Free Enterprise Works

An update from a story we noted here earlier in the week regarding the upcoming release of the most-hyped gadget in recent memory, Apple's iPhone. The reviews of this little gem are starting to come in, and it seems that free markets and competition have won the day.

The iPhone is, in many ways, a "reinvention". The folks at Apple rethought the cell phone, a device that has become ubitquitous in our society. Instead of small, incremental modifications, the creativity and wit of a global economic power was marshalled and redirected into a better convergence device. And it isn't magic - its the power of innovation.

The trouble with free enterprise is that we get so accustomed to our ways that, it seems, that we fail to fully appreciate the big advances it took to get us where we are. When the time comes and some new widget comes along, like iPhone, it serves us notice that we are in a society that values innovation, advancement, and revolution. It should be the role of government to support that innovation, not by controlling it or attempting to direct it in some fashion, but rather by getting out of the way and letting free enterprise do what it does best.