Progressives’ goal is the entire reconstruction of society, and their views are a threat to civilization, says Hayek. Conservatives err when they try to maintain their own personal standing within the existing order without resisting this anti-civilizational crusade.
A real push is also necessary in the economics trade itself. The most important step to put markets where they belong—in first place in the economic discussion. The greatest hope lies in the fostering of new institutions that will, in turn, nurture economics thinkers who dare to acknowledge the merits of markets.
There’s a new measurement of economic activity called Gross Output. GO measures spending throughout the entire production process, at every entrepreneurial stage. This is consistent with economic growth theory – entrepreneurs drive growth.
What exactly do entrepreneurs do to steer the economic ship? The founder of the Austrian School, Carl Menger, had defined this very precisely in his 1871 book, Principles Of Economics. (We’ve known this stuff for a long time.)
In the market, the individual takes the risk to find out if the results of his or her efforts create value for others, both moral and commercial. Everyone does their best, and the preferences of consumers tell producers what to produce more of and less of.
What if we had a President whose brand was built around the promise of being the best person he could, and helping all Americans to be the most productive they could be, and helping the country to achieve peak performance, focusing on the most important contributory factors and eschewing the political distractions that get in the way? What if any politician were to build such a brand and make such a commitment? It would be nice if one of them read Tom Brady’s book and reflected on the difference between personal peak performance and political performance.
So-called socially responsible investing purports to seek out companies who contribute most to society. Profits are the signal that society benefits from a company’s commercial activities. Look no further.
Professor Skousen relates marginal value to investing in the stock market. First, all prices on the stock market are created by a relatively few marginal buyers and sellers. Only a few of them call their broker or click the trade button on their E-Trade dashboard on any given day. Therefore, it takes only a marginal shift in investor sentiment to change the direction or accelerate the movement of stock prices on that day.
The emergent technologies of A.I., cloud computing, and global talent and commerce platforms will place increased demands on each of us to define our specialist value, specialist skills and specialist contribution in the interconnected global economy. These are the aptitudes required to meet those demands.
We can all ask ourselves the individual entrepreneur’s questions: Who Am I? What Do I Know? Who Do I Know? What Are My Resources? How Do I Contribute? How Do I Serve Others? Technology will be an augmenting factor, helping the individual to answer these questions and support the action plan that emerges.
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