EXCERPT:
"VENICE, La.—The Deepwater Horizon oil spill might have spelled doom for Cajun Unlimited, a charter fishing business here in the southeast corner of the state.
The company lost $100,000 worth of booked trips for the summer—high season in this world-class sport-fishing area—as the worst offshore environmental disaster ever to afflict the U.S. scared off the tourists.
But instead of packing up and leaving, owner Jesse Morris, a fourth-generation fisherman born and raised here, dug in. Mr. Morris turned a food kitchen set up for locals and visiting sport fishermen into a small industry that feeds the hordes hired by BP PLC for the cleanup. His staff nearly doubled to about 15 people, who prepare between 1,200 and 1,500 meal boxes a day, for a profit of about $3 each.
Mr. Morris said he has been billing twice as much from the expanded food business as he would from charter fishing....
COMMENT: This is what entrepreneurs do. They recognize opportunities to use resources more effectively. The owner's motivation is to make profit for himself, but the end result is that BP gets the food its workers need. No one told the owner to switch from charter fishing to food supply. He looked at the resources he had, he evaluated the demand for the various products he could produce with them, and made the switch.
QUESTION: If the charter-fishing company had been owned and operated by the government, and Mr. Morris had been the manager employed by the government with a salary that did not depend on the company's revenues from serving customers, and accountable to a supervisor in Washington, do you think the company would have switched from charter service to food supply more quickly, or less quickly?
