Why Entrepreneurial Freedom Leads to Innovation | Lawrence Reed

As long as entrepreneurs are free to innovate and to enjoy the rewards that often, but not always, come from innovation, depending on consumers and their desires, as long as they're free to innovate and keep those rewards, they will keep doing it. So it's a critical dynamic element in a free economy. An economy that is no longer innovating is, by definition, a stagnant economy. And then you have to ask the question, why would an economy stagnate? Why would people see opportunities but not act upon them? Why wouldn't they issue a new and improved version if there was some money in it for them? Well, the answer to that, invariably, is because the political authorities have stuck their nose in the way and by various measures, make it impossible or too costly or too punishing for entrepreneurs to innovate. So they just quit. They just stopped doing it.