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Conclusion

The Entrepreneurial Society

I

“Every generation needs a new revolution,” was Thomas Jefferson’s
conclusion toward the end of his long life. His contemporary, Goethe,
the great German poet, though an arch-conservative, voiced the same
sentiment when he sang in his old age:

Vernunft wird Unsinn
Wohitat, Plage. *

Both Jefferson and Goethe were expressing their generation’s
disenchantment with the legacy of Enlightenment and French
Revolution. But they might just as well have reflected on our pres-
ent-day legacy, 150 years later, of that great shining promise, the
Welfare State, begun in Imperial Germany for the truly indigent
and disabled, which has now become “everybody’s entitlement”
and an increasing burden on those who produce. Institutions, sys-
tems, policies eventually outlive themselves, as do products,
processes, and services. They do it when they accomplish their
objectives and they do it when they fail to accomplish their objec-
tives. The mechanisms may still tick. But the assumptions on
which they were designed have become invalid—as, for example,
have the demographic assumptions on which health-care plans and
retirement schemes were designed in all developed countries over
the last hundred years. Then, indeed, reason becomes nonsense and
boons afflictions.
Yet “revolutions,” as we have learned since Jefferson’s days, are not
the remedy. They cannot be predicted, directed, or controlled. They

*Reason becomes nonsense, /Boons afflictions.

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