When most people hear the word entrepreneurship they typically exhibit one of two reactions; they either remain indifferent or they immediately think "greedy bastards" and move on. There aren't too many people "out there" that fully grasp the absolutely key role that entrepreneurs play in an economy. Mainstream economic theories don’t even acknowledge their existence. Furthermore, there is always a busy body somewhere hell bent on demonstrating that entrepreneurship does nothing for "regular people". Entrepreneurship does not create jobs. Entrepreneurship does not increase the GDP and so on. To a degree they are correct, but that's not the point and it never was. Luckily enough, politicians have reversed their ways and they now realize that entrepreneurs not only vote but, more importantly, they can be extorted compelled forced incentivated (that's belter) to pay taxes "voluntarily".
The role of entrepreneurs is to produce in Praxeological terms. This is, to use their mind to create an idea and the means to execute it in order to convert it into a physical good or service. Entrepreneurs are the creators of the ideas that will improve our lives through the development of goods and services that will satisfy our needs (see Austrian Economics For Dummies - Human Labour).
The equation is simple; no entrepreneurs, no satisfaction. We know that it sounds like a sex ad, but it is no. It is reality.
When most people are asked about entrepreneurship and when can it be seen in action, they point towards patenting. But patenting is simply the outcome of entrepreneurship, one of many… and the most boring at that. Seriously. Who -other than a patent lawyer- may get excited by a patent?
Entrepreneurs are regular people just like you and us. They are those who stubbornly refuse to surrender to the impossibility of finding a solution until is too late because they have solved the problem. We, in our very tiny (we would say microscopic) way are entrepreneurs. This website is somewhat unique in the approach to Libertarianism and World Events. As such, entrepreneurs come in all sizes, shapes, forms, skills, ideas, objectives and anything else you may expect or may be incapable of expecting. If there is something that entrepreneurs do very well, is to do the unexpected. Such is the process of creation.
There is a wonderful site out there in the Internet called Kickstarter. It is the embodiment of XXI century entrepreneurship. Go take a look. You will find all kinds of entrepreneurial activities for your consideration. From arts to dance to fashion to food to music to technology and theater. Just as life is complex and varied so it is entrepreneurship. This is at the very core of free markets. The freedom to create and explore new goods and services that people may need. No other process can provide such variety, creativity and ingenuity, all designed to solve your problems and satisfy your needs. This is the essence of free markets; make a living serving other people.
Thanks to the internet it is now possible to obtain funds from micro-venture capitalists at the click of the mouse. What would in the past require a lawyer, a facilitator and many secretive meetings with possible private financiers, can now be accomplished online. Directly. With no intermediaries. At no cost. Micro-funding through the internet makes this possible. And one more thing, venture capital is the lifeblood of entrepreneurship.
Of course, this is not to say that entrepreneurship will always be successful. The free market is a relentless evolutionary engine. Serve the needs of your customer or go broke. Kickstarter's statistics so demonstrate. Only about 40% of all projects succeed in receiving sufficient funding, the remaining 60% are rejected by the public. But this is quite all right. It is better to reject a project at the earliest possible stage than spending inordinate amounts of money only to discover nobody wants the good or service it produces.
This lack of feedback is exactly what makes governments (and politicians) so incredibly wasteful and inefficient. They have no way to find out if something they are doing will be accepted or not by the people. Worse. They are doing so with peoples' money (i.e. your money). Worse. They are doing so without peoples' knowledge or consent. Worse. Even if they fail (and their failure rate is higher than 60%), they seldom accept failure, cut their losses and move on. That would be political suicide. Hence we end up with mammoth projects that nobody wants which continue to consume billions of dollars with no end in sight. And this is assuming that politicians actually want to spend our money on thing we want, which is usually not the case.
We like Kickstarter because it is a sample of peoples' creativity. There are all kinds of people presenting projects in it from all kinds of countries. This is another beautiful thing to have in mind. The citizenship of a project is irrelevant. People backing those projects couldn't care less who the entrepreneur is or what is his/her religion, political view, ethics, morality, skin color, language or how many toes in the right leg may he/she have. All it matters is whether or not a project satisfies a need. Simply beautiful!
We would like to mention only one project that caught our imagination. It is called Starscraper. It is a rocket developed from scratch by students from the University of Boston designed to elevate about 33 kg 135 km into space and return to earth. More importantly, it is designed to do this gently because its primary payload are scientific instruments. There are about 100 such launches per year, this is, the need is real.This project has been in development for 3 years now and it had a ludicrous budget of about 90,000 USD. The goal in Kickstarter is an even more ludicrous amount of 10,000 USD. These 100,000 USD were used to do R&D, purchase materials, manufacturing and so on. Basically, the entire project top-to-bottom was funded for the equivalent of one year worth of salary for one senior scientist at NASA. Is then any wonder that government agencies are so ridiculously inefficient? But there is more. This rocket is being designed to be reusable at an approximate cost of 8,000 USD per launch. Compare this number with NASA's of 1 million per launch non-reusable. An improvement of "only" 99.2 %!!! This is what entrepreneurship is all about. To refuse to give up. This is how civilization happens, not as some ridiculous government agencies declare when they say that "taxes are the price of civilization".
We believe in you. You are the solution not governments and above all, not politicians. You are the engine of civilization. All you have to do is to refuse to give up. There is a solution out there waiting for your problem. It is just a matter of finding it.
Note: please see the Glossary if you are unfamiliar with certain words.
