Three Wise Monkeys Image Attribution
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Kalyan Shah, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons
The fable of the Three Wise Monkeys has to do with hearing, seeing, and speaking, usually in reference to the evil in the world. Different people have natural strengths regarding each. Some people are better at one of them than others, but if all three work together, then evil can be diminished.
In 1962, Mises wrote The Ultimate Foundation of Economic Science and this gem is found inside:
What is called economic progress is the joint effect of the activities of the three progressive groups—or classes—of the savers, the scientist-inventors, and the entrepreneurs, operating in a market economy …
The upshot of it is that it takes at least 3 kinds of people to advance a human society — savers, scientists/inventors, and entrepreneurs — and that, in order for a society to be able to make progress, it first needs to make these three archetypes feasible.
Another way to put it is that, if you care about progress, then it is absolutely essential to cultivate and reward: the Thrifty, the Curious, and the Brave.
A penny saved is a penny earned
Thrifty people save some of the income that they earn, increasing the stock of useful resources from out of which new investments into the future could get made.
But if government creates too much inflation, it no longer pays to save, because — at typical interest rates — by the time you pull the money out, it is worth much less than it was when you put it in. By relying on inflation to pay for lavish government programs, governments undercut savers and kill off the investment into the future.
Progress is not sustainable when governments inflate currency to pay for programs.
[W]e’re trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible. Because only in that way do we find workers progress.
This quote from Richard Feynman shows that, in order to make progress, you have got to be able to test and possibly even falsify some of the things that you already believe in. But such testing is disallowed under conditions of government censorship.
Progress is not sustainable when government censorship exists.
No Risk, No Reward
The special thing about entrepreneurs is that they have the courage to attempt to act in the face of uncertainty. There is the possibility that a new idea will not be productive but instead will fail when put to the ultimate test of the market, but the entrepreneurs try, anyway.
By being willing to try to implement new ideas and new innovations — even though it could result in a personal setback and could cause one to incur personal debt — entrepreneurs drive the engine of creativity which lets society make advances it never dreamed of before.
But when governments put obstacles in the way of entrepreneurship —such as when an entrepreneur gets bogged down by regulatory red tape, or when the profit gained from serving the public better gets confiscated — then that kills innovation.
Progress is not sustainable when governments hamper or mitigate profit-seeking.
When governments engage in inflation, censorship, and economic controls — such as the U.S. government has been doing — then it pretty much guarantees that there will not be any progress. That’s because of the effects on the 3 archetypes which human societies rely on for progress: the thrifty, the curious, and the brave.
The future is not bright, but bleak, when governments engage in inflation, censorship, and economic controls. Situations which supposedly justify governments engaging in inflation, censorship, and economic controls — such as pandemics — need to be viewed with great skepticism. You can say our future even depends on that skepticism.