It has been an axiomatic principle that the U.S. is strong precisely because we don’t all think the same way.
New ideas come from new ways of thinking. We as individuals generally see the past, the present, and the future, very differently, and it’s this very division that powers so much advance, progress, growth, and diversity of vision, strategy and even tactics which propel the ship of state forth.
Sail on ship of State, sail on…
Yet, what is important, is to recall, that the prosperity of the American people is borne out of freedom of choice, out of variable and diverse visions, and out of Americans’ peculiar option to disagree about everything, and getting to express their discordant viewpoints, putting their money in their mouths when “visiting” the vast American Marketplace, and expressing their views meaningfully.
And it is Economic progress that is the happy end result of disagreements expressed, and consumer sections being satisfied through the many new & diverse offerings in the Open Marketplace of ideas, goods, and services.
It is not an accident that we generally describe those who express disagreements, via the profit motive, as entrepreneurs.
Entrepreneur is someone who makes money by starting their own business, especially when this involves seeing a new opportunity and taking risks, or a person who sets up a business or businesses, taking on financial risks in the hope of profit.
That is what an Entrepreneur is and thus, bringing the genius of disagreement to today’s conversation in Washington DC, and Wall Street — we see the cumbersome reality about the TikTok debate, where it seems to me that protectionism is winning.
But I seem to recall verbatim the answers of the Founding Fathers, and the realistic Economists, and Myself — and I can solidly declare that is not the answer.
Alternatively, business choices remind us that the good and great decisions are rarely obvious at the present time. The precious truth is that in a better world, the political class would appreciate how wrongheaded are all its actions Vs TikTok, because implicit in their attacks and their legislative role in a TikTok ban, is that TikTok’s alleged CCP-generated popularity, will be used to spy on Americans, with an eye on bringing the CCP’s authoritarian influence, ways, & means, creeping slowly, bit-by-bit into the United States.
Plainly speaking: data on Americans, is the most valuable in the world, and it’s already sold around the world for exactly that reason. Which is a reminder that data on the American people already is transacted since these markets exist, and will continue to exist in abundance; with or without TikTok. And American consumer choice data will be sold around the world, to companies, to producers, to politicians, in China, as well as elsewhere, with or without TikTok.
At the same time, the desire among the world’s entrepreneurs, producers, politicians and corporates, who wish to know about us Americans, is something to celebrate, not legislate against.
They want to know about us, because we’re the most productive people on earth.
And that is OK, because the better they understand us, the better their products become, and their ability to meet and lead our needs is increasingly accurate.
What’s there to complain about that ?
Certainly methinks that U.S. politicians should not seek a ban Vs TikTok, but rather they should allow commerce in the U.S. to freely run its course. And they should do so confidently, based on the long standing empirical evidence that stems from what happens every day, millions of Markets inside these United States.
Because what we routinely see, in our dynamic markets, is that the giants always stumble, and they do so because, tomorrow is not just a New Day, but it might as well be a New Month, a New Year, a New Decade, a New Century, or even a New Millennium as it just transpired recently…
And also because, particularly in business, the past & the present are really lousy predictors of the future, and we should be bereft of their influence for long.
Because in business whenever we are going into a new project, we rarely know, if it will be a hit, a milk cow, a wet squib, or a money sucking black hole. And if you are in business — you certainly know that you cannot reiterate the same product for ever.
Mainly because people crave newness, and your past product success is always diminished due to entropy, complacency, lack of Innovation, Pioneer’s Dilemma, etc. Think Kodak, Polaroid, ITT, AT&T, and all blue blood stocks of corporations that have fallen off the Top 100 Standard & Poor stock market index, overtime, etc.
Or it could simply be a quiet product dud, like the paperclip AI of Microsoft, or Vista windows, or Windows 95, etc, that all died ignoble deaths.
Remember those?
The main thing is that disagreements about what will meet and lead the needs of our consumers, is what puts the past and present, out to pasture, not protectionism.
Protectionism is about limiting and disfiguring the choices of people, not allowing an endless debate within the marketplace to sort out what the future will look like.
Yet, since at present, U.S. Presidents, politicians, business leaders and the courts are in the process of using force to vanquish a non U.S. owned competitor in TikTok, that had the temerity to discover the needs of American consumers in ways the competition hadn’t — we must scream for them to stop that nonsense, because not only naked protectionism is dangerous, but to go even further and use force to suffocate the market signals is sadly idiotic.
Yours,
Dr Churchill
PS:
Better to use market freedom to meet our needs…
