The phrase, “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (faster, higher, stronger), is the Olympic motto. It is meant to inspire competitors to achieve greater performances than their peers and predecessors … to “own the record.â€
Olympic athletes invest, literally, thousands of hours of their lives chasing their dream for a quadrennial chance at a medal and, perhaps, a record. Iron self-discipline drives these people to endure grueling early morning workouts. These are followed by many hours of skills rehearsal and practice followed by even more hours of conditioning.
These dedicated individuals give up family time, vacations, social events, and celebrations in the pursuit of their dreams for Olympic achievement. The seemingly unending hours of training are brutal and physically draining. There are days, even weeks, when an athlete questions whether the fatigue, the physical pain of pulls and strains, or the other sacrifices are worth it.
Additionally, there are also the ever-present doubts of some trivial injury or unexpected equipment failure at exactly the wrong time ruining years of effort and preparation. There are the exhausting trips across multiple time zones to participate in world championships between Olympics to “hone the competitive edge.†Of course, there is also financial sacrifice.
Many Olympic sports require expensive equipment and facilities. Countless times, the athletes must spend their own money. However, frequently, this is not enough. Consequently, the competitors must search for sponsors to invest money for facilities, coaches, equipment and pay for those competition trips abroad.
In many ways, an Olympic athlete chasing his or dream of a gold medal is similar to a post-graduate student pursuing an advanced degree in a prestigious university. Both are “chasing†a difficult-to-achieve goal that is often expensive in multiple aspects.
In both cases, the chase is not only physically exhausting, but also emotionally straining. There are hours upon hours of effort and self-discipline required in both cases. Lifestyles and social requirements must be tortuously warped to fit the demands of achieving the desired goal.
Yet another apt comparison is that of a small entrepreneur. These people also invest thousands of hours of their lives chasing their dream. These risk-takers dream of the “gold medal†of possessing their own successful business … being their own boss and answering only to their customers.
Like the Olympic athlete, these small business people have days, even weeks, when they question whether the sacrifices are worth it. However, also like the Olympic athlete when they have achieved success in their “gold medal†quest, they are rightfully proud.
Now, imagine, when the Olympic official hangs the medal around the neck of the victorious athlete, he or she says, “You didn’t win this.†Further, picture the president of the university putting the “PhD hood†around the neck of the newly minted “doctor,” saying, “You didn’t earn this.†Compare these imaginary situations to the president of the United States telling small business owners across the country on national television, “You didn’t build this.â€
In the Wide World of Sports, academia, business, or any other field of human achievement in the divinely endowed pursuit of happiness, does individual excellence exist, or only group accomplishment? Does our president or anyone in his party really think that no individual singularly deserves the thrill of victory or the agony of defeat due to his or her own efforts?
Is this really an American attitude? Did such a perspective inspire the development of the cotton gin, the revolver, the automobile assembly line, the electric light bulb, flight of the world’s first successful airplane, the cure for polio, or any of thousands of other achievements credited to individuals?
Tj says
I can assure you John, that every small business person who is succesful in his business, did it in spite of the government- government at all levels.
This is not necessarily so with public-private partnerships. These are normal here in OR.
That is why so many voters here have drunk the kool-aid.
Anne Garcia Garland says
So I went on the Internet and listened to the context as well as the snippit being whipped around the political barroom. The President said that other people built the roads businesses ship product over and government research created the Internet which has been made available to businesses and individuals and “if you built a successful business, you didn’t build that.” As a seriously adept user and student of English, I understand that the “that” references the infrastructure and type of government which promote and permit successful entrepreneurism. If one listens to the speech, this is pretty clear.
Think of it this way, Mr. Ragan. We pay your way to go to the state legislature with the expectation that you will help create sensible laws which both aid and protect ALL Tennesseans. You are part of the team making it possible for us to succeed. Sometimes we disagree on the way to go about that but I believe we have the same goal- the general welfare of all Tennesseans. You are part of the success of Tennessee entrepreneurs. And I think we East Tennesseans are part of your successful run for office.
Tj says
Barack Obama recently proved once again that he is indeed a Proud Marxist (as Yuri Maltsev, former advisor to Mikhail Gorbachev, calls him) when he argued that successful American entrepreneurs “didn’t build” their businesses on their own. Government bureaucrats were mostly responsible for their success, the Marxist in the White House asserted, citing government-run schools, roads, etc. Like all Marxists, Barack Obama is belligerently ignorant of economics and is in denial of much of economic reality.
No successful business person believes that he built his business completely on his own, without help from anyone. Obama’s claim is a straw-man argument. Every business person collaborates day in and day out with suppliers, customers, employees, managers, accountants, marketers, bankers, investors, and many others. As Adam Smith wrote in his famous 1776 treatise, An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1937 Random House edition, p.422):
In civilized society [man] stands at all times in need of the cooperation and assistance of great multitudes, while his whole life is scarce sufficient to gain the friendship of a few persons . . . . Man has almost constant occasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from their benevolence only. He will be more likely to prevail if he can interest their self-love in his favour, and show them that it is for their own advantage to do for him what he requires of them. Whoever offers to another a bargain of any kind, proposes to do this. Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest . . . . Nobody but a beggar chooses to depend chiefly upon the benevolence of his fellow citizens.
As for the role of government, history proves that it has always been the mortal enemy of free voluntary exchange and the generation of prosperity through the free market. As Ludwig von Mises wrote in his 1956 book, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality, “A nation is the more prosperous today the less it has tried to put obstacles in the way of the spirit of free enterprise and private initiative. The people of the United States are more prosperous than the inhabitants of all other countries [as of 1956] because their government embarked later than the governments in other parts of the world upon the policy of obstructing business.”
