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66. Economic Education is lust
One of the Answers
Is the cure a simple one for Harding University to
effect? The remedy, according to many well–
intentioned people, is exposure to back-to-the-basics
economics, along with a listing of the myriad problems
of business, and rounded out with a good dose of
"what-great-people-the-business-people-real/y-are–
once-we-get-to-know-them."
It's not that simple.
First of all, the Belden Center staff knows that most
people don't appreciate having the cure forced down
their throats, because most people don't regard
themselves as economic illiterates. Most people do
have a grasp of simplified economics: One needs
money to launch a business; one won't attract capital
unless one has a product investors can believe in; one
must make a profit to stay in business; one has to be
able to generate production to meet the demand; and
one must earn a profit (including covering opportunity
costs) to remain in business.
It
is possible that, even at Harding University and
through the Belden Center, too good of a job can be
done in explaining the virtues of a free market system.
We have, in fact, a mixed economy (government at all
levels takes 40 percent of Gross Domestic Product).
If
most citizens think that they do have a completely
free market system today, they could likely blame the
wrenching problems of the economy on free, private
enterprise. Economic education programs glorifying
our systems as it is today, in the name of pure
unfettered capitalism, only serve to reinforce such a
myth.
Most people do not have a burning desire to
understand either the so-called
''dismal science"
of
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