LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
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home and stay at home. In Cornwall, they’d have to imbibe Cornish cabernet sauvignon. Ugh. In France, instead of wrapping leftovers in tinfoil, they’d have to stuff the leftovers through the necks of wine bottles, which is particularly hard with an extra pork chop. It took the ideas of Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations to convince people that international trade was mutually beneficial to the nations involved and not some rip-off to scam their national treasuries out of gold. Adam Smith’s innovative thinking opened a two-and-a-half century era of free trade. This, even more so than the Industrial Revolution, enriched the world. We live in a time when wealth is, more than ever, almost completely a product of ideas.
And that brings up a third point of caution about intellectual innovation. Even the most brilliant ideas don’t always last... Due to dumbbells in high places in China, the U.S., the EU, and elsewhere, our wealth- creating period of free trade may be coming to an end. Even so, we live in a time when wealth is, more than ever, almost completely a product of ideas. Consider the wealthiest men of the 19th and early 20th centuries: Cornelius Vanderbilt (railroads), John Jacob Astor (fur trade), Henry Ford (automobiles), John D. Rockefeller (oil refining), and Andrew Carnegie (steel, with a strong sideline in philanthropy). This was physical stuff. Take the train to Beaver Creek, Colorado, fill up the Model T with gasoline, run over a beaver, and wear the beaver hat to the opening ceremony of Carnegie Mellon University. Now consider some of the wealthiest men right now: Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Ellison. With your Microsoft PC and Oracle databases, you don’t have get out of your chair to pester friends and acquaintances, purchase things you don’t know what to do with, and buy shares of stock to keep until you die. It’s all right not to get out of your chair. It gives you time to think. The most important innovations are ideas. Don’t just do something, sit there!
By permission Michael Ramirez and Creators Syndicate, Inc.
10 | September 2017
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