Bono on Capitalism

Experience is a great teacher. It's also an eye opener.

I believe in freedom and individual initiative --- self reliance.

I also believe that those who are in need of help must be helped --- and I'm happy to help when and where I can.

Finally, I believe that those who need help are best helped by being taught to become independent and self reliant. And that a government knows best approach thwarts and actively discourages individualism and the self reliance experience based learning model for far too many of our citizens.

Actually, and somewhat surprisingly, I agree with what Bono has to say about all this in Notable & Quotable:

"Bono has learned much about music over more than three decades with U2. But alongside that has been a lifelong lesson in campaigning—the activist for poverty reduction in Africa spoke frankly on Friday about how his views about philanthropy had now stretched to include an appreciation for capitalism.

The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been "a humbling thing for me" to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who "got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches."

"Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge," he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. "We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce."

SUMMING UP

To repeat, experience is a great teacher.

Philanthropy depends on individual initiative, private risk taking and entrepreneurialism.

So does government depend on private sector wealth for the OPM it seeks to redistribute.

The more wealth that's created, the more there is for society to share.

It's all so simple.

To paraphrase what the old Smith Barney TV commercial said, we need more rich people who make money the old fashioned way --- by earning it.

If they earn it, they will share it. But first it has to be earned.

Government earns nothing. Just a cost center.

Thanks. Bob.