Tomáš Březina, nicknamed the “concrete king”, is among the candidates for Czech president. He started his business on a green field, built a concrete group with several thousand employees and today he is a very rich and very active retiree.
Among the many things he has said in various interviews, his view on entrepreneurship is particularly interesting.
Březina clearly and unequivocally says that a normal entrepreneur does NOT do it for profit! Yes, after all, people do business because they want to make a living, they want to do their job, they enjoy it, they like to see satisfied customers, they are proud to create opportunities for other people – it’s a mixture. And the market gives feedback so that the entrepreneur doesn’t do something downright stupid, doesn’t produce crappy quality, or doesn’t produce something that nobody needs.
If you fall for the neoliberal game of “whatever is profitable is also right,” you are doing more for the demise of capitalism than all the communists in the world.
But that’s the opposite of focusing on profit! If the profiteers, who are only interested in extracting profit from employees and customers in any way they can (and preferably selling the company as quickly as possible), should prevail, we’d better be back to socialism.
Which is also a basic message to the supporters of free enterprise. You want to defend capitalism? Then defend it from such predators in the first place! If you fall for the neoliberal game of “whatever is profitable is also right,” you are doing more for the demise of capitalism than all the communists in the world. Anyone who prevents the tax and regulatory framework from favouring work over profit-making is working for the demise of business.
