The Rugged Entrepreneur
In 1928, Soon-to-be President Herbert Hoover spoke of America’s choice at the close of World War I:
History has proven socialism a miserable failure - (with the recent talk of socialized medicine, uncontrolled government spending and ever increasing hoops for businesses to jump through, you’d think most Americans failed their history classes!). In the fog of the Great Depression, however, FDR and other opponents effectively used Hoover’s words as proof too much individual freedom (which they read as ’selfishness’) and too little government is bad; the Great Depression hit and devoured American rugged individualism.
Today, many economists place the blame not on the free market but on too much government regulation. The Great Depression didn’t have to be so ‘Great.’
Hoover speaks again today - Giving to us the same choice as he did some eighty years ago. We can choose the ‘rugged individualism’ which “…is founded upon the conception that only through ordered liberty, freedom and equal opportunity to the individual will his initiative and enterprise spur on the march of progress. “
Or do we cling to socialism on which he says, “The acceptance of these ideas meant the destruction of self-government through centralization of government; it meant the undermining of initiative and enterprise upon which our people have grown to unparalleled greatness.”
When left to their devices without governmental coercion, people create and initiative new enterprise. The Internet has released a spring of creativity unimaginable in Hoover’s day. In the same optimistic spirit as Hoover we thus begin The Rugged Entrepreneur. This blog will examine the unbounded opportunity afforded by the will of the individual in a free society through the Internet.
