Last week, Portnoy launched a fund to bail out small businesses and alerted his 1.8 million Twitter followers to the cause. It seems he is spending this money out of his own pockets, a heroic and commendable endeavor, and challenging others to join him in the cause. They say when a strong man takes a stand the spines of others are stiffened, and that certainly seems to be the case here.
Politics and economics become directly interfused. The state does not recognize the limits contemplated for it in capitalism, or in the Constitution for that matter. The economic arena is now also the arena of the state. Consequently, there is no sharp separation between political officials and so-called captains of industry. The captain of industry is, by virtue of his function, at the same time, a state official.
One trait all bubbles share is an obscured understanding about the value of a commodity relative to its actual worth. In this instance, it’s why you see people paying $100,000 for a degree in graphic design that might pay them $40,000.
This mindset and the BAI process – Belief, Alignment, Implementation – can be applied not only in business but in any context or setting where there is dissatisfaction with the status quo on which an entrepreneur can build a belief and a customer can express a preference. As a result, we can imagine a wide range of fields in which the entrepreneurial mindset can be applied to society’s benefit.
Homeschooling, in particular, is booming. An estimated 3.3 percent of children were homeschooled in 2016, up from 1.7 percent in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That share roughly tripled this year to nine percent, in an Education Week survey. Gallup agrees, finding that 10 percent of children are now being homeschooled.
Logrolling is essentially the trading of favors among legislators for mutual benefit. Bills often get passed by winning the support of lawmakers by including provisions that benefit their special interests, but which may not align with any public good. As a result, successful legislation tends to be chock full of special-interest spending.
Competition and emulation of superior performance in the eyes of consumers make all of us able to achieve certain tasks better over time. Such increased capabilities mean more can be produced, and that increased production, in a world of scarcity, benefits the rest of us in society. That makes it a positive-sum game, not a zero-sum game.
When it comes to culture, there is little room for compromise. It is increasingly apparent that the only peaceful solution lies in some form of radical decentralization, amounting to either secession or self-rule at the local level with only foreign policy as “national” policy.
Unless we start teaching the ABCs as opposed to BLM, American students will continue their descent into the dumbed-down, hate-filled hellhole that has been carved out for them by radical activists. And, ironically and infuriatingly, hardworking mainstream American taxpayers are subsidizing the revolution. This is simply outrageous.
Nobel prize-winning economist Edmund Phelps has shown that the more individualistic a country is, the greater the dynamism, vitalism, and self expression and the desire to create entirely new things. Geert Hofstede, the famous social psychologist, has established that there is a strong relationship between a country’s national wealth and the level of individualism in its culture.
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