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6. Enterprise -- It's Another
Word for America
Free enterprise is a way of meeting our needs and
wants, by providing them ourselves or by freely
entered-into transactions with others. The individual is
''free"to
be anything he wants if he is
''enterprising"
enough to do it. Perhaps we often put too much
emphasis on
''free"
and too little emphasis on
"enterprise."
It
is a package deal of individual liberty
and private property. They stand or fall together.
Free to earn your keep and to keep what you earn
is what it is all about. The most basic institution of free
enterprise is private property.
A
second ingredient of
free enterprise is free access to the market. The motor
of .free enterprise, indeed, of all enterprise, is individual
initiative. The great regulator of free enterprise is
competition.
At the same time, there are many things that free
enterprise is not.
It
is not the freedom to seek profit by
any and all means.
It
is not the right to profit at the
expense of the welfare of the community.
It
is not the
freedom of any man to exploit any other.
It
is not the
freedom to waste the natural resources of the country.
It
is not the right to monopolize, which impedes or
prevents the establishment of new business, creates
scarcity, and imperils the spirit of enterprise.
It
is .not the opposition to necessary and appropriate
government regulations, often for no other reason than
that they are governmental.
It
is not the appeal to
government for subsidy or protection whenever
adversity appears. These distortions have never
belonged in a properly functioning system of free
enterprise. They can pull democratic government down
on top of them.
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