Driven to Business with Eddie Mayfield

I bought a lawnmower from a friend of mine a few years ago.  Mine had broken, I needed another one, and he’d just bought a new one.

He told me it worked fine, and that he’d take $50 for it.  I said “great,”  gave him a check for $50, and then drove over to his house the next day to pick it up.  He helped me load it; it worked fine when I got home.  My check cleared the bank, and both of us got exactly what we expected.

That little episode, writ large, is the essence of free enterprise.  And.. it only works because both of the parties share an ethical underpinning, that says neither is going to cheat the other.

It’s easy to forget that;  we’re constantly bombarded with stories of unscrupulous business people taking advantage of someone.  But, despite all the cynicism, in the real world,  almost every business person  I know is ethical in their conduct. To be sure, there are crooks in every walk of life, and all of us in business take  prudent steps to avoid being cheated.  But, unlike some countries in which I’ve done business, by and large,  the vast majority of Americans think a deal is a deal, and uphold their end of the bargain.

Benjamin Franklin, hardly a religious icon, said “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”  George Washington said, “it is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.”

Both men were making the same point as regards government, and it’s the same with business.  There must be a tacit understanding, underneath the culture, that says cheating someone is wrong.  That failing to do what you promised to do is wrong.  That taking unfair advantage of someone simply because you can, is wrong.

Christian philosopher Elton Trueblood coined the phrase in an earlier time of a “cut flower” generation.  A generation that is still blooming, but has been cut from its roots, and is unknowingly on its way to decay.

American business is, overall, ethical.  Despite cynics that say otherwise, the facts of daily life make that clear.  Most of us engage in transactions every day where we get exactly what we pay for;  we’re not being cheated.  And we don’t require a cadre of police or lawyers;  the system works fine.

But, as Trueblood worried years ago,  it matters that we remember our roots. Which are grounded in, and in fact, spring from a Christian tradition.  As Jefferson noted before the founding of the country, our rights and freedoms come from God.   That’s no longer a politically correct thing to say,  but it’s nonetheless the truth.  Not all cultures and traditions are equal.

Somehow, we have to stand on that truth, while not being insulting to other philosophies.  Sans that, the flower and genius of American free enterprise, cut from its roots,  will indeed fade.

Eddie Mayfield  @eddiemayfield