Ants and Entrepreneurs

A very thoughtful article from interesting p.o.v.!

Carl E. Mullin
visionary artist and entrepreneur
homo asteralis
ravenart@...
www.ravenartstudio.com
Were Like Ants

by Brad Edmonds
Ants are a good analogy for free people. This seems outrageous on the surface
after all, ants are mostly drones, and dont seem to have anything
resembling free will but from the perspective of an outsider, a free
society has many of the characteristics of an ant colony. If you and I were
allowed to behave as freely as we usually allow ants to behave (at least when
theyre not in our kitchens), progress toward human peace and prosperity
would be accelerated dramatically.
If you leave something ants want on your kitchen counter, theyll find it.
Ants swarm over whatever they like, and carry it back to their colonies, one
microtidbit at a time. They have a sophisticated tracking technique: Ants
leave their own trails of slimy scent. This allows them to leave the nest and
travel distances that are vast, on their scale, and always find their way
home. More threatening to our kitchens, when an ant finds something of value,
it carries a piece of it home; more significantly, it leaves a special sort
of scent trail. Other ants are keen to the signal, which explains why you
might find a major infestation within an hour of leaving a piece of cut fruit
on the kitchen counter. And ants are roving far from the colony in all
directions, constantly; so if theres a useful morsel within a certain radius
of home, theyll find it.
Entrepreneurs are everywhere in free societies, and constantly combing the
ground looking for opportunities. Unlike ants, entrepreneurs would prefer to
keep the information to themselves when they find a succulent opportunity a
market for their invention or service but the market doesnt keep the
information to itself when it finds something it likes. The antlike swarm of
customers to an exceptional offering is a message in itself, and other
entrepreneurs pick up this signal and set to work, creating their own swarm.
Once the dust has settled, entrepreneurs in this market are back to the
10-15% normal profit that an efficient producer can realize over the long
term, and customers enjoy greater selection and lower price. The customer
antbed and the entrepreneur antbed feed off each other, and everyones better
off.
This has implications for national security. Stick your finger into an ant
hill, and youll learn that the ants do an admirable job of defending
themselves. Again, they dont really have free will, and they arent acting
as a result of superior intelligence. Regardless how it happens, beings with
superior capacities, such as cattle and people, avoid stepping in antbeds
(never mind beehives). Nations are in a sense the equivalent of antbeds, but
of a special kind: Most of us big ants must apply for permits to defend
themselves and their colonies, and are never allowed to stray beyond their
borders to defend their homes against invaders. Only the Government Ants can
do this. After long enough, most of these ants lose the capacity to defend
the colony.
The analogy gets a little strained at this level, but the outsider still sees
ants: Allow the private production of regional and national defense, erase
laws that prevent civilians from defending themselves both individually and
cooperatively, and outsiders would learn quickly not to step in our antbed.
Insurance companies, entrepreneurial mercenaries, people with the wherewithal
of, as one example, Red Adair, and unforeseen others would find and attack
the real culprits behind such crimes as 9/11 (though in a fully free society
such events as 9/11 would be far less likely in the first place). The
prospect of preventing billions in insured losses would be enough to motivate
and direct free people and their agents to defend themselves successfully.
While it doesnt sound flattering to compare people to ants, the point is not
the view from the inside. Ants are mindless, and as individuals they are
without will. The point is the view from the outside, and it is the outright
inevitability of the antbed getting what it wants that we see from the
outside, and this is what terrorists and everyone else would see from the
outside of our society if we were a fully free people.
May 6, 2002
Brad Edmonds [send him mail] writes from Alabama.
Copyright 2002 LewRockwell.com