We reap tremendous benefits from the contributions of these innovators, both as we consume their products and services and as we are employed in their businesses.  Just imagine a few of the many beneficial innovations we have seen in only the past few years.  Cars are much safer while requiring far fewer resources to produce and operate than in the past.  Roads are safer, and the paving process is much more efficient and less polluting.  We have cell phones that enable us to make sure our children and parents are alright even when they are traveling or that allow us to call for help from almost anywhere.  We have inexpensive GPS devices that tell us how to get where we want to go.  We have computers and the Internet, allowing us to communicate, to have vast amounts of information at our fingertips, and to produce audio and visual products we never even imagined back in the days of mimeographs and carbon paper and party telephone lines.  We have many new medical technologies, including new cures for diseases and new artificial knees and hips that allow us to remain active and pain-free instead of spending years in wheelchairs.  Most of us take these numerous innovations for granted as being a natural part of life.  We shouldn’t. 

We need to appreciate the struggles innovators go through in order to make their dreams a reality, the risks they take, and the many hurdles and odds they have to overcome.  If we want them to continue to take those risks and struggle to overcome those odds, we need private property rights, the rule of law, a patent system, and a tax system that allow them to reap the rewards when they succeed.   

If, instead, we take the innovators for granted and adopt policies that punish rather than reward them, then those innovations will slow or even cease.  We may even slide backwards as our resources are depleted and we have not created new technologies to replace them. 

Unfortunately, most politicians and most voters do not understand this.  They think we can tax the successful innovators and entrepreneurs and distribute the fruits of their labor to others without losing future innovations.  They are wrong.

We don’t see that such policies will cause the potential innovator or entrepreneur to decide to go on vacation and relax rather than pursue his creative dreams.  Why should he take the risks when there are no rewards? 

We don’t see the innovations he would have produced that would have saved lives, that would have lifted many people out of poverty, or that would have made the environment cleaner but that will never come into existence. 

Since we can’t see what has not yet been produced, we also may make the mistake of voting for the politician who establishes the public policies that burden the entrepreneurs and prevent those innovations from coming into existence, because those politicians claim to “feel our pain” and to care for poor people or others who find themselves in unfortunate circumstances.  The trouble is that those policies result in more poverty and more misery!    If only we could see!