There's Money to Be Made
Forget "E Pluribus Unum." The real motto of the United States is "There's money to be made." It's no accident we print "In God we trust" on our cash, because materialism is our true national religion. This first struck me my sophomore year of college, when I took Econ 101. The professor told us a story of Soviet athletes (this was nine years before the Berlin Wall came down) visiting the United States, and being shocked by the sheer variety of products on grocery shelves. Granted, they came from what was, at that time, a planned economy, and they were often lucky to find one version of a product on the shelves, let alone the half dozen available at even a small market in America. But the question they asked is even more relevant today than it was then: Why do we need that many brands of ketchup? Or, if you really want to blow your mind with how many ways the same product can be packaged, take a look at the toothpaste aisle. I did just ...