By most measures, the poor in the United States today enjoy a higher standard of living than the middle class did in 1971.

If people are too dimwitted to choose on their own the foods they eat, how can they possibly be trusted to choose on their own the persons who represent them in government? The evidence does indeed suggest that Americans too often choose as their elected representatives greasy, pork-laden, and processed hot dogs who offer only empty calories as they clog the arteries of commerce.

The job of entrepreneurs, investors, and business owners and managers is to invest and to produce in ways that are most likely to yield the highest profit in the market. Period. By doing so, businesses follow the best available signals to guide them to promote the well-being of others. The additional goals that Mr. Obama wants business people to pursue sound splendid when trumpeted in public speeches but, in practice, are far too nebulous to be workable. No business person can possibly know enough to do consistently and successfully what Mr. Obama asks.

As on so many issues, Adam Smith’s wisdom remains relevant: “By pursuing his own interest he [the business person] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good.”

Obama says that regulation hasn’t killed industry. Well, true enough since most regulation is in fact pushed by the largest industries as a means of imposing costs on smaller firms and startups. Regulation doesn’t kill industry; it cartelizes it. Most of the costs are of the unseen type. What’s wrong here is his whole theory of the glory of government, that it is somehow the key to making our lives better. For example, he says that it is thanks to government that “a typical fridge now costs half as much and uses a quarter of the energy that it once did — and you don’t have to defrost, chipping at that stuff.” Are we really supposed to believe that private industry has no interest in lowering costs or increasing efficiency, that without government, private enterprise would never improve products?

With regime change perhaps imminent in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, and amid all the calls for democracy and political freedom, it’s a good time to remind ourselves that desirable as political freedom may be, it’s no guarantee of prosperity. For that you need capitalism.