UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES of 1776

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

It was an improbable experiment that took place in 1776 starting in Philadelphia with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. Seldom, if ever, had there been a nation-building endeavor organized on such uncommon denominators. The steadfast incorporators had declared liberty, and were determined to experience the fullness of freedom. But in reality they could scarcely even comprehend the world-altering power they were holding in their hands.

They had dreamed that they would know enough freedom to be able to experience the new and enticing system of free enterprise. But they discovered that it was in the dedicated pursuit of free enterprise that they found the fullness of freedom. It was an unintended consequence to find that the most precious thing provided by a free enterprise economy was not just the abundance of material wealth, but freedom itself.

The incorporators were bent on preserving their newly acquired liberty, improving the well- being of the new nation, and guaranteeing the wise use of their resources. They knew that their only hope was through the understanding and preservation of not only their coveted culture, but also through their development of a stable economy.

The historical serendipity of the 1776 experiment was in the fact that not only was it the year of the signing of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia, but 1776 was also the year of the publishing of the Scottish economist Adam Smith’s book An Inquiry Into The Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The book was a compilation of Adam Smith’s observations as he traveled and sought the answer to what causes one nation to be rich, and another nation to be poor.

Adam Smith equated wealth with income and the ability to generate income. His findings showed that a nation that can generate high levels of income is wealthy and one that is capable only of low levels of income is poor. What is it that allows a nation to create a high level of income? What is it that makes a nation wealthy? In his book he simply recorded his observations. He commented then on such unique observations as division of labor, specialization, incentives, levels of taxation, freedom of cultural and economic choice, and the opportunity to pursue the objectives and directions that are of most interest to each individual.

The incorporators of the 1776 American experiment had been greatly influenced by the observations of Adam Smith. His insights fit snugly with their ideals of independence, self- reliance, and limited government that was responsible to the people rather than the people being enslaved by the government. But what neither Adam Smith nor the young American leaders comprehended was what would be the history-making results, when for the first time those ideals could be worked out in real life, in a situation where it was possible for free enterprise to not just be haltingly tolerated, but encouraged to flourish. Since a national economic system of free enterprise had never really been tried in such laissez-faire settings, no one could fully predict the potency of the economic outcome.

The leaders of the new nation had a deep respect for the rule of law, and realized the unique necessity for a limited government to fully enforce the powers of the law. One of the basic concepts of free enterprise is that the individual citizen has the right to hold and own private property. With that goes the right to exclusively make use of the property or to transfer it to another individual of choice. People are free to make voluntary agreements with each other regarding their private property or personal labor. Contracts, therefore, are vital to the enterprise system.

Contracts and agreements, however, are meaningless unless they are enforced. Free enterprise could not exist without a legal entity to hold contract makers to their agreements. So, without a viable government to enforce agreements there could be no contracts, and without contracts there could be no free enterprise.

In addition, property rights, including intellectual property through copyrights, patents, or trademarks, work to facilitate those transfers and exchanges within the system. Because of the long- term protection of the rights, people are encouraged to write more books and music. The title to a piece of farm equipment or an indentured deed to a plot of ground assures the buyer that the seller is the legitimate owner. The right of property owners to designate who will receive their property when they die helps sustain the confidence in those property rights. Those are all subtle benefits of the free enterprise system. Those benefits were not necessarily designed and plugged into the free enterprise system before it was formalized. Those benefits came as unintended consequences of the pursuit of freedom of choice.

On the consumer side of the equation, free enterprise ensures purchasers they can buy the goods and services that best satisfy their wants and agree with their budgets. And workers are free to try to enter any line of work for which they are qualified.

Adam Smith is a hero to me because I see him as the first cultural economist. He was the first to note the curious connection between private interests and cultural interests. Individuals and businesses seeking to advance their own self-interests and operating within the structure of a highly competitive market system would miraculously promote the cultural best interest as well as the economic best interest at the same time. It began to prove out that as the individuals and businesses were allowed the freedom to choose their own options as to what they felt would be best for them, lo and behold, all the people of the culture began ending up better off. That was definitely an unintended consequence, but a welcomed and marvelous happening.

