The Foundations of the American Dream

In a free market economy like the United States, the customer is the king or queen, and they rule supreme. Business and entrepreneurship are devoted to serving customers, to improving the lives and work of ordinary people. This is what makes the American dream possible.


 

The Spark plug of American Prosperity

The entrepreneur is the spark plug in the engine of the free market and the business system. It is the entrepreneur who recognizes and anticipates a customer need, then assembles the resources necessary to satisfy that need at a price that yields a profit. It is this ability that creates all wealth and opportunity.


 

Entrepreneurship is Risky

Entrepreneurs are those who take risks to produce goods and services for customers, gambling that the customers will be there to pay prices high enough to yield profits. These profits are essential for the entrepreneur to repeat the process of developing and producing even more products and services in the future.


 

The Companies of Tomorrow

Some of the biggest and most profitable companies in America today, such as Microsoft, Dell, Oracle, and Apple, did not exist twenty-five years ago. Each year, new companies emerge and older companies disappear. The process of "creative destruction" in the marketplace never ends. Customers' wants and needs are changing continually, like the weather, from one day to the next, they never remain very long.


 

The Dynamics of the Free Market

The free market is the vast national and international meeting place where buyers and sellers come together to negotiate and decide what to sell, what to buy, at what prices, and under what terms. The "bright side" of the free market is when businesses strive to please customers in the short term while simultaneously thinking about planning for the long term. The best businesses are those dedicated to building and maintaining customer loyalty so that once they sell something to a customer, the customer is so happy and satisfied that he or she buys again.


 

Competition Brings Out the Best

To succeed in a competitive market, many of the very best qualities of the individual are demanded. At a minimum, a successful entrepreneur requires courage, both to begin in the first place and persist against endless problems and disappointments. An entrepreneur must be optimistic, energetic, visionary, determined, intelligent, flexible, and able to bounce back repeatedly from disappointment and temporary failure. An entrepreneur, above all, requires an instinct for identifying what products or services he or she can produce and offer that extremely demanding customers will buy and pay for.


 

Action Exercise

What the U.S. needs today is a new birth of liberty expressed in a national commitment to promote entrepreneurial activity by removing the hindrances that hold it back. What is your entrepreneurial dream? What steps can you take to make your dream a reality?

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