Obama on Success and Self Interest

President Obama shared his supremely wise (and interesting) thoughts on success at Arizona State University's commencement address(video here).

Isn't it interesting... Obama seems to define success as a total lack of self-interest. And yet, he was elected by a bunch of self-interested people, each looking to get all they can from their government.

As a person of faith, I find it hard to disagree with his sentiments of serving others. But, I think Obama demonstrates a shallow understanding to say that if you seek to maximize your pay, position, or title then you are inherently selfish and can't possibly have anyone else in mind. Zig Ziglar once said, "If you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want."

As evidence, I want to look at a historically momentous achievement and ask what the result of self interest was. Think, for a moment, about the invention of the light bulb. Was Thomas Edison looking to feed the hungry, poor, or disenfranchised by inventing it? While I won't claim to speak for his motivation, I'll let the fact that he commercialized his invention by starting General Electric (a company which now owns NBC -- one of Obama's biggest fans) speak for itself. (For those of you in the back of the class, he intended to profit from his invention.) And yet, that arguably self-interested invention has made the world a much better place.

What Obama fails to understand is that when people act in their own self-interest, the world is often improved as a result of their actions. And while that statement is not always true (sometimes some bad apples do act to the detriment of all), the converse is rarely true: When people are only allowed to act in the interest of others, most people lose all motivation to work at all.