Sunday, February 13, 2011

Entrepreneurial America


American needs to renew her entrepreneurial spirit.
They didn't call it that back then, but entrepreneurship is what built this country. People from all over the world risk it all to just to get here, and people born here take risks in the hope of improving their lives.

Big Business and Big Government hate free markets

Capitalism is about efficiency, and that means making more money with less people, which explains why job growth has been so sluggish while the stock market climbs.

Big Business is bureaucratic, as is Big Government, which explains their natural affinity for one another, and their mutual disdain for entrepreneurship and the little guy. Capitalism galloping along the wild economic frontiers is distasteful, unorganized, incomprehensible. It’s scary and dangerous, but that is where the growth lies.

The Messy Paths of the Free Marketplace

Carl Schramm, in his article The Messy Path to Job Creation, explains that the lion's share of job creation is done by small companies and new startups. Government "job creation" should avoid picking favorites and instead create an environment that is inviting to potential entrepreneurs.

Schramm also advocates...
...stepping up efforts to get the less-represented parts of our population into the mix.

Our goal should be to double the number of Americans who are serious about starting businesses...
Our entrepreneurial spirit is almost crushed. A stultified, soul-destroying bureaucratic mindset has gripped us, and it is killing us, our economy and society. We've got to shake it if we're going to make it in the 21st century. Government and education are two places for us to start in on immediately.

Government Bureaucracy Needs Entrepreneurship
our bureaucracies are not just cumbersome time and creativity sucks; they are expensive as well. Federal, state and local government can become significantly cheaper as we strip out the layers of bureaucracy, dispense with work rules developed in some cases back when carbon paper ruled the world, and restructure patterns of organization and management that date back even farther.

People who like low taxes and people who like big government can agree at least that by systematically making government cheaper we can have all the government we need at rates we can afford (Mead)
How? Privatize it! 
Management of the frequency spectrum and government social programs, automobile and drivers licensing, airport security, and the thousands of other petty bureaucracies... Turn it over to private companies on fixed contracts, and they will figure out ways to make these government functions more efficient.

What will happen to all those government employees thrown out of work? The good ones will form companies or join existing ones to bid on the privatized government work, doing much of it from home or satellite offices, allowing government to sell off real estate and save on maintenance and utilities costs.

We Don't Need No Education!

I watched Pink Floyd's The Wall the other night, and I was again reminded how much I hated school.
Mediocre, conformity inducing, alienating, time wasting: the school system trains kids to sit still, follow directions, and move with the herd. As the economy becomes more fluid, more entrepreneurial, it is clear that raising one generation after another of aspiring time-serving bureaucrats is not very effective. But isn’t it also a terrible waste of human potential? (Mead)
This "big box" approach served its purpose 50 years ago, but it's time for a new model. Mead continues...
Maybe there’s something more we can teach our kids than the bland pablum of the standard school curriculum; maybe there are ways we can organize learning so that it is more individual, closer to home, better integrated with the world of work — and more rewarding.
The way forward is not stacking bureaucratic remedies upon bureaucratic failures, but private enterprise and entrepreneurship in education. Open it up! Make every school a charter school and hand out vouchers to everyone. Teachers Unions? To hell with them. We need parents and student unions.  The good teachers will end up better payed, and the bums will be flushed from the system.

Introducing true entrepreneurship in schooling at all levels will allow the market to discover the needs of the consumer and tailor services appropriately. Monopolistic Bureaucracies are inherently unable to do that.

Free-market capitalism is messy, especially for the small startups. Failure rates are high, but the consumer benefits, and stiff competition builds better employees and better business owners.  Government should lower the regulatory and legal barriers to market entry, as Australia does, and confine itself to setting the rules and punishing violators.  Uncle Sam needs to stop picking winners and losers, because he almost always gets it wrong.

http://blogs.forbes.com/carlschramm/2011/01/19/the-messy-path-to-creating-jobs/
http://blogs.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2011/01/17/the-next-american-upgrade/

13 comments:

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

"We need parents and student unions. The good teachers will end up better payed, and the bums will be flushed from the system."

