THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A MIDTOWN-MANHATTAN ELEVATOR AND AFGHANISTAN - and the difference between Romney and Obama

I took an elevator up to a client's offices today - as I do most days.

And - just like other days - the elevator was a microcosm of NYC, of America: there was me - a middle-aged Jew with 2 degrees, 2 Asian women, an African-American man, a young artist-type gal with a tattooed arm and body-piercings, a jerseyshore-type guy (or was he just a bad Elvis impersonator?), an old worn out man in an old worn out suit, a Latino bicycle messenger, and South Asian - probably Pakistani or Indian.

We probably represented every major faith: Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam  Judaism, atheism. And every generation still in the work-force.

And we were polite - even cordial: someone cracked a silly joke and we all laughed. Saying excuse me and thank you and carrying on - just going about our own business.

This would never happen in Afghanistan, or any other islamist dominated place. Islamism doesn't celebrate diversity; it demands conformity. Sh*t, if you're the wrong type of Muslim they'll kill you as fast as they would kill a Jew; (just last week dozens of Sufi shrines were destroyed by other Muslims).

And that's why we are rich and Afghanistan is poor.

It's not that our culture is better - though it is.

It's that we have FREE ENTERPRISE and CAPITALISM and they don't; they subordinate the economic pursuit of personal happiness to their esoteric creed.

In other words, whereas we can GO ABOUT OUR BUSINESS, they cannot because their business is subordinated to their religion; their economy is subordinated to their religion.

As Milton Friedman said about the pencil,

"Literally thousands of people cooperated to make this pencil, people who don’t speak the same language, who practice different religions, who might hate one another if they ever met! 

When you go down to the store and buy this pencil, you are in effect trading a few minutes of your time, for a few seconds of the time of all those thousands of people. 

What brought them together and enduced them to cooperate to make this pencil? 

There was no Comisar sending out orders from some central office. It was the magic of the price system. 

The impersonal operation of prices that brought them together and got them to cooperate to make this pencil so that you could have it for a trifling sum. 

That is why the operation of the free market is so essential, not only to promote productive efficiently but even more, to foster harmony and peace among the people of the world."

And when I walk into a crowded elevator in Midtown Manhattan, I see the truth of this. And I see it when I return to the offices I work in - with Asians and blacks and atheists and Christians and so on.

As I see it when I shop in my neighborhood grocery or deli. When I get on a bus to go home after a long day at my ethnically diverse office and in the market seeing a myriad of ethnically diverse clients and on the phone talking to even more people of different ethnicities all over the USA - Armenians, Greeks, Brit's, and so on.

And this diversity - OUR diversity - it's NOT the result of noble liberals and their utopianist policies or of central government planning.

Our diversity is the result of FREE ENTERPRISE. People coming here from all over the world to make a better life for themselves and their families and their descendants. People coming here - from all over the world - to fulfill their personal dreams.

Government doesn't make their dreams come true. Government doesn't create the diversity - or instill the willingness - among diverse people from different cultures and races and creeds - to get along. Government gets in the way.

It's the free market and free enterprise and capitalism and the profit system that makes this diversity possible and desirable.

Without a potential reward, no one would risk anything and nobody would venture outside their homogeneous comfort zone.

It's always been that way: Trade is what drove the first humans to venture outside their village, and trade - commerce - is what energizes and mobilizes the human energies needed to improve one's personal finances, and the economy as a whole and thereby improve all of our living standards and life spans.

No government program ANYWHERE has ever improved living standards and life-spans as much as freedom and free enterprise.

No government program ever will.

NEED AN EXAMPLE? Here: after 40 years of central planning, China went from being a starving basket-case to an economic powerhouse by merely introducing free markets.

The people didn't change. Their dreams didn't change. What changed was one thing: the government withdrew, stepped-back - AND SHRANK.

When persons are free to make and buy and sell - in a competitive marketplace - what they want, then they make and buy and sell more things - of ever improving value.

That's why the things people buy and sell are called GOODS. People only voluntarily buy things they think are good.

Making and buying and selling things is not "AMORAL CONSUMERISM" - as the left would have you believe.

Making and buying and selling things is what makes living standards and life-spans and PEACE AND PROSPERITY possible.

The businessman in a competitive free marketplace is more important source of increased living standards and life-spans, and PEACE - and more moral - than the politicians.

In this sense, Romney is not merely a better person to have as our Chief Executive because he has actually been a CEO of major enterprises - including huge businesses and not-for-profits and a large government.

Romney is also better suited because as a businessman he has actually achieved positive results and provided goods and services to a huge number of people in competitive situations - and did so by bridging ethnic and political and religious differences - EVERYDAY.

He's not merely an achiever; he's an over-achiever, and one who did so by competing - not by commanding, by risking - not by coercing, who achieved desired results by fostering COOPERATION, and one who knows you have to deliver the goods, provide the services and bridge differences and surmount challenges every dang step of the way.

That's something leftist ideologues and islamists don't want to do, don't know how to do, don't like to do and therefore don't do well.

VOTE ACCORDINGLY. VOTE ROMNEY-RYAN.

Bonus video: the brilliant 3 minute Milton Friedman essay on The Pencil: