Comment by shimman
4 hours ago
Looking at the US culture, it's not hard to see entrepreneurship as a societal disease.
Let's not act like "entrepreneurship" is necessary at all to develop technology. Western governments simply have no ability to find their own destination as any attempt to get off the US big tech ramp comes with threats to destroy defense treaties, weapons contracts, and tariffs with their major ally.
Hardly anything to do with "entrepreneurship" and more about the insidious nature of US imperialism and how damaging neoliberalism is to the world.
Good on Europeans for rejecting this American blight.
> Looking at the US culture, it's not hard to see entrepreneurship as a societal disease.
It's easy if you're in some nihilistic and cynical echochamber like reddit. For everybody else, entrepreneurship is still quite celebrated and seen as a positive for society.
Really? Who do you know who isn't working in tech and finds something to celebrate in entrepreneurship?
In Australia one of the most common paths to wealth outside of owning property is literally taking up a trade as an apprentice, then after a couple of years beginning your own plumbing/electrician/brick laying/etc business.
That's still very highly celebrated. Interestingly enough, people with Mediterranean backgrounds also feel this way (there's lots of crossover here btw).
Owning your own business is one of the best things one can do in that culture. There's a story in a Taleb book about a Lebanese (I think?) man who went on to become one of the execs at Mobil or some other oil company, and his mother was still disappointed that he didn't own his own company.
I am thoroughly perplexed by this statement. Every single person who starts their own restaurant, painting company, events planning company, etc. is an entrepreneur. The appeal of saving up enough to break free of your job and start working for yourself is so pervasive as to be almost entirely unspoken. It’s something that, being raised as an American, you simply believe is good in the same way you believe that stealing is bad.
And yet I can’t name a single entrepreneur that I know personally outside of tech.
>Good on Europeans for rejecting this American blight.
Reject it? They pay hundreds of billions for it. Every year. For decades now.
Europe runs on American tech, using American and Chinese hardware, powered by American energy, and protected by American defense.
Surely you're confused here, because Europe didn't reject these things, they offshored them and then teased Americans about working so hard. Europe's economic situation right now is borderline catastrophic, mostly because they built a society on someone else's support in the uncannily calm times after the wall fell.
Entrepreneurship is the fountain of wealth. What else are you going to do, extract natural resources?
Well said Comrade.