contrast · Contrast · ingenuity

A bicycle shop, then a company

The Constitution bothers to mention science and useful arts. Article I, Section 8: Congress may secure for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their writings and discoveries. That sentence is why a bicycle shop in Dayton could become an industry, why Ford could scale a car a clerk could buy, why a garage in California could become a company the size of a country.

Under communism the invention belongs to the party. Under a dictatorship it belongs to the man. In this country you can incorporate, hire, fail, file bankruptcy, and try again. Failure is not treason. That is the machinery of ingenuity: property, patents, and an exit that is not a grave.

Look at the names on the buildings — Ford, Boeing, Caterpillar, Intel — and then look at who is allowed to start the next one without a ministry’s permission. The American model works because the next shop does not need a title. It needs a deed, a patent, and customers.

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