>> ^Skeeve:

Does anyone else find it really sad that he has his 7 and 9 year old kids worrying about money already? Shouldn't our kids have the fantasy that anything is possible without having to worry that they might not have enough money one day? Yes entrepreneurs are often villianized; all they think about is money and there are surely more important things in life.


Worrying? How about teaching. Why we try to keep kids in a box is beyond me. I heard a great analogy about raising kids comparing them to kites. Give them all the room you can, when they start to crash, that is when you step in. Learning the most skills you can at the youngest possible age is what some kids want to do anyway, foster that!

They always forget about the brown people >> ^missly12:

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Does anyone else find it really sad that he has his 7 and 9 year old kids worrying about money already? Shouldn't our kids have the fantasy that anything is possible without having to worry that they might not have enough money one day? Yes entrepreneurs are often villianized; all they think about is money and there are surely more important things in life.

I have to admit, the self-directed nature of his talk was something else that turned me off, but I could not put my finger on it.

While there are talks where the speakers are also the subjects, the ones I tend to enjoy are about people doing the extraordinary (e.g., refugee of horrendous war, survivor of major disaster, explored a wild and dangerous part of the earth, etc). What this speaker has done is quite ordinary. While not every kid on the block has a lemonade stand, enough are entrepreneurial so that his stories don't stand out too much.

His idea that kids that have aptitude for business or raw business sense should be tracked and encouraged is a good one. I was expecting to see a study where this idea was actually put into action. Or at least some discussion of that idea with some depth, even if it hadn't been implemented. But all the speaker did was talk about himself and his kids. And, to top it off, he inundated his presentation with the most clichéd slides imaginable.

>> ^crotchflame:

I think worse than any of that is that the talk is boring and hopelessly self-involved.

My turn off is that the speaker makes a gross and obvious untrue statement: that Ayn Rand's book is the only one that makes the entrepreneur the hero. It has really nothing to do with the content of Ayn Rand's book, but only reflects on the speaker's ignorance.

And who is trying to suppress the book? I see alot of critique of the book and the author, but that is not the same as suppression. Ayn Rand can stand (or fall) on her own.

When did I comment on her poor literary qualities or personal flaws? And how do you know what I have read? How do you know my personal political affiliations?

I merely said that it's not the only book that makes the entrepreneur the hero. And that people use her works to support their delusions of grandeur.

Now that's 2 examples of uninformed and willfully ignorant Ayn Rand fans.>> ^Crake:

^ I hereby create Crake's Law: "any mention of Ayn Rand or her works on the internet must immediately be followed up by a liberal (who hasn't read any Rand), citing her poor literary qualities and personal flaws as arguments against her philosophy"
Seriously people, it's just a book, it won't hurt you.

This guy is an idiot and uninformed. And not well read.

I don't think schoolroom performance is so closely correlated to intelligence, but in this guy's case, he is both stupid and low performing.

Two silly items in the beginning turned me off to the rest of his talk:

MBA programs do have entrepreneurial programs. In fact, they are rated on such programs. (Not that you have to get an MBA to start a business.)

Ayn Rand? Seriously? That's the only book that makes the entrepreneur the hero? He is definitely not well read. It occurs to me that many unexceptional people use Ayn Rand to bolster their delusions of grandeur.

Hey thanks Blanky

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
*quality *doublepromote

Here's a bigger picture...
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB118677584137994489.html

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Blanky, let me tell you the rags to riches story of young entrepreneur Terry Gou. ---Snipped---

Blanky, let me tell you the rags to riches story of young entrepreneur Terry Gou. He fled communist China to Taiwan, where he used $7500 borrowed from his mom to start a business manufacturing TV dials. In 3 and a half decades, he turned his small business into Foxconn, a billion dollar manufacturing corporation which employs a million workers and produces popular items for Apple, Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft.

Foxconn operates a huge facility called 'the campus', which is a humongous all inclusive structure/city that includes factories, work facilities, living quarters, stores, shops, markets and entertainment. Employees spend almost their entire lives in 'the campus'.

Foxconn is pretty much regulation free, which makes it an ideal environment for workers. Workers on average make $5 to $10 a day and are expected to work multiple 12 hour shifts. They have little recourse for the many injuries and deaths caused by unsafe working conditions and the negative psychological effects of not sleeping. They are not allowed to congregate in groups of more than 2 people on the sidewalk. They have access to one single corporate TV channel, which is produced in house. Motivational slogans are posted all over the campus for encouragement. Anyone who steps out of line or questions authority is met with punishment and intimidation. Employees are also not permitted to leave or enter the campus without a corporate ID badge in good standing.