Adam Smith explained this simultaneous phenomenon as being guided by an invisible hand. We even see it in action today as a business seeks to build a new and improved product to increase its profits. Those enhanced products like computer applications, smart phones, and industrial robots increase the culture’s well-being. Those businesses use the least costly combination of natural and human resources because in doing so it is in their own best interests. To do otherwise would put their business in jeopardy. But the company’s using scarce resources in the least costly way benefits the culture as a whole and frees up precious resources to produce something else that the culture wants.

Self- interest is different than greed. The freedom to pursue self- interest becomes the greatest method known to mankind to manage the billions and billions of individual small decisions of people seeking to better employ their resources and labor in ways other people find helpful. The socialist’s government model of centralized decision making could never come even close to determining the most correct and efficient answer to the billions of everyday decisions open to individuals and cultures. Adam Smith and the leaders of the fresh, new American experiment of 1776 seemed to get an intuitive glance into the possibilities of liberty and free enterprise. And a lot of the results were admittedly unintended and only realized as the experiment unfolded over time.

But over time their intuitions and dreams began to materialize. As they were free to pursue the free enterprise model, they began to experience true freedom for themselves:

• Built- in Efficiency The new economic system encouraged the efficient use of resources and guided the new Americans into production of goods and services most wanted and needed by the citizens. They were encouraged to develop and adopt the most efficient techniques in utilizing their resources for production and consumption in the new country.
• Built- in Incentives The free enterprise economic system promoted the acquisition of new skills and trades, gave people reason to work hard and be frugal in their lifestyles, and made it profitable for them to be innovative in solving their cultural and economic challenges. By assuming calculated risks and being innovative, they began to realize higher incomes and the creation of new opportunities of employment for fellow citizens. Many times the reward for those advances translated into higher standards of living.
• Built- in Freedom The major reward for the pursuit of the free enterprise system flowing from the experiment of 1776 was the realization of personal freedom. The alternative economic systems of centralized government lacked in efficiency, incentives, and most of all freedom. The new system emboldened economic activity without coercion or undue interference, subject to the penalties and rewards built into the economic system itself.  

The unintended consequences set into motion as a result of the determined pursuit of freedom of economic and cultural choice were nothing less than astounding. Nothing else compares historically with the results of the America experiment of 1776. The system thrives on freedom and liberty. The multitudes of quiet and persistent cultural and economic entrepreneurs flowing out from that experiment have absolutely altered the history of this world.

The chances of the experiment ever happening again are very slim, indeed. It will never happen again the same way, for certain. But even were the restart button ever to be pushed again in the future, there is verifiable evidence recorded in history that once upon a time there lived upon the face of the planet earth a people whose hearts burned within them to experience a cultural and economic phenomenon where the people were willing to pay the price of personal responsibility to cultivate with kindness, justice, and righteousness an economic and cultural system that honored liberty and freedom and personal integrity.

In the meantime, I choose to pledge my allegiance to the grand and glorious experiment of 1776, and to honor those who stood for what they believed and lived to experience the extravagant results and even the goodness of the unintended consequences. 

Research ideas from Dr. Jackson's new writing project on Cultural Economics)

  

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.drjameswjackson.com

 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SYSTEMS MATTER Part 10:The Magic of Free Enterprise

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

By the early 1990s, I was spending a lot of time in the Marxist/Communist countries of the world: Cuba, Russia, North Korea, Romania, and even the philosophically tainted countries of South America. In the Soviet Union, members of the average household spent nearly forty hours per week standing in lines attempting to procure just the basic necessities for the family.

In places like Ukraine I would occasionally stand in lines with my new friends just to see what it felt like to participate in the economic debacle of Marx, Engles, Lenin, and Trotsky. We would line up behind the old faded blue military flat-bed trucks, draped with a swatch of gray canvas, and wait our turn to have a government comrade hand down the loaves of bread or canned vegetables . . . if they still had any left.

