Private business investment is inherently superior to governmental aid as an instrument of development because it combines transfers of managerial an… - Neil H. Jacoby

World energy problems entered the headlines during 1973 and 1974 when members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) unilaterally quadrupled the price of crude oil. Concurrently, members of the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) cut back production and imposed a temporary embargo on shipments to the United States for political reasons. Suddenly, the industrialized nations awoke to their heavy and increasing dependence upon the abundant supplies of oil from Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America.

Even the population of business enterprises does not provide a comprehensive measure of ‘entrepreneurship’ in the United States because it excludes farmers, professionals, and other persons devoting at least part-time to selling their services in markets and who have neither an established place of business nor employees. A conservative estimate of the ‘entrepreneurial’ population is given by the number of individual income tax returns filed reporting income from self-employment. An estimated 11.1 million persons did so for 1968, one for each 18 persons in the United States.

A static technology is, however, almost inconceivable. It runs so strongly against established drives in American society as to be practically impossible. So long as we are thinking beings, we will find new ways to increase the productivity of work! The basic point, however, is that economic growth is needed to improve the quality of life. A rise in the GNP, taken by itself, is neither good nor bad. Everything depends upon what kind of production has increased, its costs to society, and who benefits from it. What people now want and need is resource-conserving, pollution-free growth—growth that does not harm the environment and demands less of the earth’s limited resources.