Earlier this year I wrote several blogs on the meaning of pro commerce. It is time, again, to cover the subject because I am constantly dismayed by the world around me that doesn't understand what I'm talking about and has no grasp of the world of commerce. (Here is an earlier blog as well as the previous two blogs in the same month.)
Commerce became a growing and vital force with the industrial revolution. Commerce, uniquely in history, has promoted an unending expansion of technology. Technology in turn has promoted the entire world of sanitation, medicine, surgery, food abundance and dental health. (A lot of pain is gone.)
To say that one is pro commerce, is to really accept the world of the industrial revolution that has brought us our modern world. It is to celebrate modernity... the opposite of Ludditism.
When I think about the world that has been brought to us by commerce, the world I live in, I am celebrating the joy and happiness of myself, my friends and my family.
Those who condemn commerce, who resist it at every turn, number in the billions.
They find that their unhappiness can be projected on the world around them. They see greed as triumphant; they see success as an evil byproduct of the exploitation of other humans and Nature
None of these things are true.
* Adam Smith explained how personal greed creates the modern commercial world. Many people get up in the morning to bake our bread, not because they love strangers, but because commerce brings them personal products and bountiful other rewards.
Smith understood this before the industrial world exploded with its generous life-giving abundance. Read Adam Smith. Understand how the motivation of individuals when combined in the large institutions of commerce results in healthy and positive abundance.
* Think for a moment about how people voluntarily work for salaries and for self-generated income and you can see that ‘exploitation’ is not a byproduct of commerce. Where exploitation exists it comes from the harsh power of government and the suppression of commerce. Only in pro commerce countries can people take any job and learn any skill they are competent to undertake.
The widespread anti-commercial sentiment includes hostility toward big companies. The hostility is the result of poor reasoning. Many, if not most, of the global 2000 companies have gained their stature because they reduced the costs of goods and services for everyone around the world. They introduced significant efficiencies in manufacturing, distribution and marketing. Think IKEA, Caterpillar and Starbucks. They introduced meritocracy around the planet. That alone has created so many wonderful human byproducts.
That is why I call on everyone to clear the blinders from their eyes and join in celebrating the bounty and healthfulness of commerce.
* Lastly, those who believe environmental degradation is due to business are ignoring the reality that the USSR and communist China were the worst offenders of environmental degradation. The United States and Japan are the heroes of environmental improvements in every domain from clear air to clean water.
We need to celebrate the world of commerce. The industrial revolution, its handmaiden, has been a true godsend.