Foxconn has been in the news recently because its employees have started committing suicide in increasingly larger numbers. Terry Gou has attempted to slow this trend by raising pay from a nickel an hour to a dime.

This is how your free market utopia went wrong.

This is an Orwellian nightmare, but from a purely capitalist perspective, this place is a raging success. It provides millions of jobs and produces high quality, popular consumer products for a very reasonable price; products that you and I both own and cherish.

In a deregulated free market, how does anyone compete with this? What's to keep this from becoming the status quo if it isn't already? This, in a nutshell, is why I fear the Ron Paul Love-o-lution. Foxconn could not happen today in America because of regulations, but with each little bit of accountability that republicans, libertarians and democrats strip away, the closer we get.

Your vision is a beautiful one. The tiny village with a baker, a butcher, a tailor, a shopkeep, a barber and a 5 cent nickelodeon, all working hard and living well together in peace and harmony. It's beautiful. I want to live there too, at least until Terry Gou discovers it and builds a factory there.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

I think that's a key point. When the US has eschewed "socialist" welfare state programs as it has generally done over the last 30 years - in favour of free enterprise and privatisation - the result has been to concentrate wealth at the top of the spectrum with the country club set. I don't see any free enterprise solution to this.

Victorian England had a lot of concentrated wealth at the top, and a huge pool of poor workers and very little regulation. That led to work houses and rampant pollution. It also (thankfully) led to a strong labour uprising that redistributed that wealth with a progressive tax system, creating a large middle-class. Bad for the rich? Absolutely. Vastly better for the whole country? Definitely, yes.

>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^blankfist:
@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

I'm starting to get curious, do you ever read my comments all the way to the end?
Maybe I need to be less whimsical. My point was that today's flawed reality is a utopia compared to your utopian proposals.
As for "why not give free market capitalism a chance", I may as well say "why not give Marxist Communism a chance"? I mean, obviously real communism has never been tried -- just ask the modern communists.
There's been no radical boost to growth during America's 30-year march to the right, and shrinking the welfare state and dismantling unions hasn't boosted the median income, so why would we ever keep marching on until we get to the ultimate extreme?
The modern progressive movement isn't on a march towards communism, it's trying to optimize society through an iterative scientific process. We look at things that have failed, or things that have worked elsewhere, and try to learn from them, and build a better mousetrap.
I don't really know what the end-state of modern liberalism looks like. I think it will always be looking to change and evolve over time as new problems and new solutions present themselves.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.


I'm starting to get curious, do you ever read my comments all the way to the end?

Maybe I need to be less whimsical. My point was that today's flawed reality is a utopia compared to your utopian proposals.

As for "why not give free market capitalism a chance", I may as well say "why not give Marxist Communism a chance"? I mean, obviously real communism has never been tried -- just ask the modern communists.

There's been no radical boost to growth during America's 30-year march to the right, and shrinking the welfare state and dismantling unions hasn't boosted the median income, so why would we ever keep marching on until we get to the ultimate extreme?

The modern progressive movement isn't on a march towards communism, it's trying to optimize society through an iterative scientific process. We look at things that have failed, or things that have worked elsewhere, and try to learn from them, and build a better mousetrap.

I don't really know what the end-state of modern liberalism looks like. I think it will always be looking to change and evolve over time as new problems and new solutions present themselves.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

No, I live in a welfare state. Compared to Australia, the US is a RonPaulian fever dream.

>> ^blankfist:

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:
1. regulated market.
2. welfare state
That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.
Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

@NetRunner, you offered the following as your utopian idea for new government:

1. regulated market.
2. welfare state

That's exactly what we have now. Exactly. Government regulates every single industry. Every one. We have a massive welfare state. Our economy is also going to shit and entrepreneurs cannot stay afloat with all the regulations in order to create more jobs. It's a recipe for failure.

Why not give free market Capitalism a chance? Your regulated markets and welfare state spending simply is not sustainable.

@rougy, corporations or cooperatives. Same thing.

You still didn't give me a better system. I'd love to hear it. How can you keep people employed without giving individuals the freedom to create jobs? I tried opening a small business here in LA, but I was making significantly less hiring people, paying for lawyers, paying for an accountant, paying the taxes, etc. than I am now working selfishly as a self-employed contractor. I am no longer working to create jobs because it's too expensive. I get a lot less business, but the only employee to pay is me.

So how can you expect people to pay for housing and feeding people? How do you plan on creating jobs for people in your system? You cannot actually believe government created employment to be sustainable, do you?

I'm listening. Taxing the rich entrepreneurs maybe? You think that will incentivize them to create more jobs? Or create less so to increase their personal profits like I did? Please, I want to know the better alternative to free market Capitalism.