We Are Not All Entrepreneurs

[phantom power]

It's the age old conservative myth - everybody could be a Rich Successful Entrepreneur(tm) if we'd just suck it up, or stop sucking on the govt teat, or whatever.

I'm pretty sure it's macro-economically impossible for everybody to be rich and own a business. Not that conservatives ever let reality get in the way of their world view.

Scott Galupo makes an important point in his post on Paul Ryan’s speech last night. Measuring the distance between Ryan’s vision and the lived experience of many Americans, Galupo observes that:

In Ryan’s intellectual bubble, there are job creators and entrepreneurs on one side and parasites on the other. There is no account of the vast gray expanse of janitors, waitresses, hotel front-desk clerks, nurses, highway maintenance workers, airport baggage handlers, and taxi drivers. They work hard, but at the end of the day, what can they be said to have “built”?

This disconnect goes beyond Ryan. Again and again last night, we heard stories of poor people who became successful because of their hard work and smart decisions. Susanna Martinez described the growth of her parents’ security business “from one 18-year-old guarding a bingo-to more than 125 people in three states.” Rand Paul told the story of his constituents, the Tang family. According to Paul, Mr. and Mrs. Tang are Cambodian refugees who work long hours in the donut shop they own, but how have sent their children on to extraordinary academic achievement. Even Ann Romney contributed to the rags-to-riches story contest. Although many Americans know her as a quarter-billionaire enthusiast for equestrian sports, Mrs. Romney thought it important to inform us that she is the granddaughter of a Welsh coal miner.

These stories make us feel good about America. But their repetition ad nauseam reveals the insularity of the Romney campaign. Most Americans are not entrepreneurs or business owners. And the ranks of employers aren’t limited to the blue-collar types Galupo mentions. They include vast swathes of the middle class, including millions of government employees who would presumably lose their jobs if the Ryan budget were enacted. (People who work for military contractors would apparently be safe.)

We heard a great deal last night about what a President Romney would do about America’s enemies, at least as John McCain and Condoleeza Rice understand them. We also heard something about Romney’s dedication to freedom, although without much explanation of what that means. But we heard almost nothing about what another Republican administration offers Americans who work jobs rather than “creating” them.

It’s part of the so-called American dream, as Sen. Paul put it, that “any among us can become the next Thomas Edison, the next Henry Ford, the next Ronald Reagan…” Another part is that those who don’t reach the towering heights of achievement can hope for stable lives that include a reasonable measure of comfort. Republicans once endorsed this rather modest ambition. Does anyone believe they care about it now?

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/we-are-not-all-entrepreneurs/

[HughBeaumont]

1. Therein lies the problem -

Just because anybody CAN become the next _______ doesn't mean everybody WILL or even SHOULD. If everyone was exemplary (as Thomas Friedman thinks we're all required to be), no one would be. If life were run by a stack-ranking system where every year, the bottom 10% performers are purged, it'd be counterproductive and a complete drain on resources. If corporations operated as they did for multiple purposes in the 1950s, and not for a SOLE purpose as they do now, things wouldn't be so vastly inequitable and unimproved as they are now.

[frazzled]

2. It's not just janitors and waitresses in the "non-entrepreneur" class

It's research scientists, mathematicians, teachers and professors, artists and writers, pharmacists, journalists, airline pilots ... the list could go on.

Imagine a country in which everyone owned a donut shop, and there were no scientists or sculptors or symphony musicians or carpenters. We'd be nothing.

[XemaSab]

12. What's wrong with donuts?

The real problem is that while the republican party says it's the party of people who get up at 2 AM to make donuts, it's really the party of people who get up at 7 AM to go move money around.

Donuts are an actual product, and donut shops employ real people who work hard and produce a public good.

Stockbrokers? Notsomuch.

[frazzled]

13. Boy, you didn't understand my post

Sorry.

[XemaSab]

15. I did get your post, but I went off on a tangent

I apologize for that.

The world is made richer by scientists and musicians and doctors and other people who don't "create jobs," and it's also made richer by donut shop owners.

There's nothing wrong with being any of these things.

There IS something wrong with being a person whose entire job is being a capitalist god, while telling himself that he's a job creator. The modern republican party is some corporate fatcat sitting in a corner office on the 50th floor telling himself that he's exactly the same as a southeast Asian immigrant running a donut shop, and it's despicable.

[HiPointDem]

16. if everyone was an 'entrepreneur' who would the entrepreneurs get to do the actual work?