Government spending at all levels accounts for some 40 percent of GDP, signifying that the American economy is at least 40 percent socialist. The socialist “public” school system is a disaster in every city with only a relatively few affluent suburban enclaves of success. As such, the American workforce has been dumbed down, year in and year out, to the economic detriment of everyone. The socialist “public” roads are responsible for more than 50,000 highway deaths each year, which is hardly a good record. The welfare state has destroyed the work incentive of millions and caused the break-up of untold numbers of families. (The basic mechanism here is welfare and child support payments that are generous enough to create millions of deadbeat dads who abandon their children without the social stigma of having left them in dire poverty).
Social Security reduces incentives to save for one’s own retirement. Lowered savings rates lead to less capital investment and, consequently, slower economic growth. All other government spending programs enrich the parasitic political class while impoverishing the producer class. The long history of aggressive militarism by the U.S. government has always ratcheted up governmental powers at the expense of liberty and prosperity while enriching the military/industrial/congressional complex. The system of unlimited democracy that Americans now slave under can be defined as follows: Moochers and parasites hiring/electing professional looters to steal from producers.
The Fed has always generated boom-and-bust cycles in the economy, and then blamed the problems it created on the free enterprise system. After the Greenspan Fed created The Great Recession the current Fed “godfather,” Ben Bernanke, went on television to arrogantly sneer at the notion that markets and the free enterprise system should or could be the way out of the depression, while arguing for the granting of vast new regulatory powers for the Fed.
Every business in America is now strangled by tens of thousands of pages of regulations in The Federal Register, not to mention reams of state and local government regulations. The pettiest, most selfish, and most ignorant local political hack has the ability to use government regulations to shut down billion dollar construction projects on a whim. A recent example of this is how a single member of the West Palm Beach, Florida city council caused a stoppage of the building of a major outlet shopping center in that city by demanding that the construction company that is building the shopping center hire more “local firms.” It is a good bet that the city councilwoman in question has a relative who is a construction contractor. Such acts are nothing more than legalized extortion.
The more a business person must deal with regulations and regulators, the less time he has to devise ways to improve his products, cut his costs and prices, and create new products. Government regulation crowds out entrepreneurship, wealth creation, and job creation while imposing immeasurable costs (in time and money) on private businesses.
There are a few exceptions, but for most of the past 120 years government regulation of business has been a tool used by large corporations to stifle competition from their smaller competitors and to create barriers to competition from potential competitors. The very first federal regulatory agency, the Interstate Commerce Commission, founded in 1887, was used first by the railroad industry to cartelize the industry as a government-controlled price-fixing cartel. It then did the same thing for the trucking industry. The Civil Aeronautics Board was similarly “captured” by the airline industry, which enjoyed a government-enforced cartel price-fixing monopoly for half a century before it was deregulated in the late 1970s. The entire regime of “public utility regulation” has been one big government-run cartel or monopoly scheme since the late nineteenth century. This all goes under the rubric of the “capture theory of regulation” in the discipline of economics. (See Butler Shaffer, Restraint of Trade; and Gabriel Kolko, The Triumph of Conservatism).
Government also deals a death blow to the institution of capitalism with its massive bailouts of failing businesses as an additional form of corporate welfare. Capitalism is a system whereby profits and losses are private. Serving customers well leads to profits; failing to do so leads to losses or bankruptcy. Socializing the losses while keeping profits private encourages reckless risk taking and sloppy business management and causes “private” businesses to operate more like government bureaucracies.
In short, Barack Obama’s ignorant “you didn’t build it” remark did two things: First, it displayed remarkable economic ignorance; and second, it asserted exactly the opposite of the truth with regard to the role of government in the economy. In today’s world American businesses that are successful in the marketplace have become so despite government intervention, not because of it.
August 13, 2012
Thomas J. DiLorenzo [send him mail] is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland and the author of The Real Lincoln; Lincoln Unmasked: What You’re Not Supposed To Know about Dishonest Abe and How Capitalism Saved America. His latest book is Hamilton’s Curse: How Jefferson’s Archenemy Betrayed the American Revolution – And What It Means for America Today. His next book is entitled Organized Crime: The Unvarnished Truth About Government.
conservativelawyer says
while I agree that President Obama’s statement has been dramatically taken out of context, TJ’s response is well written and accurate, and I agree with the substance of his statement.
CK says
Obama’s attitude is “it’s not theirs” ,they didn’t do that without his help .He’s the greediest and most arrogant politician I have ever seen. Power has made him totally corrupt.,although he was pretty far along that path before being elected . Achievement MUST be punished in Obama’s alleged mind,.he’s a very foolish person IMHO. Thanks for the article ,it shows that someone out there still has character,unfortunately it’s not the leader at the top.
CK says
Listen to it for yourself,Obama thinks WE are HIS property. At the very least he believes OUR property should be controlled by him. To my thinking,that’s a combination of narcissism and pure arrogance. It’s in his heart to TAKE what we work for ,one way or the other .Simply put I don’t like bullies and Obama is the worst kind ,you can’t tell him to stop and pick on someone his own size.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/see-obamas-6-most-outrageous-statements-that-hannity-claims-show-the-real-obama-his-frightening-vision-for-our-country/
Obama said “They know they didn’t — look, if you’ve been successful, you didn’t get there on your own. You didn’t get there on your own. I’m always struck by people who think, well, it must be because I was just so smart. There are a lot of smart people out there. It must be because I worked harder than everybody else. Let me tell you something — there are a whole bunch of hardworking people out there.†–
Obama’s now-infamous “you didn’t build that quip†from July 2012.