I teach a university course entitled Entrepreneurial Value Creation in Society.

The course examines various topics related to entrepreneurship and society through the lens of four specific principles, which are:

• Competition
• Power Balance
• Free Exchange
• Alignment of Incentives

In particular, with respect to the above principles, I emphasize the following:

• Competition (a society and its individuals prosper when government policies encourage and promote full and open competition in the marketplace rather than hinder it)
• Power Balance (a society and its individuals prosper when political and economic power and decision-making in society is decentralized rather than centralized)
• Free Exchange (a society and its individuals prosper when people are able to freely exchange goods & services; this follows from the fact that whenever two people conduct an exchange of goods or services BOTH are better off, as long as there is no fraud or coercion involved)
• Alignment of Incentives (government policies that degrade or fail to improve overall societal well-being typically fail because they create adverse or misaligned incentives, at the individual and/or corporate level)

I would be interested in hearing from you which of the above you agree with and which you disagree with, and why.