[freshwest]

3. Excellent read and the comments were great, too.

[railsback]

4. How true

Most people aren't entrepreneurs. Most people aren't scientists, mathematicians, musicians, or lawyers. Its just the order of nature. I'm lucky enough to have a niche that keeps me busy. Very few people can do what I do because not everybody is born with the ability to pick up a pencil, brush or other medium and create imagery for commercial use, or transfer that over to computer generated art. Its not a gloat, just a realization of what I'm able to do to make money, and I'm grateful every day I don't have to slog to someone else's office and work for an hourly wage. I've tried to teach others what I do because I get swamped sometimes and having help would let me get more sleep, but have had no success. Its like Tony Bennett trying to teach me how to sing. Its just not in my molecular structure.

[haele]

5. It's difficult for many people to understand that a leader's success depends on those being lead.

A entrepreneur only succeeds if there's a market for his or her business and there's sufficient help to back up the efforts it takes to build that business.
Like an entire family willing to work the shop, a bank or friends and family willing to provide capital, a local community that has sufficient infrastructure to provide location and logistical support...
(...all the notaries, lawyers and clerks, handymen and repairmen, road crews, general engineers, water-department workers, drivers, and all the other support workers that get product "A" to location "B" safely and efficiently - otherwise known to Ms. Rand's acolytes as "the moocher class" - being 85% of the people in this country that works for wages instead of "running a business&quot
The person who "owns" the business, "runs" the office, or "leads" a team is only as good as his or her workforce, and is only as successful as the amount of customer demands and how well they are met.
That's why for every successful family-business donut shop or bakery story (like the one down the street from me run by my next-door neighbor from Laos and his extended family), there are twenty stories of equally hard-working family businesses that fail.

BTW, the "Cambodian" or "Vietnamese" immigrant family donut shop is almost a cliche, just like "the 3rd-generation Mexican-American family run Taco shop with the best burritos in town" - almost every large town and city that has that particular immigrant population has at least two or three, and they really generally only do enough business to pay mortgages on the family house and help supplement scholarships and other aid for the kids who can get through college rather than pay a whole bill.

Y'know, when it comes to the American Dream, I've got a shitload of good, innovative green ideas running through my head that if I only had the time off my responsibilities (keeping a roof over the heads of my family, providing food and health care), some help (both domestic and for research/idea testing) and a couple million dollars to research and market, I'd be able to become an entrepreneur and probably make a fortune - even if I don't get conned into selling off that business to a monopolizing mega-corp capital investment firm when I become successful and innovative enough to be noticed.
But - since it's not just me that might end up under a bridge if I fail, I have the responsibility to weigh sacrifices and risks before I test my safety nets.
As I still have the option to just work hard at a decent job to support me and my family instead of breaking my back and health just for perhaps a 2% chance of being as successful enough to keep a roof over our heads for the next 10 year while I "make a go at building it myself", many of those great ideas will remain on my mental story-board drawing pad while I'm working my butt off for wages until I can get the time and figure a way to napkin engineer them enough to find and interest the right people.

Which brings me to my last point, learned by observing supposedly innovative big engineering businesses competing for R&D work for the government.

What is never really understood by the general public is that the big businesses actually hate competition and real innovation, because it costs way too much money either to innovate or to catch up to the competition if they develop a major new idea or product.
Most "innovative" products one sees being developed - even at DARPA - are usually either incremental improvements or easily implemented re-tooling of existing products or ideas.
Lots of companies prefer to to get new ideas sponsoring "engineering" contests and mentoring projects for HS and College students (which are good for the students, but shouldn't be used to look at the science a new way), and spend most of their R&D dollars investing in ways to figure a way to jack up costs by packaging this "innovation" up in a unique design, and market these "new" and "improved" designs.

Haele

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. The "entrepreneur" fetish that's taken over this country over the last 30 years is laughable

As soon as somebody tells me that he or she is an "entrepreneur," I basically stop listening to what that person has to say.

I stand with the workers, period.

[bemildred]

7. Yep. nt

[phantom power]

8. entrepreneurs are important, but so are a lot of other things

American economic discourse has become almost exactly as realistic as proposing that we could all be successful if we all just tried harder to become professional athletes or famous singers.

90% of business startups fail. And very few of that other 10% make anybody wealthy.

[reformist2]

9. A lot of us don't want to be, either!

[hifiguy]

10. The comments were shockingly sane and truthful.

There may be a few conservatives - not Republicans - left with functioning cerebral cortices.

Damned good read.

[reformist2]

14. Yep. There'd be a lot of left/right agreement, if we could somehow call a truce on the culture wars.

[hifiguy]

11. Kick! nt