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Entrepreneurial Quarks: The Elementary Particle of the American Economy

Some of you may have recently read about the Higgs boson particle and how its potentially confirmed existence would explain how anything with mass (i.e., everything that exists) is built.

Some of you may have also recently read about how President Obama doesn’t feel that entrepreneurs actually built their businesses, but that the businesses were actually built by everybody else. My conclusion from reading about both recently is that, like me, the President was probably not very good at Physics.

Now, I don’t want to bore my precious few blog readers with an overly complex discussion of the Higgs boson particle. Ok, the truth is I am not capable of providing an overly complex discussion of Higgs boson because I was not very good at Physics. To totally bare my soul, I don’t even recall my 9th grade Physics teacher’s name.

I believe that the world economy, like the universe, exists because it is composed of increasingly smaller components like national economies and currencies and natural resources.

What I’ve learned in the past few weeks about Higgs boson is that world-renowned physicists believe that this little bugger is essentially the reason that things are able to exist. The Higgs boson is thought to be the granddaddy of all elementary particles, existing in a family of particles that include other bosons, leptons and my favorite: Quarks.

Without the Higgs boson and a few other elementary particles like quarks, nuclei could not exist. Without nuclei, atoms could not exist. Without atoms, molecules could not exist. Quarks and bosons and family are the smallest known things…it is believed that they are not comprised of other things but simply…are. And because they exist, they have a mysterious power to build other things. In other words, all things exist because of these most elementarily elemental of elements.

I believe the economy works that way too. I may have struggled in Physics, but I did pretty well in Economics. I believe that the world economy, like the universe, exists because it is composed of increasingly smaller components like national economies and currencies and natural resources. They in turn are organized and exist, through the existence of roads and bridges, and internet infrastructure and usable sources of energy. They in turn are produced and delivered through corporations and employees and taxes paid by them both. And at the core, at the most elementarily elemental of all the economic elements in the world are entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are the quarks of the world economy. They just are.

The theory of the entrepreneurial quark is something like this: through a desire to improve the condition of their neighbors, and a willingness to pursue their own long-term interests by deferring their short term interests, these entrepreneurial quarks have built quite the universe.

My fundamental belief is that the world economy exists thanks to the basic entrepreneurial particles and not the other way around. These particles, like quarks, have mysterious behaviors that, when operating in the aggregate, provide profound changes in the universe around them. Why these elements would risk financial distress, familial bliss and more than two good nights’ sleep in a row is unknown, but there is a theory. The theory of the entrepreneurial quark is something like this: through a desire to improve the condition of their neighbors, and a willingness to pursue their own long-term interests by deferring their short term interests, these entrepreneurial quarks have built quite the universe.

In summary then, all natural things in the world exist thanks to quarks and all man-made things in the world exist thanks to entrepreneurs. From the bottom up, not from the top down. If you believe that it actually happened the other way around, well, you’re simply ignoring the basic laws of physics and of economics.

Wayne Barz is Manager of Entrepreneurial Services for Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania. Follow Wayne’s blog at www.TechonomicMan.com or on Twitter @TechonomicMan.