Marx and Lenin had not only scoffed at, but had officially outlawed, anything that even smacked of free market, free enterprise, or portrayed the slightest capitalistic nuance. With that stance they negated any advantage of market-generated information that would have helped guide them with their economy.

There was no concept of economic growth or production. They had squelched any intrinsic market signals and had shut off any built-in factors for motivation and incentive to help the economic system run smoothly. They had locked themselves into a system that glorified mediocrity and stymied excellence. That was the price they were paying so that they could retain absolute control over a centralized economic system of redistribution. They really believed that they could figure it all out by themselves and control the attitudes and actions of millions of individual workers in their centralized system. But, they could never get it right.

• The flash of genius regarding the magic of prices had been observed and written down by Adam Smith, and it had been available to the socialists for a hundred years. Its efficiency had been well documented and not hidden at all from the public. Smith had recognized that the prices that emerged from individuals entering into voluntary transactions in a free market could silently coordinate the activities of millions of people almost immediately. Each individual would be seeking the area of his own interest, but his actions would result in an experience of unintended consequences where everybody ended up better off. Those transactions sent silent signals out to the entire economic system. Those signals guided the actions of the other individuals in the economic system so that they could make enlightened decisions on their own without the necessity of any politburo or centralized Marxist Gosplan telling them what to do.

In Milton Friedman’s bestselling book, Free to Choose, he brilliantly explains the three elements of Prices: Prices perform three functions in organizing economic activity. First, they transmit information; second, they provide an incentive to adopt those methods of production that are least costly and thereby use available resources for the most highly valued purposes; third, they determine who gets how much of the product – the distribution of income. These three functions are closely interrelated. (1)

Prices are the nervous system of the free enterprise economy. Individuals like to buy at the lowest price possible, and sell at the highest price possible. At some point there is a mark where the seller is willing to sell his product and the buyer is willing to buy the product, and each feels that he is coming out of the deal better off. If that mark cannot be struck, then the deal fails to be consummated. If agreement is made, then price for the product or service has been established. Additionally, the successful transaction encourages the individuals to pursue yet more transactions in order to feel better off again and again, thus expanding the total economy.

In experiencing the Gosplan in action in the old Soviet Union, I observed that there were constantly surpluses of the wrong things and shortages of the things needed. In Armenia, my new friends at the shoe factory pointed out that the Gosplan would try to figure out how many comrades needed to plant enough hectares in hay to feed enough horses and cattle to provide sufficient leather hides to be delivered to the shoe factory for the making of military boots. They always got it wrong somewhere along the line. They would experience a drought (that was always one of their favorite excuses for failure) where there was not enough water to grow sufficient hay for feed, or they would grow so many tons of hay that it would spoil or mold and have to be discarded.

In a free enterprise economic system we do not observe many incidents of surplus or shortage or inconsistent availability of products. Prices make that happen. That is because prices balance the demand for goods and services with their supply. The quantity that the consumers want to purchase is assured to match the quantity producers want to sell. The balance between supply and demand is no accident. Prices make it come out right each time . . . unless there is interference by some control-seeking government entity. Even in times of economic upset or disaster, goods and services are available at the present market price.

To pursue our shoe factory example, let’s return to the Soviet Union’s Gosplan and see how it differs from an economic system of free enterprise. If a retailer needs to purchase from the open market certain numbers and styles of shoes in order to advertise and sell them from his spring shoe catalogue, he may contact a shoe manufacturer and enter into an agreement to purchase said shoes to be delivered to a certain location by a certain date for a certain price. Each party is free to enter into such an agreement. As soon as the shoe manufacturer commits to fill the order for the retailer, he immediately secures the necessary leather to fill the order.

