Just Asking...

Since it has been many years since I studied Adam Smith...going way
back to those Dark Years of my distant youth, I will not comment on
his insights other than to address the two points Bob Hatchey
mentioned.

1. Too much wealth in the hands of too few people is not healthy for a
free market.
*But by its very nature, a Free Market does exactly that, enables the
most clever, or cunning, or creative, or ruthless to force out
competition.  It's the Law of the Jungle.  Survival of the fittest.
Is this really the best way to build a civilization?

2. Businesses that grow too large hamper the kind of healthy
competition that is necessary for a free market to work as it should.

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*But this is exactly what happens with "Free Enterprise".  Remember,
the bottom line is Profit.  Profit trumps People.  Profit trumps
Progress.  Profit trumps pollution and poverty and Public Education
and Public Health and Pizza...well, maybe not deep dish Pizza.
Free Enterprise or Capitalism, given its head, will do exactly what we
see around us today.  Small enterprises begin.  A creative fellow
figures out how to mass produce the latest invention, a gasoline
driven horseless carriage.  He quickly begins forcing his competition
out of business.  But before he becomes a monopoly, several other
enterprising fellows ban together and copy his mass production
techniques, and manage to compete.  So we call this an example of Free
Enterprise at work.  But if you believe that, just head out and try
starting up an automobile factory.
Once upon a time, Boeing was a little airplane company on the shores
of Lake Washington, competing with many other small airplane
companies.  Today Boeing is an international corporation, beholden to
no one.  One of what I call, Corporate Nations.  This is the outcome
of a system that claims Profit as its bottom line.
Why do we need profit in order to have incentive?  Is Profit really
all that motivates us?
If so, we have certainly corrupted our basic Human Nature.
Why not change the bottom line from Profit to, Love?
Love of my family motivates me to head off to work each day.  Love
causes me to figure out how to do my chores more efficiently in order
to have more free time to spend with my wife and our children.  Love
for my fellow workers inspires me to develop safer methods of doing
our work.  Love inspires me to become a doctor, a scientist, a
developer of universal health, and a builder of public education for
all.
If Love is our bottom line, we might see some changes in what we now
call Progress.  We might not put as much energy in building War
Machines.  We might not have Homeless folks living under bridges.  We
might see more public workers keeping our cities and countryside
clean.  We might see more affordable housing that replaces the High
Cost dwellings that now dot the countryside.  We might see workers
sharing the profits of their businesses, and have a vote in company
policies and future direction.  We might see a cleaner planet, a
return to fresh air and clean water.
Oh sure, I know it would be hard to change our bottom line.  But do
you think it would be worth it, if it meant that through Love, we
could make life better for all of us, rather than just for the few who
climbed to the top of the Pig Pile built upon a Phony man made value
called, Profit?
Just asking...

Carl Jarvis