06-23-2016, 06:42 AM
So the ideal social order for entrepreneurialism is one in which labor is ultra-cheap, public services are minimal, taxes are low, unions are not in existence, regulation is practically nil, and education is devalued. Even the roads are bad, so people must rely upon doing everything locally. One continent is full of such places, so it ought to be a hotbed of economic development. It's Africa.
Let's ignore the right-wing claptrap about people being too well off for their own good. No generation wants its kids to be poorer than itself, and no generation is willing to give up much for the good of humanity. Nobody wants to be cheap labor, and nobody wants to work seventy-hour weeks in a consumer society if the rewards of the consumer society are available. It may be easier to be an employee than the operator of a small factory. Entrepreneurs create the consumer society while being unable to participate in the hedonistic consumerism that the entrepreneur-created society creates. Maybe a really-nasty 4T destroys so much capital that people must become shoe-string entrepreneurs. So people open cobbler shops, fruit stands, or hole-in-the-wall eateries before the overall economy can start producing automobiles again.
The highly-educated who owe huge amounts of student debt are incapable of creating workplace capital that they own. Maybe someone with a graduate degree might start a professional practice, but a veterinary clinic is no growth business. People heavily in debt must typically become employees -- not entrepreneurs.
Yes, some kids really are coddled, especially if their parents are members of the executive elite or the lucrative professions. They well know the consumer society, and they are unlikely to start dealing in used cars, If they start a business it is likely to have a 'party' atmosphere that fails to turn a profit, and it of course fails.
Let's remember that businesses need customers. Who patronizes small businesses? The middle-income groups. The middle-income groups have been getting squeezed through job losses, degradation of the workplace, and student-loan debt.
On the other side, maybe we are churning out profits without much true entrepreneurial activity. We are good at making things more expensive than they need be. Much of the profit in America is economic rent -- guaranteed streams of revenue for passive investments in financial 'services', sweetheart contracts between government and business (in public-private partnerships in which the taxpayers take most of the entrepreneurial risk and financiers get a reliable stream of profit). Americans are leaving rural areas and the Rust Belt for the big coastal cities where costs are high but attractions are plentiful. One does not start a business so that one can attend the symphony or get a sunburn on the beach. High incomes now come either from being a big landowner (farmer or landlord), owning huge amounts of business equity mostly from inheritance, high-paying professions, membership in the corporate nomenklatura, or even outright crime. Near-zero interest rates favor existing businesses getting loans at low rates, with loans to small businesses going through subprime lenders. It's easier to collect student loans from someone in hock to become a school teacher than to collect them from someone who sets up a small business.
Let's ignore the right-wing claptrap about people being too well off for their own good. No generation wants its kids to be poorer than itself, and no generation is willing to give up much for the good of humanity. Nobody wants to be cheap labor, and nobody wants to work seventy-hour weeks in a consumer society if the rewards of the consumer society are available. It may be easier to be an employee than the operator of a small factory. Entrepreneurs create the consumer society while being unable to participate in the hedonistic consumerism that the entrepreneur-created society creates. Maybe a really-nasty 4T destroys so much capital that people must become shoe-string entrepreneurs. So people open cobbler shops, fruit stands, or hole-in-the-wall eateries before the overall economy can start producing automobiles again.
The highly-educated who owe huge amounts of student debt are incapable of creating workplace capital that they own. Maybe someone with a graduate degree might start a professional practice, but a veterinary clinic is no growth business. People heavily in debt must typically become employees -- not entrepreneurs.
Yes, some kids really are coddled, especially if their parents are members of the executive elite or the lucrative professions. They well know the consumer society, and they are unlikely to start dealing in used cars, If they start a business it is likely to have a 'party' atmosphere that fails to turn a profit, and it of course fails.
Let's remember that businesses need customers. Who patronizes small businesses? The middle-income groups. The middle-income groups have been getting squeezed through job losses, degradation of the workplace, and student-loan debt.
On the other side, maybe we are churning out profits without much true entrepreneurial activity. We are good at making things more expensive than they need be. Much of the profit in America is economic rent -- guaranteed streams of revenue for passive investments in financial 'services', sweetheart contracts between government and business (in public-private partnerships in which the taxpayers take most of the entrepreneurial risk and financiers get a reliable stream of profit). Americans are leaving rural areas and the Rust Belt for the big coastal cities where costs are high but attractions are plentiful. One does not start a business so that one can attend the symphony or get a sunburn on the beach. High incomes now come either from being a big landowner (farmer or landlord), owning huge amounts of business equity mostly from inheritance, high-paying professions, membership in the corporate nomenklatura, or even outright crime. Near-zero interest rates favor existing businesses getting loans at low rates, with loans to small businesses going through subprime lenders. It's easier to collect student loans from someone in hock to become a school teacher than to collect them from someone who sets up a small business.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.