Failure is a Treasure

 

 

 

Failure is a treasure not to be wasted.

Capitalism can be explained as ‘letting the natural consequences of your acts take their course’. 

The building blocks of Capitalism are entrepreneurs: people who develop an idea and risk their time, money and efforts to see it through.  Except for the very lucky ones, it takes several tries, to succeed.  Each try has the potential to fail.  Those who succeed, reap the benefits, growing our economy and creating employment for themselves and others in the process.  Those attempts that fail, carry with them a fundamental lesson, which entrepreneurs will use to learn and improve their processes and have a better chance at success the next time.

It is said that no one can consider her/himself and Entrepreneur until they went bankrupt a couple of times.  By failing, they learn essential lessons on market realities, perseverance, focus, negotiation and technical skills, market perception, needs and fluctuations, discipline, etc.  These fundamental lessons can’t be learned in any other way, as they bridge the gap between information (education, instruction, training, etc.) and reality, in a world of human actions and reactions.

A bailout robs Society of the benefits of this fundamental lesson on reality. 

Bailing out means getting in the middle (tinkering) between the actions of someone (Entrepreneur, Corporation, Society, etc.) and the natural consequences of their actions.  The opportunity to learn, grow, truly succeed, is sorely wasted.

A culture of shifting responsibility, entitlement, whining and living of welfare, replaces the concept of responsibility, accountability, self-respect and adulthood.

Bailout replaces a temporary setback, a stepping stone towards greatness, with dependency.  Growth stops, entrepreneurship is replaced with begging, conformity and stagnation.

Failure is a temporary setback, an indispensable lesson, not a curse.  The individual and collective economy is cyclical, like everything else in the natural world.  Attempts to ‘stabilize’ it just prolong the valleys, delaying the recovery and causing real harm.

At every cycle, if allowed to flow naturally, each part of the economy becomes stronger and wiser as a result of the lessons learned.  Room is made for new generations of creative entrepreneurs and some who got used to unrealistic perks, have an opportunity to ‘catch up’ with reality, learn and come back better and stronger.

Government intervention, as a big nanny, interrupts that process and spoils the benfits.  While apparently helping, they only do so temporarily, as it prevents Society form learning important lessons.  They can ‘contain the water’ for so long, and then we pay a price that is much higher than the original and natural consequence.  Eventually, both paths meet at the same point of reckoning with reality: one is just much longer and painful thanks to the ‘help’ from the Government.

Capitalism is basically a philosophy of responsibility, accountability and opportunity to grow.  Accountability in this context does not mean ‘finding whom to blame’, but the opportunity for all to see the consequences of one’s plans in the context of the existing market conditions, and fully learn from them.   Socialism, under the guise of ‘compassion’ does not understand this concept, removes the principle of responsibility (replacing it with blind obedience), regressing everyone to the stage of infants, and disrupts the natural cycles of try, error, learn, try again till success.

Socialism, the antithesis of Capitalism, has proven time and again not to work.  Socialism bails you out, Capitalism holds you responsible.  Capitalism incentives the individual to succeed because it allows the inner need to grow to function, and allows the individual to benefit from his/her own efforts.  Socialism teaches the individual to reap the benefits of somebody else’s work.

Those attempting greater government control, promoting bailouts, forcing the ‘equalization’ (wealth redistribution, etc.) still believe that Socialism could work, which at this stage in history is truly magical thinking, or irrational faith.  This is not consistent with their other core beliefs.  Inconsistency is a constant in the Socialist schema.