At last week’s Mont Pelerin Society meeting in Stockholm, Deirdre McCloskey argued that it was important for society to affirm entrepreneurship. How right she is.
The economic benefits of the new technologies and processes constantly created by people with new economic ideas is obvious. But the social benefits of such inventions also are enormous.
Consider James C. Marsters, who helped end the isolation of the deaf around the world. The Wall Street Journal reported on his death:
As an orthodontist, a licensed pilot and a sometime-professional magician, James C. Marsters mastered fields challenging for anyone, even more so for a profoundly deaf person such as himself.
His greatest feat was to conjure the text telephone, or TTY, which for the first time gave deaf people independent access to the telephone via teletype machines. It was the first in a string of technologies that help deaf people communicate.
Mr. Marsters, who died July 28 at 85 years old, defied the isolation many deaf people of his generation experienced. He willed himself into the mainstream long before there were technologies and programs to help deaf people do so.
People like Marsters exemplify how the market encourages people to do good while doing well. Markets are not perfect, nor are the entrepreneurs who drive them. But then, human beings are not perfect. However, human liberty — in the form of economic freedom in this context — is the best environment in which to foster a society that is both prosperous and good.
