The
'hard-working' entrepreneur: another liberal myth collapses in
America
The myth
of the young, incompatible and risky businessman who finds success
thanks to hard work and (perhaps) a kind of genetic predisposition on
risk-taking has collapsed officially at the end of 2017. If you are
born poor you will probably die poor. And if you are born rich you
will do whatever you want.
Philip
Alston experienced some horrible pictures from his trip to the US. He
saw people with rotten teeth who could not visit a dentist. He saw
homeless and citizens dying from curable diseases or just from ...
environmental pollution.
As a UN
Special Rapporteur on Extreme Poverty and Human Rights, he had the
duty to record that at least one in eight inhabitants of the world's
richest country lives below the poverty line and presented some
examples that would make his report a bit more "attractive"
to the international media.
Alston
also included a phrase, which is the final shot on the half-dead body
of the American Dream: "If you want to talk about the American
Dream," he said, "you should know that a child born poor in
the US, statistically has almost no chance of escaping poverty".
His
conclusion contradicts the core of the myth of excellence, which
argues that hard work is all that is required for someone to secure
success in liberal America ... or even in the Greece of crisis.
In fact,
a recent survey, published in the Child Development Review, says that
poor children, who believe in concepts such as "meritocracy",
"excellence" and "social justice", end up being
disappointed and often are being led to dangerous and
self-destructive behaviors "as they begin to challenge
themselves for problems they could not control."
Instead,
as the head of the research, Erin Godfrey, explained, “If you're in
an advantaged position in society, believing the system is fair and
that everyone could just get ahead if they just tried hard enough
doesn't create any conflict for you … [you] can feel good about how
[you] made it,”
Additionally,
Alston's and Godfrey's remarks, overthrow a legend that has spread
over recent years as a mystical heresy at the heart of modern
capitalism: that entrepreneurs often owe their success not only to
excellence but also to a genetic predisposition.
According
to the theory, risk taking by young entrepreneurs, starting their own
companies, is a hereditary gift. Obviously, because this argument is
in conflict with the principles of capitalism and brings us back to
the years of enlightened aristocracy, its devotees emphasize that it
is not enough to have the gene of the entrepreneur unless you combine
it with hard work that will distinguish you from the rest
(excellence).
The
hundreds of texts that promote this genetic theory have a unique
source of a book by Scott Shane, who teaches entrepreneurship (?) at
the University of Case Western Reserve in the US - therefore a person
without any knowledge of genetics.
Instead,
dozens of recent scientific research show that the increased trend
towards high risk, which (admittedly) exhibit quite a lot of
successful entrepreneurs, is usually related ... to dad's or mom's
money.
As early
as 1998, the researchers David Blanchflower and Andrew Oswald from
the University of Warwick, have shown that risk-taking is only
"inherited" in the sense that successful entrepreneurs have
inherited a significant amount from their relatives, which they used
as initial capital in their business. In a survey in 2013, economists
Ross Levine and Rona Rubenstein, from University of California,
Berkeley, said that "if someone does not have money from his
family, the chances of opening his own business are diminishing."
Researchers
do not usually try to prove that the entrepreneurs use Dad's money to
open their business (although this is usually the case) but that
family property is an invisible safety net that allows them to take
more risky business decisions.
Therefore,
what they inherited is not a gene, but the comfort of "smashing
their face" with safely and - if the investment succeeds - the
audacity to appear as risky, successful entrepreneurs.
Article
by Aris Chatzistefanou under the title 'Entrepreneur with dad's
money', translated from the original source:
Related:
USA needs universal education in Marxist theory, stat!
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