I have posted from time to time of inventions or ideas that I find interesting, new innovations, technologies, and more.  I often make the comment that it is entrepreneur-ism at work, or that I hope they make a bunch of money, etc.  Many may consider me a “greedy capitalist” at times for my hope of f0r-profit enterprising versus strictly altruistic giving of one’s talents.  My reasons, once pondered and understood, are often much more ‘giving’ than many may give credit to.

The free market plays important roles ethically and morally as well as economically and for advancement or progression.  It can be a gauge of one’s effectiveness, of one’s desirability.  As a dipstick, profit can be most valuable, telling you what society wants or doesn’t want, what a market needs or doesn’t need, and even simply your own inability or ability as an entrepreneur.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, simply an indicator, even to let you know you still have something to learn.  These indicators are not only valid in seeing viable financial success but actual desired assistance.  The marketplace need is a cry for help, a wanting for something better.  It may not always be so dramatic such as finally gaining back the two feet of floor space by going for a flat panel TV over your ancient tube set, but the cry still exists.  Oftentimes people decide there must be a trade between satisfying the cry for help and making money when, in reality, they work best when together.  Many treat the desire to make money as a desire to exploit, abuse, and hurt those around them when they are polar opposites.  If I am not satisfying the need, no one will be willing to pay money for it in the free market.  If people are paying for it freely, they must want it and it satisfies the cry.  One can align areas of passion and satisfaction with financial success.

This leads us to the next powerful point.  When someone is financially successful in a venture, it becomes a self-perpetuating entity of progression.  The new found success begins to fund the future of the industry, idea, and society.  You are able to focus energy at improvements and perfection as they will only further increase your wealth which then can be used to further still.   This is the miracle of entrepreneurship.

As for the selfless, it too can benefit from this great concept on both levels.  If one generates an idea with no more desire than to help someone, they tend to fall short due to several blind spots.  The charitable person often looks at capitalism and profit with scorn, simply due to hasty, confused judgment, often the result of an indoctrination throughout one’s personal history.   The charitable person hence lacks the two benefits of a free market and entrepreneurship, a set of effective and efficient indicators and the means and resources to continue working.  Without the indicators, you get causes like that posed in a recent comedy, to “promote vegetarianism in third world countries cuz it’s really important…”  People often spend a substantial amount of resources helping others through ineffective and inefficient methods.  Without indicators, it is difficult to know otherwise.  Now without resources, the charitable person finds themselves focusing attention and fighting for additional resources more than actually helping, researching, or doing what really must be done.  It becomes a fund-raising effort more difficult than any entrepreneurial venture.  The free market not only provides indicators but when the indicators say “YES”, it also provides the means and resources.

This brings us to yet another question, How do you make money at something meant to help those with nothing, without simply exploiting them?  Well exploitation at this level is difficult without forcing someone to do something, which goes against the freedom of the market anyway.  So how does one keep the mission to help while also creating a powerful venture.  This is where human ingenuity and creativity play their biggest role, in discovering the “landscape” of the market.  Miracles have been witnessed with the use of micro-credit by companies like Kiva, profitable miracles even.  Now, instead of simply giving money, micro-credit is giving opportunity with responsibility, give a man a fish vs. teach a man to fish.  Companies like Tata Motors creating new cars for only a few thousand dollars, opening up means of transportation closed to most, is another example of simple ingenuity that creates perpetual “selfless-ness”.   Any gains can be put back into further developing technologies, providing jobs, and providing an increase and progression to ALL involved.  All of this, by no means, should be interpreted as though I’m against non-profit ventures or organizations.  On the contrary, I belong to several.  Simply, it is the idea that there may be more effective alternatives or combinations that allow for more attributes of human achievement.

Entrepreneurship and the free market is much more than seeking profit.  It has been falsely interpreted as seeking control over others, gain at the expense of others, but in the long term, that isn’t even possible IF people are truly free (as in “free” market).  No one will buy your product a second time if they find it was a sham.  People with this strategy come and go but true progression sticks around.   Entrepreneurship is about human ingenuity, about progression in one of its highest forms, that is when taken as a personal challenge and not with the intent to defame or destroy.  I choose to define it in its purest sense as lacking such glaring deficiencies and simply being individuals seeking the greatest from themselves and from one another.

Entrepreneurship: free thinking individuals seeking the greatest in human ingenuity and progression from themselves and each other.

Let me know what you think of my little sharing time!