But, let’s say the manufacturer is dilatory and waits for a period of time to purchase the leather. And in the meantime there is a drought, (or some other kind of impediment in the leather supply). Immediately information goes out into the marketplace regarding the shortage of leather, and the cost of the remaining available leather supply goes up. But leather is still available at the new price. The cattle growers in Texas receive the free information and may decide to not sell the entire cow to their beef steak market in Japan, but, rather, butcher the cattle in Texas and save the leather hides to sell to the shoe industry, and just send the custom steaks to Japan that year. The cattleman’s neighbor hears of the leather shortage and decides that next year he will switch his ranch operation from growing sorghum to raising cattle, because the selling price of leather has increased sufficiently and he now has an opportunity to make a handsome profit.

The prices of shoes for the spring season are going to go up. There will not be a shortage of shoes, but the potential customers will have to make a decision as to whether or not they want to pay a higher price. Since the company with the spring shoe catalogue has a firm contract with the manufacturer for the leather products at a lower price, he stands to make a better profit from raising his shoe prices, or he has an edge on the market and can afford to sell his shoes faster at a lower price than his competitors who had to increase all their prices because of the increased leather costs.

But the manufacturer now has to scramble and find some leather available at the price that existed when he signed his contract with the retailer, or he will experience a sad loss.

The manufacturer grabs the Wall Street Journal and turns to the commodity price page in search of leather. All this information is free and available in the open marketplace. He locates a leather supplier in Brazil who is willing to sell him the leather at the previous year’s price and even assume part of the shipping costs. The manufacturer has covered his potential losses and can fulfill his contract with the spring shoe catalogue. All that information exchange and human initiative happened almost instantaneously, without needing to be gathered, sorted, and distributed to everybody in the economy. Everyone had access to all the information, but those who did not have a personal interest in the leather or shoe industry could simply ignore the information and go on with their own interests. There is no way in God’s green earth that all that could have taken place under Gosplan!

Of course, all the cattle ranchers who jumped in to raise more cattle and sell the leather at the increased prices, now have the prerogative of going back to raising sorghum. But everybody in the system had the right to pursue his or her desires to become better off. Everybody in the system had instant and pertinent information available making it possible to pursue those free choices.

Nothing has ever been designed to match the efficiency of free enterprise. That is because nobody designed the free market. Nobody manages the free market. Nobody controls the free market. It is a phenomenon that registers thousands of personal preferences in a nanosecond.

It can deliver information that can peg the market value of a million different products all at the same time. It can inform people in every corner of the earth what to produce, when to produce it, how much to produce, and how much to buy at any given time. It can even let you know where to go to search out job opportunities within your scope of interest. If none of that information is pertinent to you . . . you can simply ignore all of it!

All of that instant information is not mined, gathered, filtered, stored and made available by one individual or one big box superstore of technology. All that collaborative wisdom is freely made available and is the result of millions of individuals working in union with one another while seeking to be better off within the scope of their own interest.

The anomaly tagged as free market that operates within the phenomenon of free enterprise just simply exists in all of its sophistication wherever individuals exist who have been granted freedom of choice in areas of culture and economics. Those are the individuals who have a deep desire to end up better off. That phenomenon of free enterprise is a precious gift to the world!

Next Week: SYSTEMS MATTER Part 11: Profit and Loss

•  Profits
•  Losses
•  Wages

          (Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics) 

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SYSTEMS MATTER Part 9: Essentials of Free Enterprise

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

So, what’s the big deal about the free enterprise idea? Civilizations over the centuries seem to have bumbled along just fine utilizing economic systems directed by dictators, despots, and greedy socialists . . . haven’t they?

Please recall that the whole reason behind this discussion is the valid and penetrating question, why are some nations rich and other nations poor? We have concluded that the reason is not because of the difference in the people. I have observed in my lifetime of travels that the people of the United States are precious and wonderful, but they are not necessarily more clever or skilled than those in other venues of the world.

A supply of natural resources doesn’t necessarily guarantee that a nation will be wealthy either. Japan has almost no natural resources, yet it is relatively wealthy. Brazil is larger than the continental U.S. and is rumored to be blessed with more natural resources, but it is still considered a developing country and poorer by far than the U.S. India and North Korea have resources in abundance, but they are not wealthy.

