Our Future Hanging in the Balance – Part 1

If not properly balanced the world will tip over and flip upside-down, figuratively speaking of course. But, balance really does exist at the very core and essence of nearly everything in life.

An example from the real world.

A natural ecosystem relies heavily on a very delicate balance. It is quite amazing that it works, actually. If you introduce a new plant or animal into the ecosystem, it could totally change the nature of the ecosystem forever, but the amazing thing is that it will adjust and find a new but workable balance in most cases.

If the mice population gets out of hand, the owls will have plenty to eat, will reproduce more, and stay in the area longer until the mice population starts to drop. Then the owls will have less to eat, reproduce less, and some will head off to other areas in search of food. The decrease in the owl population will keep the mice from going extinct, and the two populations will balance against each other.

Balance in a free market.

In a free market, the natural process of supply and demand do the exact same thing. It can get a bit bloody, like a natural ecosystem, with businesses eating businesses and people losing jobs and vaporizing huge amounts of money, but the losses make the gains worth fighting for. The presence of potential gains and losses encourage production. The greater the gap between potential loss and potential gain, the greater the incentive to produce.

There is also a balance between labor and management as long as a worker has the freedom to leave the company and find work elsewhere and management has the freedom to find more productive workers. This balance is disrupted by unions that make it difficult for management to find better workers, and makes it difficult, if possible at all, for workers to find other work in the same field without permission from a very powerful union that controls all companies in an industry. This lack of balancing powers becomes even greater, when a union purchases a company. This situation casues a conflict of interest at best, and leads to tyranical rule in some cases.

More to come in a future post (or two)…

Related posts:

1. Our Future Hanging in the Balance – Part 3
2. Our Future Hanging in the Balance – Part 2
3. Work/Life Balance
4. How important is freedom of the press?
5. Caring for China is on Twitter!