SYSTEMS MATTER Part 11: Profits and Losses

by Dr. James W. Jackson

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

Repeatedly we have asked why some countries are poor and other countries are rich. Our discussions keep bringing us to the conclusion that the countries that are wealthy, or becoming wealthy, are those that are capable of producing higher levels of income. Those higher levels of income are generated from successful production of goods and services based on the effective use of the country’s natural resources.

In order to make the best and most productive use of the natural resources in a country, the individuals within that country must experience cultural and economic freedom. They must be free to pursue their own interests and be allowed to make choices that they personally determine will result in their ending up better off. When those freedoms exist, the individuals are allowed to generate higher incomes by creating new wealth to be enjoyed by themselves and their country. To the degree that those freedoms are denied or restricted, the country will be less wealthy.

It is good to remember that profits are absolutely necessary to the existence of enterprises. Not very many people would run the risks of ever establishing a business without the possibility of making a profit. Without businesses, we wouldn’t have the goods and services we enjoy and to which we have become so accustomed. But let’s take a deeper look at the function of profit.

• Profit: The phenomenon of profit is the indicator of growth. It is the mechanism that sends the message that growth is being experienced in the economic system. Profits inform us of the positive value that has been added to the country’s economy, sometimes referred to as the gross domestic product (GDP).

A technology company in the Silicon Valley of California might take a measure of sand and transform it from the recognizable sand granules into a highly desirable and useful computer chip. They may sell the computer chip to another manufacturing company or to an individual. The expense required to transform the sand into a marketable product would be considered their cost. The money received from the purchaser of the computer chip would be their sales price. The difference between the chip manufacturer’s costs and the sales price would be the company’s profit. When the company registers its newly generated profit, it simultaneously records that the wealth of the nation has just increased by the same measure. That wealth represents brand new just- created riches that up until that time had neither existed nor been recorded.

Effectively built into the free enterprise economic model are inherent signals and guidelines that work for increased success and growth. No one specifically designed the model to offer such signals . . . it just functions that way. But those signals and responses all happen so quickly and so silently, even without any individuals or committees in control of the signals. As a result of the simple market forces, individuals are guided to use the nation’s natural resources in the best and most efficient way. That is all possible because the consumers, as well as the business folks, act with the same cultural and economic freedom of choice in the specific areas of  their self-interest. They also believe that their choices will make them better off in the end.

When the consumers buy goods and services, their collective purchases direct resources to businesses that are meeting consumer wants. Their actions also direct resources away from businesses that are not meeting consumer wants. If the consumers purchase enough of a certain product to create a profit for the business, then the business can receive and rely on the signal that it should continue to offer that product for sale.

Adam Smith saw all of those seemingly instant and automatic signals coming out of the existence of the free enterprise economic model, and referred to the anomaly as the invisible hand. That invisible hand utilized all the unintended consequences of all the individuals who were simply acting with cultural and economic freedom of choice while pursuing their own operations of self-interest.

Even high profits send an important signal and serve a necessary function. High profits attract other players into the industry. As new businesses come in, the competition increases. It is the competition of the new firms that forces prices and profits down, thus increasing the efficiency of the total economy. It is interesting that profits encourage the very competition that keeps profits in check.

The inherent signals coming from the components of prices, profits, losses, and wages, determine not only which industries continue to exist but also which products survive. Only profitable industries, firms, and products survive. That also makes for a more efficient economy.

• Losses: The concept of losses plays an equally important role in sending signals to the economic marketplace. Businesses must match their production choices with the consumer choices or face losses and eventual bankruptcy. In the system, profits seem to be the rewards and losses seem to be the pain. But in the long haul, even the pain of the losses serves to bring about rewards. Losses send the signal that something must change because the natural resources are not being used for the highest and most efficient means.

Just as high profits in a certain industry will send signals for new businesses to get involved in the same activity, so also do losses send a strong signal for others to pack up and get out. Those negative signals are strong and equally important.

When a business incurs costs that exceed profits, it is in trouble. It is time for it to change its approach and use its resources some other way. That is a hard lesson to learn. But failure in a business simply means that the business is not making other people better off. When that failure occurs, the resources that the business was using can now be used for other purposes. Other managers can now have a go at managing those resources. It is hoped that they will be successful in making people better off, and, as a result, make a profit from redirecting those resources.

 It is important that we ask why some countries are wealthy and others are not. It is likewise important to ask why some countries were wealthy and are presently becoming less wealthy. It is important to investigate at what level the individuals of a country are presently experiencing cultural and economic freedom as they access a country’s natural resources. It is still important to observe if the individuals are allowed to generate higher incomes by creating new wealth to be enjoyed by themselves and their countries.

Let’s keep observing and asking questions. Let’s keep discovering!

Next Week: 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.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

SYSTEMS MATTER Part 8: Self-Interest vs. Selfishness

by Dr. James W. Jackson

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

When Adam Smith introduced the verbiage of “self-interest” into his economic and cultural reporting he laid himself wide open to misunderstanding, misinterpretation, and criticism.

A person of a different economic ilk, wanting to end all arguments regarding the intent and integrity of Adam Smith, and dismiss him as a greedy scoundrel, would only need to portray him as the champion of selfishness. Such a person needed only to claim, “Smith is the epitome of the bourgeoisie capitalist interested in only grabbing, at any cost, the wealth of this world at the expense of the poor and downtrodden.” The verbal assassination would have pretty much been accomplished at that point.

