Profit Motive

 

                                             

Despite the fact that business ranks as one of the top college majors, it is true that many college graduates today would prefer to work for a non-profit organization than a profit making one.  There would appear to be a stigma attached to working for personal gain.  To many working for profit is ignoble, even crass. 

This attitude is not just found in the young but in all levels of our society.  It helps to explain the contempt we see directed today at words like Capitalism and Capitalist, both of which are terms of opprobrium in progressive and Democratic Socialist circles. Indeed, popular fiction and movies have ingrained in us a cardboard stereotype of the money-grubbing, overweight, usually lecherous business tycoon.

Nevertheless, because of the bad connotation of the word Capitalist, I prefer to think of myself as an advocate of a free-market economy based on private property rights. By law and tradition in America, we all have the right to profit from our education, our knowledge, our experience, and our labor. It is the key to our success.

Countless examples could be provided to demonstrate the success of a free market economy versus a government controlled socialist model. Here is one example that shows that modern China’s economic success is due more to the profit motive than Socialist ideology. 

A few years ago, I read an op-ed in the Wall Street journal by Michael Meyer in which he noted a truly revolutionary development in a Chinese village over 40 years ago.  After taking power in China in 1949 Chairman Mao and the Communist party had effectively abolished private land ownership. Villages were organized into communes “crippled by production quotas that seized most of what they grew for redistribution.” 

The result was a disaster just as it had been in Communist Russia decades earlier. Meyer tells the story of the village of Xiaogang where by 1978 the villagers could no longer meet their quota because they were starving. They were eating roots, leaves, and tree bark. Driven to desperation the farmers decided to defy the authorities.

They signed a pledge to divide the village land into family plots whose produce could be kept by each family once it had paid the required quota or tax. The results were revolutionary. Next year saw a record harvest that led the local political boss to complain that the farmers “had dug up the cornerstone of socialism.” 

Inevitably, the news and the practice spread until the popular land reform that defied communist orthodoxy became officially adopted after Mao’s death. Deng Xiaoping, his successor, urged the Chinese to ignore political dogma and instead “seek truth from facts.”

Interestingly, this same revolution had an antecedent in early American history. After two years of near starvation, the Pilgrim fathers at Plymouth colony abandoned their experiment with communal farming and divided the land into family plots worked by all members of the family. The colony never starved again. 

Why should it be so hard for people today to understand the value of the profit motive? Not only do the companies in my investment portfolio turn a decent profit, but also they provide invaluable goods and services for millions of people. They light and heat our homes as well as enable us to communicate easily with one another. 

The little revolution in Xiaogang not only fed the people of that village but it also has enabled China’s population to eat and prosper as never before. Democratic Socialists may think that Communism succeeded in China but it was really private property and free enterprise that made China an industrial giant. 

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Private Property

  

 

There was rioting and looting in the streets of Los Angeles after the hometown LA Rams won a narrow victory over the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl. In addition to the disturbances and vandalism in the streets, store surveillance videos showed dozens of mainly young black men looting a jewelry store. 

 

They were ransacking and cleaning out the shelves not for the necessities of life but for high end merchandise for later sale for profit. In other words, they took property that did not belong to them for their own personal gain. 

 

Such looting has become more and more prevalent in American cities in the past two years. It is a very dangerous phenomenon, and poses more risk to our Republic and American way of life than the so-called Insurrection of January 6, 2021.

 

The foundation of our American way of life is not democracy. After all, despite popular voting we are not and have never really been a democracy. Most of our major cities, for example, are ruled by politicians elected by a small portion of the electorate.

 

No, the foundation of our way of life is private property, or the right to acquire and keep our own property. I am not going to write a history of private property, but the concept goes back to the dawn of history. Our Constitution did not give us this right. Our Founding Fathers assumed that the right to private property already existed, and that it was sacrosanct.

 

One of the reasons for the inclusion of a Bill of Rights in  our Constitution was to limit or prevent the new government from interfering with our rights, including the right to own property.

 

Today’s Progressives, even those sympathetic to Communism, tacitly affirm the right to private property. Senator Bernie Sanders does not share his Vermont home with strangers. Representative Alexandra  Ocasio Cortes of New York does not let others use her lipstick. It is hers to use as she wants.  Before she became AOC, she was a bartender, but I doubt if she ever gave away drinks for free.  Lebron James does not let others use his prized sneakers. Actually, he makes millions by endorsing sneakers and other products. He does not give them away for free. They are his property, and he is free to use them as he pleases.  God forbid that President Joe Biden would allow squatters on his Delaware estate to use the bathrooms and raid the pantry. 

 

The right to private property is the main reason why immigrants have always come to this country. Even modern Russian oligarchs buy real estate in New York city because their money is not safe back home. Chinese immigrants to California exchange their Xuan for dollars and then pay cash for million-dollar homes, secure in their right of ownership. For as long as I can recall, immigrants from Greece have been buying or opening diners with the assurance that their property cannot be taken from them without just compensation. Other immigrants own fruit and vegetable stores, motels, liquor stores, and convenience stores with the same assurance.

 

From the origins of our country, we have tacitly given up our right to defend ourselves and our property to law enforcement agencies. Most of us have, for example, accepted various gun control laws with the assumption that our laws and police will protect us. 

 

However, it is obvious that in the past few years crimes against life and property have dramatically increased. Although  most of us have not personally been affected, statistics, not anecdotes, show remarkable increases in shootings, murders, rapes, car thefts, and lootings, especially in our major cities. 

 

Even worse is the fact that progressive politicians have not only refused to take action, but also have actually abetted the crime wave by making excuses for the looters, or refusing to prosecute them.  Call for defunding or eliminating police, have just made things worse. Bail reform has also played a major part in releasing offenders back on the streets.

 

On the other hand, progressive politicians have invoked emergency powers to force the law-abiding 99% of the population, both black and white, to comply with Covid mandates.  The same politicians who insist on strict gun control laws for law abiding citizens, balk at proven measures to keep guns out of the hands of criminal gangs.

 

Just this week, the local Selectwoman of my hometown, quiet, suburban Fairfield, announced that our police are relatively hamstrung in dealing with gangs of motorcyclists driving recklessly through our streets. When police approach them, they just speed away secure in the knowledge that police are forbidden to engage in active pursuit. Usually, their vehicles sport stolen license plates or none at all. Like the looters, they openly flaunt the law with impunity. 

 

This may seem like a small matter to some, but experience has shown that the prevention of minor crimes has the effect of reducing the incidence of major attacks on life and property.

 

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