Wisdom from Walton

H/T to the Dr. Laura Blog, this was the Quote of the Week a couple months ago:

There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.

- Sam Walton
American businessman and entrepreneur
Founder of WalMart

The free market is made up of every single person on the earth, including you. Any "failure" of the free market is largely and almost exclusively due to one fact: government constantly interferes with and manipulates the markets. When this happens, even to the slightest degree, markets are unable to function properly. It is like trying to have a successful marriage when both sets of in-laws are constantly harassing a young, newly wed couple - problems are sure to abound. (Instead of big brother, the nanny state, or Uncle Sam, the government is often the intrusive mother in-law — the mother of all mother-in-laws!)

And so when you restrict the freedom of the market place it ceases to be a free market, and this is precisely at the heart of our current economic woes. Sam Walton was correct in his observation — the customer is boss. We don't need government regulations, oversight, and other anti-capitalist intrusions, which attempt to tell people what to do and not to do regarding their business.

The markets work because every day millions of people make free choices on how they wish to use their resources, and businesses and entrepreneurs constantly try to create the best goods and services to meet the needs of those same people. This drives progress, innovation, invention, and prosperity for everyone — largely in proportion to how much they participate in the process. Every dollar we spend is a vote for or against how a business runs and operates, and across every person in the nation and the world we create an economy that works better than ANYTHING anyone or any group — no matter how supposedly intelligent — could ever wish to create.