There is no group of individuals in America more denounced, despised, and misrepresented than businessmen. In movies, books, and articles they are routinely portrayed as greedy swindlers willing to do anything to make money. Yet, these are the individuals who produce the values that we need and desire.
We should celebrate these individuals, for they make our lives immensely better.
Without businessmen, we wouldn’t have the abundance of food that is available to us. We wouldn’t have reliable and safe automobiles. We wouldn’t have electricity to power our homes or HVAC systems to heat and cool them. We wouldn’t have smart phones, computers, or flat screen televisions. We wouldn’t have Amazon, Neflix, or Google.
Without businessmen, we would have to produce every necessity of life for ourselves. We would have to grow our own food, sew our own clothes, and build our own shelter. We would have to cure our own illnesses and nurse our own injuries.
Without businessmen, our lives would consist of a constant struggle to survive. Businessmen have relieved us of that burden. They have made survival relatively easy, and allowed us to focus on flourishing. And for that, they deserve our admiration and our thanks. We should celebrate businessmen.
But businessmen cannot create the values that we want and need when politicians and bureaucrats erect arbitrary obstacles and barriers. Businessmen cannot create values when their judgment and actions are regulated and controlled by others.
If we want to continue to enjoy the immense material benefits made possible by businessmen, we must celebrate their achievements. But more fundamentally, we must free them from the arbitrary dictates of government officials.