I have so many things to be thankful for today I cannot begin to count them. Life has been very good to me. I am glad I live in a nation that is just, peaceful and prosperous.
Though there are many things wrong in our country, most of us still enjoy levels of freedom, opportunity and prosperity unknown to most of our fellows here on earth. However flawed some of our institutions and culture may be, they still are wonderful in the true sense of creating awe.
I am particularly aware of how fortunate we are to have one particularly great institution — the “city desk.” I don’t mean that group of journalists covering and editing local news, but rather the men and women who help walk-in customers at plumbing, electrical, welding, bearing and power train, foundry supply and other commercial supply businesses.
If it were not for these people and the facet of U.S. national character they represent, we would not nearly be as well off.
I realize I may have much more contact with these folks than the average person. I am an extreme do-it-yourselfer and I push the envelope in terms of what I think I need for home improvement and hobby projects.
Perhaps that is why city-desk sales clerks are so unheralded in economic and business news. They are unknown to most people in contrast to the less knowledgeable “help” we encounter at most big retailers.
Our economic prosperity, however, depends on a helpfulness and willingness to cooperate to a far greater degree than most of us appreciate. We economists are partly to blame. In introductory courses we emphasize how Adam Smith identified the beneficial roles that self-interest and competition play in the efficient provision of goods and services to meet people’s needs.
We tend to pass over the similarly vital role of cooperation in successful market economies. The public good is advanced when businesses compete for customers on the basis of quality, price, convenience and other features. It is also advanced when people are willing, even eager, to help others achieve some goal even when it does not involve immediate profit.
I love hot metal. I am moving from welding and hand forging into feeble attempts to cast bronze and aluminum. During the past few months I have purchased 12 fire bricks, two small graphite crucibles, 100 pounds of foundry sand and 5 pounds of parting dust from four different local suppliers.
Only one of the purchases was more than $50, and I am sure that none of these businesses made any money on such small sales. But like the people who rummage around in some dusty bin for the special roller chain link I need to make my post hole digger work just right, these salespeople are almost always willing to offer advice and even referrals to competitors to help an amateur like me succeed in my play.
One has to spend some time living in other countries to appreciate how important an ethos of cooperation and helpfulness is in economic life. Yes, I have met wonderfully helpful individual tradespeople in my wanderings through South America, the Caribbean and the Balkans.
However, at the risk of sounding like a booster, I still think the cooperative spirit in U.S. commercial life stands apart from that of many other nations.
This day-to-day helpfulness extends throughout U.S. business culture.
True, we can always find stories of fraud, poor service and abuse of the consuming public in our business news.
Yet despite many bad eggs, business at all levels in the United States remains remarkably honest and cooperative.
We owe much of our prosperity to this ethos, and we should be thankful for it.
© 2002 Edward Lotterman
Chanarambie Consulting, Inc.