Government's role in national prosperity

By: Lorenzo Dee Belveal

At the outset let it be declared that it is not the obligation of government to create jobs. Especially in agrarian and industrialized societies, job creation is uniquely the responsibility of "capital"; and "capital" is what our modern argot labels "management" or "ownership".  If anything approaching reasonable employment is to exist, "capital" must provide it.

But having said this, we need to also recognize that government does, indeed, bear a heavy responsibility that is directly tangential to the matter of job creation. Let's take a hard look at this seeming anomaly. 

It is the plain, demonstrable and unavoidable obligation of government to maintain an economic climate in which "capital" (read: management and/or ownership) can not merely survive, but prosper. 

The abject failure of state socialism is properly deemed to have been largely
precipitated by socialism's predilection to bankroll its social experiments with the proceeds of its cannibalizing of the (private) businesses and industries within its scope. When this source of financing was depleted, socialism (communism) was doomed, and its principal laboratory experiment, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, collapsed like the economic house of cards that it was.  

The "climate" conducive to business success - and optimal job creation - requires an equitable system of laws, rules and regulations, under which all actual and potential business competitors can pursue their own respective commercial interests. These legal 'ground rules' must prohibit monopolization, must equalize taxation, must set forth the competitive principles that shall apply, and strike a reasonable balance between the forces of production and consumption (read: supply and demand) throughout the nation's innumerable marketplaces. 

This obligation to provide a "climate" that protects and encourages competition, innovation and expansion is not merely a hypothetical, ministerial function. The United States of America, the world's preeminent example of economic success, is no more a product of its inventors and business innovators, than it is of the legislators who have patiently - over a period of centuries - fashioned a set of laws, within which, the rigors of competitive confrontation can be accommodated; vigorously, expansively - but nevertheless equitably. Maintaining a balance of the forces in the marketplace is the crucial key to overall success of the system.  

This is the function that is most notably lacking in Third World countries. Instead of fashioning the "climate" in which their citizens might prosper, Third World politicians have opted for arrangements that fill their own pockets. Corruption and arrant criminality within the government of a nation has the effect of smothering the flickering sparks of genius that would - must - otherwise provide the fledgling enterprises that - given time, reasonable opportunity and some encouragement - will grow into the businesses and industries that provide employment for the citizens and widely shared prosperity for the country at large. 

Government is not the mechanism for job creation. But government is the entity responsible for creating and maintaining the socio-economic situation within which commerce can function and prosper. It takes an intelligent mix of all of these interests to fashion a functional economic milieu within which men and women can find the jobs they need, and the capitalizers (investors) can find the rewards that continue to provide the incentives and business profitability, growth and stability that must exist to attract ever greater capital creation, business growth and new  economic development.

As it has worked out, the United States of America has proved to be better at sustaining this productive "mix" than any of those countries who are now most distinguished by their envy of the "American miracle". In truth, it is no "miracle". It is the predictable outcome of good planning, intelligent cooperation, hard work and a broadly shared national vision. 

This is precisely what Honduras - and a hundred other dirt-poor, confused and backward sovereign examples - have consistently lacked. --and what they must find if they ever expect to improve their sorry lot in this pragmatic world. 

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