A death announcement last week in the Houston Chronicle caught my eye. I never met the late Stephen Simon, but what I read made me realize that the quiet heroes and heroines of free-market capitalism need to be saluted now and then. For they are the wealth creators and real philanthropists versus the political system’s wealth redistributionists and wealth destroyers.
Here is the essence of this man. An engineer. More than 40 years with a major energy company in a variety of advancing positions at home and abroad. Successful. Private sector philanthropist with his time and money.
And through it all, a “heroic capitalist” in the Smith-Smiles-Rand tradition (see Part I of my Capitalism at Work). A practitioner of Principled Entrepreneurship ™.
Think of what Julian Simon would have said about Stephen Simon (no relation): He created more than he consumed to leave us resource richer.…