Socialists and Democrats (but I repeat myself) always lambast Big Business as the Evil component of capitalism. They forget:
On the market of a capitalistic society the common man is the sovereign consumer whose buying or abstention from buying ultimately determines what should be produced and in what quantity and quality. Those shops and plants which cater exclusively or predominantly to the wealthier citizens’ demand for refined luxuries play merely a subordinate role in the economic setting of the market economy. They never attain the size of big business. Big business always serves – directly or indirectly – the masses.
It is this ascension of the multitude in which the radical social change brought about by the “Industrial Revolution” consists. Those underlings who in all the preceding ages of history had formed the herds of slaves and serfs, of paupers and beggars, became the buying public, for whose favor the businessmen canvass. They are the customers who are “always right,” the patrons who have the power to make poor suppliers rich and rich suppliers poor.
-Ludwig von Mises (The Anti-capitalistic Mentality; it is here for free)
While the wealthy ARE important, they are important in that they are often the “early adopters” of those higher priced goods – think LED TV, personal computers, and cell phones. However, it is we, the “common folk”, that set the market place.
It’s like that old saw “why do you rob banks? It’s where the money is”.
Sure, fancy clothes, private jets, yachts; all of those, however, provide jobs for the masses which then spend the most money in the aggregate.
(H/T: Cafe Hayek)
