What sets America apart from its peers? One answer is the “animal spirits” of American business, which have produced generations of prosperity at home and helped uplift the poor across the world. At our best, Americans seek to harness the power of capitalism, rather than denounce and suppress it.
There was a time when Americans celebrated great industrialists—when Henry Ford and Andrew Carnegie were household names spoken with pride, rather than contempt. Today, the conventional wisdom in mainstream media outlets and storied educational institutions is that capitalism is evil—and that violence may even be justified to thwart it.
In our morally inverted world, it’s worth remembering that, for all its imperfections, American capitalism is worthy of celebration. So this week, as part of America at 250—our yearlong celebration of this country’s milestone birthday—we’re celebrating America’s great capitalists, from Ford and Carnegie to Taylor Swift: how they made their fortunes, how they spent them, and the legacies they leave behind.
As we enter the age of artificial intelligence, the great entrepreneurs of our time produce things that live in servers and on the cloud—inventions that may leave little physical trace hundreds of years from now. But, in our first offering, Philip Delves Broughton takes us on a different journey: into the Walmart Supercenters you can shop in, the golden arches you can enjoy a burger under, the factories humming across America. He’s celebrating the titans who changed our physical world: the Builders.
If the Builders mold the physical world, consider the woman whose very presence boosts revenue at every business in every town where she performs—the first major pop star to own all of her own copyrights, and the undisputed ruler of the sonic world: Taylor Swift. “Swift is a titan of industry,” writes Dominic Green, “one of the great American capitalists that Ralph Waldo Emerson called ‘monomaniacs’—the creative spirits whose ‘speculative genius is the madness of few for the gain of the world.’” Read his essay on how Swift made it in the business of sound, right before the hostile takeover by the business of images.
After making all their money, America’s great capitalists are faced with the question of how to spend it—and how much of it to give away. That can be a trickier dilemma than you might think. Mark Gimein traces the arc of American philanthropy from Andrew Carnegie’s 1889 “Gospel of Wealth” to the Giving Pledge, launched in 2010 by Warren Buffett and Bill and Melinda Gates, and asks why today’s billionaires are walking away from the tradition that made their predecessors immortal.
—The Editors
As described by Warren Buffett, free market capitalism has made the American Experiment, in only 250 years, the greatest success in human history. However, past performance is not necessarily indicative of the future. Morgan Stanley estimates 70% of tech value created is due to "network effects". In other words, once an invention reaches a critical mass others must use it to participate in the network even if its not the best product. Think telephone, Microsoft Office, Google search, products that become de facto monopolies through network effects then are so big their cost of service or goods sold becomes so low they are virtually impossible to displace. An argument can be made that the "network" of usage is really a public asset rather than some free ride playing field waiting to be exploited. The solution then is not laissez faire capitalism, nor is it incentive crushing socialism. It's our politician's challenge to find a middle. We are having a terribly messy way of addressing that challenge, but I can't think of a better one, except to recognize the messiness of the challenge and maybe be more civil.
I hugely admire the entrepreneurs and capitalists who take risk and deserve the rewards. Where I differ is the overcompensation of bankers, CEOs of public companies and others who expect to be rewarded like very succesful entrepreneurs while taking little or no risk. Why does the custodian of a company get the sort of rewards that most entrepreneurs cannot dream about. ?