Tim Nerenz:

The argument for free enterprise is won at “free”. And the thing that enterprise must be liberated from is, of course, government.

When people are free (from government) to produce, own, exchange, store, transport, invest, save, buy, sell, invent, work, and consume in any manner they see fit, the most possible prosperity is delivered to the widest possible number of people in the shortest possible time.  This is the lesson that economic history teaches to those who will observe and learn.

And it is not difficult to understand why it is so – 310 million distributed brains focused on rational self-interest have a higher aggregated IQ than do a few dozen civil-service central planners whose priorities are more time off and early pension. …

As much as it might like to, the socialists’ evil nemesis Walmart can’t raise prices on a whim – not because there is a government, but because there is a Target.  Meanwhile, the sugar cartel can charge three times world market price because of U.S. government protection. …

In fact, most of the material things that we find indispensable to modern living were unavailable to all but the last seven or less generations of humans.  Why? What happened to suddenly turn the fight for survival into the pursuit of happiness?

America happened, with its free enterprise system and its Constitutionally-limited government.  For the first time in history, people owned themselves and the fruits of their labors.  They kept what they produced instead of turning it over to a king, priest, dictator, warlord, tribal chief, colonial governor, general, emperor, commissar, or entire village.

People who can keep the surplus they produce, produce in surplus; those who can’t, don’t.  The word economists use to describe this phenomenon is “duh”.

And America would not have happened but for two other seminal events – the Protestant Reformation and the invention of the printing press.  Religious freedom and freedom of speech were the necessary precursors for the establishment of political and economic freedom.  More freedom is good, less freedom is bad and yes, it is really that simple. …

Free enterprise has raised the average manufacturing wage in China from 58 cents per hour in 2000 to nearly $6 per hour today.  Let’s connect the dots for the UW grads: government lets go of the rope, 43 million new businesses are formed, the economy is 70% liberated, and wages go up 10-fold in a decade.  Get it?

Meanwhile, our government is tying us up with more rope, business start-ups have slowed to a trickle, government takes a bigger share of GDP each year, and wages (measured in tangible value, like ounces of gold) have plummeted over the last decade.  The Chinese are not kicking our butts; we are sitting on their foot. …

Free enterprise doesn’t care who wins and by how much.  It lets each of us discover how high is up for us.  And when our enterprise is free from government, most of us discover that up is a lot higher than we could have ever possibly imagined.