Damn straight! I am sick and tired of reading in op-ed's to the Detroit News of just how good teachers and their union's are and yet an absolutely abysmal record exists for all to see!

This ship needs to be turned around and fast if this nation has any hope of a future. It cannot be done overnight but a good start would be to abolish tenure at all levels of academia.

Divine Theatre said...

I just recently had the misfortune to peruse a blog written by three teachers (yes, it takes three), wherein one opined on the miseries of the Free Market. You see, she had a "bad doctor", so the Free Market is a failure!
I wonder if she knows she has the option of going to another doctor. Unlike the wretched school system she has a choice. Her students, however, do not.

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

@Divine, Would you be so kind as to share exactly what blog that is?

p.s., I just started to follow your blog as I was remiss in not doing so at an earlier chance.

Divine Theatre said...

Thanks for following my blog, Christopher, although you will find it is mostly trite, shallow junk!
The aforementioned blog is here:
http://hamsandwich66.blogspot.com/?ext-ref=comm-sub-email

Silverfiddle said...

Divine: You blog is not trite, shallow junk. I'm not into art and design, so I don't have much to say there, but I do find non-political blogs interesting.

Wouldn't it be great if we didn't have to constantly argue over principles we all once took for granted?

Wouldn't it be great if there were no more Left Blogistan and Right Blogistan, but just Blogistan?

A Blogistan full of art, poetry, fishing sites and blogs on shooting shotguns, camping and woodworking?

Hopeless dreaming, I know...

BTW, Divine, I went to that blog a backed you up. Silly woman, using the corporatist-statist financial market as an example of a free market... And she's teaching our children.

Christopher - Conservative Perspective said...

Thanks Divine, I too have responded to that blog.

Divine Theatre said...

I cannot begin to tell you what I think of this next post.
http://hamsandwich66.blogspot.com/2010/04/in-eyes-of-beholder.html

WomanHonorThyself said...

amen bro but the Statists have their own agenda as sinister as it is~~

Silverfiddle said...

I read it and decided to step away...

I was going to ask a simple Thomas Sowell question: "How do you propose to pay for "free" education for all?" But it's Sunday, I just got back from shooting, and I don't feel like crapping in somebody's punchbowl.

I've learned that such discussions are futile. Progressives dream of more a bigger government to solve all ills, this in the face of all the contravening evidence.

Jersey McJones said...

I was speaking with my 97 year old grandma today (a quite lucid and intelligent 97 year old). She asked me, "Why are we still in this recession? Can't this new president do anything?" Needless to say, these were big questions and we had a long complicated conversion about them, but I can sum up the fundamental of it here:

The Baby Boomers, 76 million or so of them, control the bulk of the general wealth and are only just now beginning to retire and divest. Most of them still work, and are skilled professionals. The next generation is waiting for them to retire, move on, spend their money, and continue the economy for the future. But people live longer now, and can accrue wealth much later into life, so they can enjoy their silver years without fear. But until the Baby Boomers finally retire, and that's going to happen over next generation, their wealth will be tied up unproductively in banks. So, what do we do? Nothing. There's nothing we can do to change that. We simply have to wait, and we have to revisit financial regulation with the foresight that we live much longer now.

Whatever your personal preference of philosophy, this the reality of the situation. Over the course of the next twenty years, the economy is going to grow, and it will be be we people now between our mid-40's on down who can both profit from that and make this country a better place as well.

Right now may be a good time to think smaller, but soon enough we can start thinking big again.

JMJ

Divine Theatre said...

"The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich. "
P. J. O'Rourke

Silverfiddle said...

Oh, Jersey...

"Control the wealth?" It's their freakin' wealth! They can "control" it however they want.

"...tied up unproductively in banks"

Are you really that economically illiterate? So you think a bank digs a hole in the back yard and buries your savings there? THEY INVEST IT BY LENDING IT OUT TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO MAKE STUFF!!! It's called economic activity, and that is what powers a nation, not progressive hope and change schemes

Javelina Bomb said...

Good point, Silver. If you want to go into business, you don't go to school, you start a business. You learn by failure(s). Nowhere in government does anyone learn from failure because it's not their money that they're losing.