\u00a0 The one thing you\u2019d have left without businesses\u2014property\u2014would be worth a whole lot less without them.\u00a0 Without businesses, you wouldn\u2019t have the public treasury that fuels your activity.<\/p>\n So don\u2019t you owe them something?\u00a0 Let\u2019s start with an apology.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have heard enough from Elizabeth Warren and Barack Obama about the debts entrepreneurs owe to the rest of us.\u00a0 The fact that we did not dismiss this nonsense out of hand says poor things about our abilities to reason … Continue reading