Under certain respects, the debates will be warranted, but as I read reviews and Tweets regarding the show, before the story is even finished, some are hitting the Send button loaded with 140 characters of daggers and poison-tipped hashtags for Americas earliest entrepreneurs.But political entrepreneurship should be the yard stick that separates a robber baron from a capitalist.
Market entrepreneurs do not request nor obtain such assistance. A successful market entrepreneur accepts the responsibility of using his own judgment, uses his mind to create material values, is honest in his dealing with others and with reality, risks failure and loss, persists in the face of adversity, is alert for information regarding previously unrecognized needs and ways of meeting them, and earn profits as his reward for increasing the wealth of individuals in society. Unlike the political entrepreneur, the market entrepreneur relies on the market mechanism to sort out the successful from the unsuccessful entrepreneurs. It has created a culture where success is tainted by the supposition that the successful men at this time were guilty of despotic capitalist leadership, and likely the same must be true today. It was the business incarnate of Nietzsche Superman; one that transcends morality and the whole to become the strongest possible individual. The turn of the century truly was an all or nothing, rich or poor society; while Rockefeller made millions while the average person made 8-10 a day may demonstrate an unbridgeable gap between rich and poor, it in no way implies an inherent wrong doing. Competitors we must have, we must have, said Rockefellers partner Charles Pratt. And while High School text books would have us believe that shipping rebates and discounts gave Rockefeller a competitive edge with which no oil company could compete; it was not unprecedented and Vanderbilt offered the same rates to any company who could provide the volume. The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Free Market WorksIt is debunked in John Lotts Freedomnomics: Why the Free Market Works and Other Half-Baked Theories Dont. As well as in Thomas DiLorenzos article the Myth of Predatory Pricing. The predatory firm first lowers its price until it is below the average cost of its competitors. The competitors must then lower their prices below average cost, thereby losing money on each unit sold. If they fail to cut their prices, they will lose virtually all of their market share; if they do cut their prices, they will eventually go bankrupt. After the competition has been forced out of the market, the predatory firm raises its price, compensating itself for the money it lost while it was engaged in predatory pricing, and earns monopoly profits forever after. Thus, legal restrictions on price cutting, in the name of combatting predation, are inevitably protectionist and anti-consumer, as Harold Demsetz noted. The Robber Barons The Great American Capitalists Free Market EntrepreneurshipIn doing so, they ignore the difference between the free market entrepreneurship celebrated by The Men Who Built America and the political entrepreneurship that killed it. To quote Chandler, what could be less likely to produce useful generalizations than a debate over vaguely defined moral issues based on unexamined ideological assumptions and presuppositions. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |