Entrepreneurs and Economics
John Tamny gives some great examples in his book, Popular Economics: What the Rolling Stones, Downton Abbey, and LeBron James Can Teach You About Economics. He talks about a conference he attended where one the speakers displayed a 1989 ad for the Tandy 5000 desktop. The ad proclaimed that it was the “most powerful computer ever!” Monitor and mouse were not included in the $8,499 price.
The computer you have today is far faster and more efficient than one of the best computers on the marker a quarter century ago. You can buy a Dell laptop computer for less the $400 that has a Quad-Core processor, 8 GB of memory, and a hard drive with 1 TB of storage.
The original hand-held cellular phone was the Motorola DynaTAC 8000X. If you have never seen one, you might rent the 1987 Oliver Stone film, Wall Street. I would imagine you would laugh when you see Gordon Gekko pull out this “brick of a phone” to make a phone call. The 1983 price for this technological wonder of the day was $3,995. Today, nearly everyone has a cell phone and expects to pay less than $250 and sometimes less than $200 for a phone that does much more than make phone calls.
We benefit from the inventions of entrepreneurs, but we also benefit from the manufacturing efficiencies of a free market that put these devices in our hands for a fraction of their original cost.
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Kerby Anderson is a radio talk show host heard on numerous stations via the Point of View Network endorsed by Dr. Bill Smith, Editor, ARRA News Service
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Posted by Bill Smith at 10:12 AM - Post Link
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