Understanding economic development: be an entrepreneur

I find columns like this recent one in the Albuquerque Journal which urges retailers and other chain businesses to look to Southwest Albuquerque especially frustrating. The author complains that chains like Flying Star and Weck’s are overlooking his neighborhood.

Leave aside people like our esteemed Senator Tom Udall who believes that we should all support “small businesses.” Presumably, this eliminates chains like Flying Star and Weck’s, and it most certainly eliminates Lowe’s (another retailer the author complains about not having).

But, if there are so many great business opportunities in Southwest Albuquerque, why doesn’t the author and some of his friends and neighbors gather some money and start their own business? That is, after all, how most of these big chains became big. Someone at some time decided to quit complaining and put their money on the line to start something they believed in. It is the entreprenurial spirit that made this country great and it is this mind-set, not that of whiners and “Occupiers” that is going to get us back to prosperity.

Of course, when you do succeed and people come out in droves to oppose you, it might make you think twice about wanting to start that business in the first place.