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Michael Strong wrote, in his excellent book Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and
Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems:
"A short history of
twentieth-century economic and political thought might be summarized as:
"Market Failure! Markets don't work
as well as the classical economists thought and therefore we must control them
(1900-1960).
"Government Failure! Governments
don't work as well as democratic theorists thought, and therefore we can't
depend on them to do the right thing either (1960-2000)."
Markets are excellent for what they are for!
Free markets
create more wealth and distribute it more widely than any other economic model.
Under free markets we always witness a large middle class.
But the market doesn't solve all problems in society.
Nor
does government.
To reiterate: markets create more affluence and involve more
people in prosperity than any other system, and governments are the most
effective entity in protecting inalienable rights and maintaining laws that
allow markets to flourish.
But there are a number of things governments should
not do and markets will not naturally do, and these tend to be precisely the
major challenges our society faces (and seldom solves).
If we are to move beyond maintaining a quality standard of
living for most people and the protection of our rights and freedoms, and
effectively address society's main ills, people need to voluntarily take on the
world's problems and find ways to address them.
Charity, philanthropy, volunteer
service, service projects and social entrepreneurship (the creation of
companies or projects with the specific goal of systematically addressing
long-term societal problems) is vital.
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Social Leader Daily by Oliver DeMille
