When I decided to start my column, Biz Bites, I did it for one reason: to add value to the Santa Fe business community. My idea was to cover a wide range of topics that would be informative and entertaining to business owners and others who work in the wild and wacky world of profit-making.
Before I started doing that, however, I wanted to lay out my philosophy of business and markets, so I published the following in the debut issue of the Free Press on March 5, 2008.
The Power of the Market
By Rick Gee
Recently I met someone who asked me the proverbial get-acquainted question: “So, what do you do for a living?” When I answered that I help businesses explode their profits by maximizing their document technology, a decidedly disapproving look crept across her face.
“I hate business,” came her rebuke.
I was not surprised to hear this. Many people agree.
But business—the free market—offers the possibility of cooperation without coercion. As economist Milton Friedman once said, “The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.”
When many people think of “public service,” they think of politicians. But the true public servants in our society and community are business owners. They are entrepreneurs, risk-takers who serve their fellow man by providing value in the form of products, services and jobs.
But what about the “price gougers” and companies whose profits are “too high”? Profits are the financial manifestation of the value a business or entrepreneur brings to the people of the planet. When a business is successful (profitable), it can hire more people, offer new and improved products and better serve the universe.
Still, some consider business and the economy a zero-sum game: If one person or business earns a lot of money, surely it must come at the expense of another. But we live in a world of abundance. Business people and the customers they serve all contribute to and benefit from that abundance.
As Whole Foods CEO John Mackey once declared, “For us, our most important stakeholder is not our stockholders, it is our customers. We’re in business to serve the needs and desires of our core customer base.” This from a company that tallied $183 million in total net income in 2007.
So to my recent acquaintance and anyone else who “hates business,” I urge you to consider this: It is the power of the market and the efforts of business people that make it possible for you to get dressed in the morning, drive your car to work, and consume the food and beverages that give you the energy to pursue your dreams and goals in our abundant universe.
