The Economics of Public Choice

When an economy is largely free enterprise and government is small, then innovative entrepreneurship can arise anywhere and at any time. For example, a Thomas Edison or a Warren Buffett or a Sam Walton or a Bill Gates or a Michael Dell or a Steve Jobs can emerge from obscurity and create new goods and services that benefit our entire society. Remember that every large corporation started out as a pet idea of just one person. But when government is dominant, and free enterprise is repressed, then decisions are made centrally and politically, rather than at the grass roots. Under big government the few at the top make all the decisions. Once power is restricted only to the small, political elite inner circle, and denied to the many, then innovation is stifled and new ideas remain unborn. Allocation of resources by political processes will steer resources towards cronies, rather than innovators, entrepreneurs, and other productive individuals. It comes down to who you know instead of what you know.