Mind Your Own Business
Do you mind – your own mind – and your own busyness? What about others?
Is your mind your own? What about your busyness – whether you own it or not?
To mind is to pay attention to and care for.
A mind is a terrible thing to waste – with occupation and busyness that does not benefit us or others.
An economy is the allocation of scarce resources.
Focusing on how many pieces of a pie people get is less productive than making the pie big enough for all.
What tends to make an economy “grow” is:
- 1. private ownership
2. future-orientation
3. capital formation through thrift
4. technological innovation
5. a system of profits and losses
6. low taxation
7. free trade at every level
8. the enforcement of contracts
9. honest money
10. the reduction of envy.
This list can be boiled down into three phrases:
2. Let’s make a deal.
3. Mind your own business.
The American middle class has seen its progress blunted ever since 1973. There are reasons for this.
- 1. present-orientation
2. capital consumption through reduced thrift
3. government-capped profits and government-subsidized losses
4. rising taxation (Social Security)
5. dishonest money (no gold exchange standard after 1971).
What has saved the middle class from ruination is:
- 1. private ownership
2. technological innovation
3. free trade
4. the enforcement of contracts
5. the reduction of envy
Entrepreneurship is still alive and well in the USA. It’s very easy to start a company. The United States remains the richest “free trade” zone on earth. Generally, “live and let live” overcomes the politics of envy. “Mind your own business” is still honored – even though “Homeland Security” relentlessly undermines it.
Today there is an ideological war between those who want to reduce the extent of the second list of five and those who want to increase this list and then reduce the government’s restrictions on the first five.
Who do YOU want to mind YOUR busyness?
Government is a disease pretending to be its own cure. ~ Bob LeFevre
© 2011 – 2012, Oren Pardes. All rights reserved.
