BrianGarst.com

President Obama recently addressed the graduating class at Arizona State University’s commencement ceremony.  In the speech, Obama displayed a shocking level of  ignorance regarding the most fundamental aspects of a free market economy.

In the face of these challenges, it may be tempting to fall back on the formulas for success that have dominated these recent years. Many of you have been taught to chase after the usual brass rings: being on this “who’s who” list or that top 100 list; how much money you make and how big your corner office is; whether you have a fancy enough title or a nice enough car.

You can take that road – and it may work for some of you. But at this difficult time, let me suggest that such an approach won’t get you where you want to go; that in fact, the elevation of appearance over substance, celebrity over character, short-term gain over lasting achievement is precisely what your generation needs to help end.

This is rich coming from a man who has, perhaps forever, cemented the American presidency as an office of appearance over substance.  His every action to date has involved public spectacles to hide contradictory actions, as exemplified by his denunciation of our unsustainable debt from Mexico after he spent 100 days piling it on in Washington.

With that said, there are tiny grains of truth in the President’s speech.  Short term gain should not overwhelm lasting achievement, and one’s life ambitions should certainly be more substantive than authoritative titles and flashy cars.  But Obama utterly dismisses the single best, albeit far from perfect, way we have to measure public usefulness: our pay.

The leaders we revere, the businesses that last – they are not the result of narrow pursuit of popularity or personal advancement, but of devotion to some bigger purpose – the preservation of the Union or the determination to lift a country out of depression; the creation of a quality product or a commitment to your customers, your workers, your shareholders and your community.

The trappings of success may be a by-product of this larger mission, but they can’t be the central thing. Just ask Bernie Madoff.

This is the common call of the collectivist, but it is completely false.  The greatest contributions to our collective good rarely, if ever, come from an actual desire to serve, or even an awareness of, “some bigger purpose.”  It is the beauty of a dynamic, free market economy that one need not try to serve “some bigger purpose” to provide real benefits for others.  When we earn a dollar, it means we have delivered a dollars worth of products or service to others. That which serves ourselves, serves us all. This is even truer in the modern welfare state, where merely providing for oneself means preventing the need for additional burdens on others.

America’s greatest inventions have not come from government bureaucrats serving some nebulous common good, but from entrepreneurs willing to take great risk for fame or fortune. It is those who demand that we all serve the collective good who condemn us all to poverty and servitude.  Just ask anyone who has lived under collectivist rule.

Barack Obama