Transcript of a brief speech given by Rose Wilder Lane at Robert LeFevre’s Freedom School (financed by R.C. Hoiles) in Colorado Springs (08/30/1958)

ROSE WILDER LANE…

I don’t know if I will be able to talk at all. I am no good at all as a talker. I have enjoyed enormously my time at the school and I am very pleased to meet you. It is my opinion that it is the finest thing in the country. I had no expectation of finding such a fine thing when I came out. I think it is truly an important and tremendous thing that is being done here. I am very glad and happy to have seen it.

I am not good at speaking, I warn you. If I were behind my typewriter I would not be afraid of you at all.

I have thought that since it is Sunday I should have a Sunday text; I’m sorry but I don’t know chapter and verse but it is a rhetorical question – “What should it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul?” I know it is meant to save peoples’ souls but I am interested in the implications of this question. The assumption is, of course, that the motive in making a choice of action is profit. It is not only assumed that a man will consider his profit but it is assumed he should. There is no question about it. In the choosing between two courses of action, he is assumed to chose the profitable one. The assumption is that the profit motive is a good thing. And, yet, oddly enough, the profit motive has fallen into disgrace.

No one seems inclined to grant the profit motive. You never hear anyone say, “Oh, he is a noble man. Everything he does he does for his own profit.” It is a peculiar thing, which has led me to consider ‘what is the profit motive?’ And I have come to some thoughts about it that I would offer for your consideration because there is to be some discussion later.

In the first place, we will accept that everything we have in the whole world and in our relationships comes from human action. Sometimes it is obscure to us but it is the fact that every person is born naked on this earth with nothing to sustain his life or satisfy his desires. Everything comes from the action of human beings and the action of individuals because that is the action of human energy, life energy, that exists only within an individual person. We have nothing at all except through the action of individual human energy. So we must consider that as the first requisite.

In acting, it is our duty that we all have a profit motive – always. And I will illustrate that by saying that if each one of you is sitting alone in this room and you want a book, you will walk across the room and take the book. Now you do that because – perhaps without realizing it – you calculate that the value you will obtain by that expenditure of your time and your energy is worth more to you than the time and the energy that you expend. In other words, you expect to profit from your actions.

Now, suppose, when you get there the book isn’t there. So instead of a profit you have a loss. That doesn’t cause you to cease to want the book. It probably increases your desire for the book. And you will remember it is in another room and you will expend the extra energy and time to go to the other room to get the book because you want it. But suppose the book is in Colorado Springs. You calculate "it isn’t worth my time, it isn’t worth my energy. I won’t profit. This will be a loss of time and energy for me if I went all the way to Colorado Springs for that book." So you don’t go. Now I say, in my contention, that if you have no profit motive then you do not act. And, therefore, a derogation of the profit motive itself – the attitude that people should not have a profit motive – is actually nihilism because our lives depend on our actions. If we do not act on our profit motive, we don’t live.

There is a misunderstanding also, I think, in this because it is assume that there is some of materialism in the profit motive. It is supposed that there are superior values but if you act for profit you are acting for dollars or something material. The actual fact is that no one ever wants anything material. For example, no one ever wants a motor car. You’ve probably all had motor cars. But that is not what you want. When you buy a car, you buy it as a means to a real value, which is an intangible value. You don’t want the car, you want to save time and energy and a means of transportation. You want a sensation of power and speed. You want perhaps a change in the attitude of your neighbors who will admire you for having the car. You want things that are not material at all. No one actually wants any material thing. They always want an intangible value. And our actions are directed for intangible values and not for any material thing. It is the want; we want it as a means to an intangible value. A profit. We accept that everyday in our ordinary conversation. We say “well, I’d do it but it takes too much time.” We say, “it will be worth it when you get there.” We constantly express the profit motive in our actions.

Profit motive is the basis of all our exchanges in trade and commerce and it is also the basis of society. It is the individual profit motive that is the basis of our society because from co-operation we gain greater profit than we can possibly gain by solitary action. Therefore we co-operate. That was illustrated in my childhood – the house raisings, the corn huskings. In the early morning when the sun was rising, you would have 12 men – practically the whole neighborhood would arrive in wagons, on horseback or on foot – the men, the women, the children, the dogs…and the men brought axes and ropes and the women brought food and babies. The sun was rising, the clearing was made and the logs were there. And they laid the four logs and then they made the notches. The rows rose up one at a time. The house just went up like that. 12 men could put up a house in a day. One man could not possibly put up a house in 12 days. There was a profit for each man. Suppose there were 12 houses and these 12 men were at each house. They get them done more quickly. Each house is built more quickly.

There is also commerce and trade. If you give a dollar for an article, it is because you want the article more than the dollar. You profit. If the seller does not want the dollar more than he wants the article, he won’t sell it. If the exchange occurs, there is profit. Therefore, the profit motive is the basis of commerce. The profit motive is the basis of all socialization. All of you who came here, came here expecting to get a greater profit from the time and energy expended in this way than any one of us would have gotten in any other way. I don’t say that we’ve got it – it may be a loss – but we expected to profit; that’s why we’re here. And a profit motive is an economic action only because it underlies all action. Therefore I come to praise the profit motive, not to bury it.