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This article buys into the idea that entrepreneurship is hard, and most people can't do it. Beyond being an exercise in self-love, this is the perspective that

by lethain 18y ago

This article buys into the idea that entrepreneurship is hard, and most people can't do it. Beyond being an exercise in self-love, this is the perspective that the 'big dumb companies' crave. Whether we say "damn, I'm not good enough to leave" or we say "damn, I'm one of the few that is good enough to get out", we're still buying into the vision that industrialists wrought for us a century ago. Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs. The barriers to entrepreneurship are not inherent flaws in the majority of humanity, but intentionally manufactured barriers to promote the industrial model of production and consumption. Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street.

dgordon 18y ago
"Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs." Exactly. The same is apparently (according to John Taylor Gatto, writing in The Underground History of American Education) true of the Amish today. Are the Amish just that gifted with genes for entrepreneurialism? I think not. It's merely conventional, and a recent convention at that, to work for a Faceless Big Company by default, as pg points out in his essay "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss."
thomasmallen 18y ago
> Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street. I understand what you're saying, but that's the wrong way to say it. I've learned more about entrepreneurship from hustlers I've known than anyone else, and hip hop usually captures that spirit better than any other music. Entrepreneurship takes balls, and your stones have to be massive to flip dimes and quarters under the noses of teachers and cops.
- fallentimes 18y ago
  You're right. Few things are as entrepreneurial as drug dealing or even ticket scalping :).

by lethain 18y ago

dgordon 18y ago

"Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs." Exactly. The same is apparently (according to John Taylor Gatto, writing in The Underground History of American Education) true of the Amish today. Are the Amish just that gifted with genes for entrepreneurialism? I think not. It's merely conventional, and a recent convention at that, to work for a Faceless Big Company by default, as pg points out in his essay "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss."

thomasmallen 18y ago

> Whenever you're cribbing euphemisms off of eight year old 50 Cents' songs, then you're probably driving the wrong way down a one way street. I understand what you're saying, but that's the wrong way to say it. I've learned more about entrepreneurship from hustlers I've known than anyone else, and hip hop usually captures that spirit better than any other music. Entrepreneurship takes balls, and your stones have to be massive to flip dimes and quarters under the noses of teachers and cops.

fallentimes 18y ago
You're right. Few things are as entrepreneurial as drug dealing or even ticket scalping :).