Instead of indulging in the semantics game, let’s stop and examine just what Adam Smith was saying:

. . .the obvious and simple system of natural liberty establishes itself of its own accord. Every man, as long as he does not violate the laws of justice, is left perfectly free to pursue his own interest his own way, and to bring both his industry and capital into competition with those of any other man, or order of men. The sovereign is completely discharged from a duty in the attempting to perform, which he must always be exposed to innumerable delusions, and for the proper performance of which no human wisdom or knowledge could ever be sufficient; the duty of superintending the industry of private people, and in directing it towards the employments most suitable to the interest of the society. According to the system of natural liberty, the sovereign has only three duties to attend to, three duties of great importance, indeed, but plain and intelligible to common understandings: first, the duty of protecting the society from the violence and invasion of other independent societies; secondly, the duty of protecting, as far as possible, every member of the society from the injustice or oppression of every other member of it, or the duty of establishing an exact administration of justice; and thirdly, the duty of erecting and maintaining certain public works and certain public institutions, which it can never be for the interest of any individual, or small number of individuals, to erect and maintain, because the profit could never repay the expense to any individual or small number of individuals, though it may frequently do much more than repay it to a great society.(1)

Adam Smith presumes that every person wants to end up better off in life. If left to pursue voluntary transactions of business and barter with other free individuals, the only transactions that will be successfully completed are those transactions where both free trading partners end up better off. A system that promotes that freedom where everybody ends up better off not only encourages additional such transactions but greatly increases the total volume of successful business.

But the human desire to end up better off could be, but is not necessarily, selfish. To possess the desire to make good decisions and end up better off in life displays the admirable qualities of accountability. Good stewardship of life and of those things we possess reveals our willingness to accept and practice personal responsibility. Selfishness is the attitude and spirit where an individual insists on his or her own arbitrary demands on other people regardless of consideration or cost. It is the whole idea of me first . . . it’s all about me. That spirit of selfishness is counterproductive to good business because both parties do not end up better off.

That is why Adam Smith insisted that the government must not be greedy or selfish either. The greedy intentions of the government, or the individuals who control the government, are also counter-productive to the positive growth of an economy, because when they are greedy all parties involved do not end up better off.

Smith tried to build into the system checks and balances to control the selfishness and greed even of the government or Sovereign by saying that their reach and function should be limited to (1) protecting their citizens from outside danger or oppression, (2) the rule of law where the citizens are protected from other individuals within the country, and (3) the establishing and maintaining of certain institutions or services that could not be offered by a single person or a small group of individuals, e.g. courts, recording of public documents, road systems, etc.

The very government itself has the power and opportunity to induce its constituency, by promises of largesse, to believe that the government can exclusively make the citizens better off through receiving favors, grants, and subsidies from it. Those promises are based on a delusion that the government of the nation envisions, generates, and controls all the wealth of that nation, and has the right to distribute that wealth to whomever is willing to totally acquiesce to the government leaders making those promises. The government does not earn any of the money it promises to give away, but, rather, has to take the money away from individuals who have already earned it. Those promises of favors, grants, and subsidies are a form of buying-off the constituents.

When the government promises to take away from those constituents who have earned wealth in order to redistribute that wealth to those who did not earn the wealth, they are appealing to the selfishness of the recipients who would enjoy receiving largesse gained from the efforts of others rather than from their own efforts. A government or Sovereign may have the power to manipulate a model of redistribution through coercion, but, obviously, all the individuals in the deal do not end up better off. At that point the economic model moves into a model of contraction rather than an economic model of growth and production, and over the long haul it cannot remain sustainable.

As we will see later, the free market system depends on the possibility of voluntary and free political and economic choices within the framework of a fair and just rule of law. Throughout history there have been very, very few occasions where cultures and civilizations have experienced the phenomenon of the combination of political and economic freedom at the same time. Great Britain and the United States experienced that kind of exceptional freedom.

The resulting economic system did allow for the observing of what could happen if that political and economic freedom could come together and function successfully. There had never before been such a model created of economic growth, production, and expansion, and to think that the successful experiment had been realized in such a relatively short amount of time.

The exceptional results of the American experiment are largely due to the thinking and writing of several men of common ancestry divided by a large body of water called the Atlantic. They were able to compress, condense, and consolidate the dreams and the desires of the millions of people throughout the centuries who had longed for the opportunity to experience economic and political freedom.

In America, Thomas Jefferson was writing about a new nation that would be the first in history established on the principle that every person is entitled to pursue his or her own values. On the other side of the ocean, Adam Smith was writing about the possibilities of a free market where individuals could pursue their own objectives of voluntary transactions. Both believed that the role of the government should be that of an umpire and not a participant. Each believed that the pursuits of one’s own values and interests were not necessarily greedy or selfish, but necessary for everyone to end up better off.

Those men of creative vision believed that an entire group of people could move forward and achieve the goal of personal as well as national wealth. It was possible to pursue self-interest without being selfish or greedy, and the end result would be a unique model where everybody ended up better off.

 Next Week: Essentials of Free Market
            (Research Ideas from Dr. Jackson's 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