Delivered by Ron Manners AO during the Free Market Road Show at the Estonian Business School (Tallinn) on April 29th, 2026.
I’ve been thinking about this issue ‘the philosophy of entrepreneurship’ since Prof. Harold Dulan, University of Arkansas in U.S.A., walked into my office in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia, in 1976. He wanted to ask me some questions.
I realised that to him these questions were important as he had flown 30 hours to visit me. Incidentally, that is the same number of hours I have travelled to get from Perth, Australia, to Tallin in Estonia! So, I’m exhibiting equal dedication.
Prof. Dulan was authoring a book called, “Capital Formation Perspective for Australian Resource Development” and his major concern was that Australia was in real trouble due to the difficulty of Forming Capital.
In his research he had found there are only two people in Australia who shared his concerns. Apart from me, there was one economist in Sydney expressing similar thoughts.
I wondered how he had heard about my comments being made in Western Australia.
Important to realise that this was about 20 years before we had an effective internet. It seems my comments, made as President of the local Chamber of Commerce, had been relayed through the Chamber of Commerce network and found its way to U.S.A.
His book determined — “The question for Australia is time. How long can she wait to form the requisite capital, allow suitable migrant intake to accelerate, maximise the development of her natural resources, and assume a more sophisticated role in world industrialisation? It is a serious situation for Australia.”
I had become aware of the difficulty in raising capital from numerous efforts to launch nickel exploration companies and having to travel to London to raise sufficient capital.
There was truly little appetite for risk investment in Australia, at that time.
That had caused me to think about how the creeping bureaucratisation of commerce was suffocating entrepreneurship, at that time, and I sense that there are some concerns, here in Estonia, about the Brussels bureaucrats, similarly suffocating the great Estonian spirit of enterprise that is widely known around the world.
Entrepreneurship is a state of mind, and we must never cease the fight against the stealthy bureaucrats, as they extend their tentacles into our endeavours.
I am personally an entrepreneur and I’m sure I always have been.
I cannot say that I set out to become an entrepreneur. I became one through necessity through solving problems and backing myself out of disaster situations where ‘another way must be discovered as an escape hatch’.
My earlier efforts of entrepreneurship were simple step-by-step progressions. Firstly, as a paperboy selling newspapers. This was a great start in satisfying the needs of others and it taught me that by delivering service, with a smile, you might even get the occasional tip!
That was at age nine, when I got started with my grandfather’s pushbike, that he left to me. That bike collapsed about a year later and I bought a new bike from my accumulated capital. My earnings, which were all mine, (apart from what I paid my mother so I could gain my independence and pay my way around the home).
From the surplus I managed to buy a new push-bike and continue on that role and developed enough capital, from there, to venture into another business of making small, simple, and cheap radios. This was a thriving business and allowed me to generate enough capital to launch into my next business, which was inventing the dual roll toilet paper holder, as illustrated.
You must remember that this was at a time when toilet paper was a relatively new invention and I was annoyed when I was left with an empty roll.
Having the dual rolls seemed to be a straightforward way of having an insurance policy.
This was my first roaring success in business, at age fifteen, and it was so successful that I was spending too much time away from school, filling the orders, but failing exams. It was only after the stern reprimanding of my parents who reminded me of the importance of passing exams.
I then managed to carefully balance school, along with this business, so I could achieve a 51% pass rate, and still get about my business.
All this just goes to illustrate how simple life was in developing your own capital to expand further.
From the dual toilet roll holders, it enabled me to launch into my next venture of introducing to Kalgoorlie, which is my hometown, the first jukebox (does anyone know what a jukebox looked like, if not, I will explain).
That was another roaring success and that allowed me to generate sufficient capital to join with others and we build a drive-in theatre. Does anyone know what a ‘drive-in theatre’ is? (Explain)
That generated sufficient capital, so I was able to again join with others and build a bowling alley.
This was not so good.
Then, later in life, when I was starting a mining company at a time when there was an economic downturn and we moved the office into my home which meant we had to order another telephone number – pre mobile phones and we had to order another fixed line. To our amazement this phone never stopped ringing as the number had been owned by a lawn mowing contracting firm who had left town.
When I say, “entrepreneurship is a state of mind”, we didn’t get angry at being annoyed at the continuous telephone calls, we just realised we had a business and instead of buying any lawnmowers and satisfying those clients, we simply advertised and put the business up for sale as a thriving lawn-mowing business. We got lots of offers. We took the highest offer, of course, and our accountant advised we would have to pay some tax on this sale. So, we made it a cash offer and that way there was no tax to be paid.
Once again, that financed our further exploration. We started exploring and became successful as a gold mining company and became the third largest Australian-controlled gold mining company in Australia, over a period of 20 years.
That just goes to show how easy it was, back in those days, to form capital. Not anymore! Even if you wish to be a paperboy you cannot be a paperboy without having an Australian Business Number allocated to you and from that minute onward the Australian Taxation Office will hound you and then seize at least half of your earnings. You will never have enough surplus cash to further invest and move up the economic chain, as was once possible.
I recently took photos of young homeless people sleeping in the streets of Melbourne. They cannot get started. They don’t have an Australian Business Number.
I know how difficult it is for young people to launch themselves into the business world.
One of my hobbies is running the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation and over thirty years we have created opportunities for 3,000 young Australians and they are now employed all around the globe. At a recent seminar, when I was talking to the latest group of Mannkal Scholars, as we call them, I found their greatest concern. It came from the question to me of, “How will they know when they are successful?”
My reply was, “That you are successful when you manage to have money working for you, rather than you working for money.”
Then their concerns were obvious as they wondered how they would ever generate enough surplus capital, not only to start a business, but even to buy a home and start a family. The burden of the bureaucracy has become unbearable.
One of my favourite economists, Ludwig von Mises, once said, “That capitalism breathes through tax loopholes”.
Similarly, it requires careful structuring to enable capital to be successfully accumulated to prosper.
It is not only government, which is of concern to me, it is also the way that business conspires against consumers, and this was highlighted in Adam Smith’s book, The Wealth of Nations. Today, we see this evolving as “occupational licensing and the evolution of cartels, all designed to seek government protection against competition.”
There were times, in my business career, when I have been caught up in legal disputes when I have refused to join these ‘protection rackets’ and I was prosecuted by the Minister for Consumer Affairs, who later became our State Premier.
I was successful in my legal defence and several years later it gave me immense joy to see that former State Premier, himself, go to jail for corruption.
Over the years I have been actively involved in developing policy papers to fight against anti-business legislation, and I will attach an example of the style of document and comment on their success.
| Seminar Background Paper by Ron Manners President, Kalgoorlie Chamber of Commerce June 8 1977 Introductory comment from Ron, December 1, 2015: Although written for an economic seminar in 1977, it’s amazing how pertinent these comments are to a 2015 ‘reform starved’ Australia. (and again in 2026, with a Trotsky style of Federal Government) This document was referred to by Lang Hancock in Sydney and Melbourne speeches, resulting in hundreds of requests for copies. The 1977s equivalent of ‘going viral’. |
Meanwhile, I quote Thomas Jefferson, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”.
Don’t let the bureaucracy suffocate your entrepreneurial spirit.
