(2006-11-27) Kling Us Entrepreneurial Culture

Arnold Kling thinks that the key to US Culture is our support of the Entrepreneur (he's doing a series driven by Carl Schramm's Enrepreneurial Imperative book). My definition of an entrepreneur is someone who both launches a new enterprise and bears considerable risk and accountability relative to its success... An important subset of entrepreneurs (and of intrapreneurs) might be termed Change Agent-s. A change agent's new enterprise defies conventional wisdom and habits in some important way. Famous entrepreneurs, from Thomas Edison to Steven Jobs, are change agents. Change Agent-s encounter resistance from people who are unwilling or unable to see the benefits of Innovation, which explains why personal charisma and salesmanship can be important to their success... In Continental Europe (EU), labor market regulations serve to keep small businesses small and to ossify the work forces at larger companies. In the United States, it is much easier for new businesses to expand and for old businesses to shed unnecessary workers... An entrepreneurial culture can emerge only in a setting where Private Property enjoys protection. When government fails to prevent crime, or when government corruption and expropriation serve the same functions as crime, the price for entrepreneurs is steep... China seems more dynamic than Europe, but I would argue that China's government-controlled financial system ultimately is not compatible with American-style entrepreneurship. Instead, we may have more in common with other nations of the Anglosphere, as well as such entrepreneurial outposts as India, Israel, and Singapore... And, if our goal is to have more countries that look like America, then having them adopt a democratic political system may not be necessary and will certainly not be sufficient. Instead, our primary focus should be on fostering an entrepreneurial economic system.

EdmundPhelps frames this as a Dynamist culture. He also notes the Intrinsic benefit of having this Freedom.

Arnold Kling's next piece deals the Income Inequality implications of marriage behavior (who you marry and whether you stay married). It's easier to be an Entrepreneur with a supportive and income-producing spouse (Two Income Family). A 2003 analysis by GaryBurtless, an economist at the Brookings Institution, found that a rising correlation of husband-and-wife earnings accounted for 13 percent of the considerable growth in economic inequality between 1979 and 1996.

His 3rd piece deals with Educating Kids. The incumbent policy is more of the same. Both parties in Washington champion more government involvement in primary education and more subsidies for existing colleges and universities. The innovative policy is to support any alternative to our current education system. Ultimately, we would trust consumers to keep the best alternatives and discard the rest... In my view, the key to improving education is removing entry barriers and allowing alternative schooling experiments to flourish. From this perspective, the politicians of both parties who are most strongly "pro-education" are in fact the biggest obstacles to improvement, since their policies serve only to entrench the educational establishment.