By Ken Langone
Wednesday, June 17, 2020
When future historians tell the story of this pandemic, I
hope American capitalism is not so despised and maligned by the professoriate
that they leave out the pivotal role private enterprise and individual autonomy
played, not just in slowing and ultimately defeating the virus, but in getting
the country back to work.
It was individual Americans who started socially
distancing in March, as COVID-19 took hold in Italy and many mayors and
governors were still calling fears of contagion from China overblown, if not
bigoted. By the time our leaders came around to the crisis, millions of
American workers and their employers were already taking steps to keep each
other safer. And while Republicans and Democrats in Washington played politics
with financial aid aimed at blunting the great economic pain necessitated by
shutdowns, thousands of businesses, trade associations, and patrons were
starting relief funds for the most heavily impacted.
Among the companies that could stay open, I will admit I
am biased in my pride for one in particular.
Home Depot, the company I helped found, boosted wages and
doubled overtime to acknowledge the valor of workers who wanted to stay on the
job during some very scary times. Knowing that kids were at home because
schools were closed, Home Depot expanded paid time off to help parents and made
hours more flexible for older workers who were deemed at risk for COVID-19
infection. Many other companies offered similar incentives.
When it came time to attack the virus itself, businesses
around the country showed the same decency and ingenuity, quickly repurposing
to meet demand for personal protective equipment (PPE) such as masks and gowns
for frontline medical workers. Apparel company Brooks Brothers and MLB uniform
tailor Fanatics switched their stitch to make masks. So did hockey company
Bauer and retail stores David’s Bridal and Jo-Ann Stores. A NASCAR team, North
Carolina-based Stewart-Haas Racing, helped its neighbors by putting idle racing
transports back on track, delivering 2 million medical masks to Novant Health
facilities in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Virginia. Whiskey and vodka
distilleries, especially small, locally owned ones, switched to making bottles
of alcohol-based hand sanitizer.
Cutting-edge manufacturers used 3-D printers to make PPE.
Charlottesville-based women’s shoemaker OESH made a mask that had soft edges,
making its seal as strong if not better than what would be provided by N95-rated
masks. There wasn’t time for FDA approval (which is a question we should take
up later), but the skillful engineering made the mask a success.
One Delaware company, ILC Dover, worked with the National
Institute for Occupational Safety and Health to shorten the regulatory review
process from one month to a week. That way the company could make its new
Powered Air Purifying Respirator hood, which provides 100 times the protection
of an N95 mask, available to health-care workers attending to patients with
COVID-19.
National big-box stores, corner-store pharmacy chains,
and delivery services really stepped up in hiring temporary workers. Wal-Mart,
Walgreens, CVS, Costco, 7-Eleven, Ace Hardware, Dollar Tree, Dollar General,
Domino’s, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s, Instacart, FedEx, UPS, and grocery chains
around the country all upped their hiring to meet demand and provide
opportunities to the recently unemployed.
Perhaps most strikingly of all, tech companies have
really shined. Amazon, Uber Eats, GrubHub and dozens like them made it possible
to keep a social distance while keeping the homestead supplied with groceries
and supplies. Tech companies didn’t just keep us fed, they kept us on the job.
Employers used existing, but often untapped, IT capabilities provided by
companies such as Zoom, Microsoft, Apple, and Google to transform a cubicle and
conference-room workforce into a remote team interacting through a camera and
video screen. In the short term this kept a company’s productivity up, and
long-term applications could create a more flexible workplace that could better
support parents or employees who want to live in a rural area.
Of course, the biggest heroes are yet to earn their fame.
Hard at work are the world’s leading scientific and research minds toiling for
vaccines and treatments. Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson, and Moderna all have
billion-dollar investments into fast-tracking a cure.
Throughout this entire ordeal, which is far from over,
our blinkered press has focused on the negative, on anecdotes of price gouging,
temporary supply-chain disruptions and shortages, and companies that saw
outbreaks in the workplace.
But it takes a special kind of dumb to look at all the
institutions that came up short under the pandemic and put free enterprise
anywhere near the top of the list. Our free-enterprise system is the best at
allocating resources and responding to crises. The private sector should be
praised, not demonized, for its efforts during this pandemic. The examples are
numerous, and they keep on coming.
The best thing the government did, arguably, is get out
of the way. Government watchdog Americans for Tax Reform has identified more
than 600 rules or regulations that were changed to give companies the room to
innovate and adapt to meet the demand for equipment and other goods created by
the pandemic. My hunch is these are probably 600 regulations that do not need
to come back once this is over.
We are not a perfect country, but we do have something
that will always help us prevail — either over a pandemic or the next pitfall
we encounter. We have regular people who dare to do heroic things.
Americans don’t need to be told what to do, and companies don’t need command-and-control regulation to do what’s best for a community. That’s because Americans’ entrepreneurial spirit is the biggest factor flattening the curve.
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