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attention is directed to the stability of the social order through constraint of opportunity. What a
hideous waste! he might exclaim.
The great achievement of Wealth of Nations resides in its conviction and demonstration that
people individually do best for everyone when they do best for themselves, when they aren’t
commanded too much or protected against the consequences of their own folly. As long as we
have a free market and a free society, Smith trusts us to be able to manage any problems that
appear. It’s only when we vest authority and the problem-solving ability in a few that we become
caught in a trap of our own making. The wild world of Silicon Valley mavericks and their
outriggers is a hint of a dynamic America to come where responsibility, trust, and great
expectations are once again given to the young as they were in Ben Franklin’s day. That is how
we will break out of the school trap. Ask yourself where and how these Silicon kids really learned
what they know. The answer isn’t found in memorizing a script.
1 I say this in the face of the technology disasters in global stock markets which have wiped out trillions of dollars
of capital, pension funds, and peoples’ savings. Promoters and manipulators of stock prices live in a world only
tenuously connected to the dynamics of invention, a world whose attitude is drawn from the ruthless pragmatism of
the Old Norse religion strained through the ethical vacuum of Darwinism. The tech bust should teach us something
about the dark side of the human spirit, but it can say little about the positive aspects of flesh-and -blood technical
enterprise or the innate democracy of the working societies it generates.
Selling From Your Truck
In the northeast corner of an island a long way from here, a woman sells plates of cooked shrimp
and rice from out of an old white truck. Her truck is worth $5,000 at most. She sells only that
one thing plus hot dogs for the kids and canned soda. The license to do this costs $500 a year, or
$43.25 a month, a little over a dollar a day. The shrimp lady is fifty-nine years old. She has a
high school diploma and a nice smile. Her truck parks on a gravel pull-off from the main
highway in a nondescript location. No one else is around, not because the shrimp lady has a
protected location but because no one else wants to be there. A hand-lettered sign advertises,
"$9.95 Shrimp and Rice. Soda $1.00. Hot Dogs $1.25."
The day I stood in line for a shrimp plate, five customers were in front of me. They bought
fourteen plates among them and fourteen sodas. I bought two and two when it came my turn, and
by that time five new customers had arrived behind me. I was intrigued.
The next day Janet and I returned. We parked across the road where we could watch the truck
but not make the shrimp lady nervous. In two hours, forty-one plates and forty-one sodas were
handed out of the old truck, and maybe ten hot dogs. A week later we came back and watched
again as nearly the same thing happened. Janet, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America,
estimated that $7 of the $10.95 for shrimp and soda was profit, after all costs.
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