Jim Whitt, Contributing Editor

Cyberia, The Final Frontier?

“Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise, her five-year mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilization, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” Sorry Captain Kirk, but with all due respect, there’s a new frontier called cyberspace.

I wanted to learn more about cyberspace so I logged onto the Internet and looked it up in an online dictionary. It offered this simple definition: “The electronic medium of computer networks, in which online communication takes place.” I also found that someone creatively coined a new word — Cyberia. Cyberia is defined as “the computer and Internet world and its virtual reality, the ‘global village’ of electronic communication; also called cyberworld, cyberspace.” For the technologically challenged, Cyberia may at first appear to be much like Siberia — a place of hopelessness and despair.

But once you learn to navigate cyberspace, you discover that you can pilot your own starship and explore it from the comfort of your own home or office. Sit down at your computer and you’re ready to go anywhere in the World Wide Web in a matter of nanoseconds by merely logging on. You can connect with anyone in the universe if they have an email address. You can buy, sell and trade and have merchandise delivered directly to you – or to your customers – all with a few keystrokes. You can read the newspaper or a book online. You can do research on any subject by Googling (if you don’t know how to Google you’re in Siberia not Cyberia). You can go to www.WhittEnterprises.com and find out how we can help you and your organization reach your full potential. While you’re there, you can even watch a video of me speaking. You can boldly go anywhere you want in cyberspace. As Yakov Smirnoff might say, “Cyberia…what a country!”

The Internet may be the final frontier for free enterprise. It has survived and thrived because it has evolved with almost no government control. In most cases, you can purchase products via the Web, tax free. This, of course, has governments licking their chops. There was a conference in Tunisia recently to determine if the U.N. should control the World Wide Web or if it should be sliced up, giving local governments control. That should send all of us screaming and running for the exits. The quickest way to corrupt anything would be to put the U.N. in charge. The second quickest way to corrupt anything would be to give the government control.

Fortunately, none of the above happened. Cyberspace is safe for now. But we should always be vigilant because free enterprise, whatever form it may take, is under constant assault – even here in the United States, the land of the free. Here’s a case in point. One of the captains of cyberspace, if not the admiral, is Bill Gates. This college dropout launched Microsoft into orbit and changed the world of computing. Their products made navigating the maze of technology simple enough that even people like me can use a computer. This made Bill a billionaire – and a target. Bill Gates has got to be stopped. Why? Because Microsoft is an evil empire! Bill Gates is taking over the world!

When it comes to evil empires, Wal-Mart has to be at the top of the list. It’s hard to pick up a newspaper or watch the news without being lectured on how they enslave workers and are trying to take over the world. But, wait a minute! I thought Microsoft was trying to take over the world. That’s it! There’s a conspiracy between Microsoft and Wal-Mart to take over the world! I did a Google search on Wal-Mart and found a Web site called WalmartWatch.com, which promotes “a nationwide campaign to reveal the harmful impact of Wal-Mart on American families and demand reform of their business practices.” A recent study reached the conclusion that Wal-Mart is bad for the economy.

Now, I’m not here to defend Microsoft or Wal-Mart. But regardless of what you think of these two companies, it’s absurd to say that either is bad for the economy. Why? Because in a free-market economy the consumer determines what is good or bad. Consumers have conducted their own studies and have overwhelmingly concluded that these companies are good for the economy by trading their hard earned money for the products and services Wal-Mart and Microsoft provide. When consumers decide to spend their money somewhere else and Wal-Mart and Microsoft go broke, then you can say they are bad for the economy. And that’s the way free enterprise works.

There are those who want to legislate Wal-Mart out of business. The Maryland legislature just passed a bill forcing companies with at least 10,000 employees to spend at least 8 percent of their payroll on healthcare expenses. This thinly disguised legislation, pushed by labor unions, was designed specifically to target Wal-Mart. Now that they have succeeded, they are pressuring 30 other states to do the same.

When free enterprise is under assault in some other segment of our economy, we should all be concerned. If it can happen in Maryland it can happen in Missouri or Montana. How long will it be before some union or activist group will decide to use the same tactic with animal agriculture as they did with Wal-Mart in Maryland? After all, cattle feeders are just as evil as Wal-Mart aren’t they? What if your state legislature passed a law requiring commercial feeding operations to spend a specific percentage of their payrolls on healthcare? Maybe they start with feedyards with 100,000 head or more to make it look like they are punishing the big corporate feeders. Then they can say they are just trying to protect the little guys from the big, evil conglomerates. But before anyone starts shouting hooray, how long do you think it will be before they target feedyards with capacities of 50,000 or 25,000 or 10,000 or even 1,000 head?

The key word in free enterprise is free . Free enterprise works best when it is free from artificial controls. It gives control to the consumer. The consumer chooses which businesses succeed by how well they serve. When there is a service or product void, history has proven that competition will arise somewhere, somehow and make its way into the marketplace.

Maybe free enterprise is the real final frontier. People naturally migrate to frontiers. Why? Because we naturally seek freedom and the frontier is where you find freedom in its purest form. That’s why we should fight to keep the free market free regardless of whether it’s Cyberia or Siberia. Because when freedom is threatened anywhere, it is threatened everywhere.

Please e-mail comments to Jim Whitt at jim@whittenterprises.com.

Cargill Animal Nutrition is proud to sponsor the “Whitt and Wisdom” column which offers business management and leadership advice from management consultant Jim Whitt. Cargill is an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services.