Ryan Daniel Moran argues that profit incentives drive better products and service. He contrasts two coffee shops: one where a barista questioned capitalism, another where poor service and curdled milk showed what happens without competitive pressure to improve.
Two days ago, I went to a new place to get my morning coffee. And it was a place that served really high end coffee and they served bulletproof coffee with like MCT oil and grass fed butter and all these fancy things in the coffee. And the woman at the counter, she asks me, hey, what are you up to? Are you on your way to work? And I said, yeah, I'm going to the office today. And she says, well, what do you do for a living? And I said, I'm the CEO of capitalism.com. and she kind of froze up for a second and she got a little bit defensive, offensive. And I could tell that, you know, I had said a word that she wasn't quite comfortable with. And she asked me a question. She said, well, are you pro capitalism or anti capitalism? And I said, well, it would be a little bit ironic if I owned capitalism.com and was anti capitalist. So we started to talk about this a little bit and danced around the topic and it was clear her button was pushed a little bit. Triggered. She was triggered. And she says, oh, I don't know, I think we could do better. Better. Could do better. Where do you think you get your damn MCT oil from? You think the benevolence of someone.
Is giving you your MCT oil? Why do you think you have an abundance of grass fed butter?
You think we can sustainably get grass fed butter without a for profit system? It's interesting because the next day I went into a different coffee shop. I was meeting with someone that I was interviewing and it was this coffee shop I had never been to before. And we got there when it was supposed to open and the shop owner was late, like 15 minutes late. And we stood outside in the cold while we waited for the shop owner to get to the store. And the person I was interviewing turns to me and says, look, I wanted to meet here because the owner's a personal friend, but she's never on time. And we watched three people try to open the door and it was locked so they couldn't get in. And when we finally got in, this coffee shop was also a vintage clothing store, which is cool, but a little bit of an odd combination on something you would normally see marketed. And when I ordered my drink, I ordered it with almond milk and it curdled.
The shop owner came over and she told us that business was really struggling.
What do you know? And I hear so many people say we don't need a for profit system because we would just have passion businesses. In fact, that was the argument of the woman at the first coffee shop. She said, I think we could do better. I think business would still exist if it was, you know, there would be passion businesses. A passion business is one where there is no incentive for you to do a good job. Capitalism is the incentivized way where we are forced to serve one another. It's why good products win. It's why we have progress us. It's why we. You have access to the goods and services that you want. We don't get it because of the benevolence or the kindness of the person who makes them. It is out of their own self interest and that's what allows you to have freedom of choice. And my fear for my generation is that we will miss that and then we will destroy it. And that's why I feel called to represent capitalism because it is the best possible shot we have of creating the change that we want to see in this world.
Nice.
So wait, you could take a Left here on 21st. I want to go back.