We have certainly validated in our previous discussions that just because a country cranks up the presses and prints more money, it does not make that country wealthier. In fact, printing more money relative to the amount of goods in a country’s economic system simply sets that country on a course of bankruptcy through inflation.

Production of goods and services is the established reason for nations being wealthy. Income is created through production. Discourage or destroy production and you take away income. Take away income and you have a nation of poverty. Let industrious people be allowed to keep for themselves the fruit of their individual and corporate labors and they will realize prosperity. Allow a dictator or a corrupt government to steal the fruits of conscientious labor through excessive taxation or greedy manipulation and coercion, and you will experience not just resentment and rebellion but unemployment, want, and increased crime.

Cultural and economic decisions set into motion individual and national consequences. Cultural and economic systems are the means of transportation that carry out those predictable consequences. Cultural and economic systems make all the difference in the world.

If the individuals of a nation are allowed to experience a system of freedom of economic and cultural choices within a framework of legal fairness and rule of law, they will spontaneously use their God-given talents and abilities to jointly utilize the available resources to produce needed and desirable products. That production will then materialize into individual and corporate income. The end result will be a wealthy nation.

I have noticed an interesting economic irony in my international travels. In Great Britain, some parts of Europe, and especially in the United States, the country may have started out with an economic system built on freedom of economic and cultural choice. Production flourished, industrial revolutions took place, income was generated, and the country became wealthy.

But then the governments began tinkering with the formula of free enterprise. Myriads of special-interests groups decided to vie for pieces of the profits. Labor unions decided to build their empires of closed shops, quotas, regulations, dues, and manipulation. Politicians began to see that the exercise of increased taxes could deliver monies not only directly into their own endeavors, but also make it possible to garner votes necessary to seize additionally desired control.

This tinkering did not take into consideration that there is a direct and positive correlation between stifling the freedoms of economic and cultural choice and the net wealth of a nation. They somewhere forgot that the secret of a wealthy nation was an economic system that allowed individuals to create wealth. The more onerous the restrictions, the less would be the production. The more extortionate the taxation, the less would be the income and money for reinvestment.

In 1776, there seemed to be a straight line running from the 1215 signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede, England, directly to Thomas Jefferson and his friends in Philadelphia. Individuals would be allowed not only personal freedom, but economic freedom as well. By the 1930s and the Great Depression, that straight line seemed to be running directly from London and John Maynard Keynes to Franklin D. Roosevelt at the White House in Washington DC. From that time until the present the economic system has changed from one of growth and production to one of outrageous politics, unbalanced budgets, burdensome regulations, programs with gargantuan deficits, and a prevailing economic philosophy that truly believes it is possible to spend one’s way out of seventeen trillion dollars of federal sovereign debt and tax one’s way into prosperity.

All that having been said . . . let’s look at the bright side and discuss the five essential factors necessary for realizing a successful free enterprise system:

• The right to own property is the fundamental basis for free enterprise. Ownership includes the individual’s exclusive possession and also the right to transfer that ownership to someone else. Individuals must be free to agree with other individuals to voluntarily enter into contracts. There must be the possibility to personally succeed in the endeavors and also the possibility to fail. The property is not just limited to real estate or land, but also to any personal property or capital. Perhaps the most important resource that you own is your labor. You have the right to exchange your labor for income or other benefits. 

• Free enterprise is based on the freedom of cultural and economic choice. But, it is not anarchy or lawlessness. In order for free enterprise to work, there must be an established and recognized government. The fact that two individuals are entering into voluntary agreements presupposes that there is going to be some kind of establishment with the authority to enforce those agreements. There must be a fair and enforceable rule of law.

Next session we will discuss the absolute magic of the Free Enterprise System when we look at the last three essentials: Prices, Profits, and Losses.

• Prices 
• Profits
• Losses

Next Week: The Magic of the Free Enterprise System

            (Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson   

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

  

www.jameswjackson.com  

 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com