Mike had to make a decision. He finally got to the point where he didn’t want his retirement savings going to support Wall Street banking.
After moving to Cedar City and discovering George Wythe College, Mike took a class in political economy. He started reading classics on economics such as Economic Harmonies written in the 1850’s by French economist Fredrick Bastiat and Wealth of Nations written in 1776 by Scottish philosopher Adam Smith.
His paradigm was totally altered, and he began thinking the difference between wealth and prosperity: wealth is accumulated and concentrates, whereas prosperity is used and spreads. I pondered this too, as he shared all his thoughts with me.
Mike was stewing at last year’s bailouts of wall street CEOs and big business at the tax payers’ expense. He even wrote a post about it. We had many discussions about different models of business. We came to the understanding that when profit is the only goal of a company- usually any means, fair or foul will be used to accomplish that end. Business is almost always end driven.
