Government Entrepreneurship Training?

By, Chris Rossini

I'm not making this up.

Government, the institution that coercively takes your money and then arbitrarily disperses it, is teaching entrepreneurship!

This same institution, that does not use price signals and does not use profits or losses as a guide, is going to teach you how to be an entrepreneur....For free!!!

BusinessWeek, which should be chewing this to pieces (but isn't) reports:

After Kim Osterhoudt lost her human resources job at a financial services firm in a 2009 downsizing, she tried to eke out a living selling homemade jam near her home in Belle Mead, N.J. To improve her odds of success, she enrolled last year in Entrepreneur University, a free, 60-hour, local entrepreneurship training program. Launched by the New Jersey Department of Labor in partnership with the nonprofit Intersect Fund, the program supports small business development in poor and distressed areas of the state.

Today Osterhoudt’s 18 varieties of jam are popular at farmer’s markets and distributed at a handful of specialty markets. Osterhoudt says her business is on track to hit $60,000 in revenue this year—double that of 2011—but she has yet to turn a profit and has been living off the proceeds of a home she sold shortly after she lost her job. Her goal this year is to pay back the $15,000 she withdrew from her retirement account in order to start the company.

Sounds about right.

Government taught her how to generate losses. Perhaps they're showing slides on how the U.S. Postal Service or Amtrak operate.

There's more:

Because these programs are new, their long-term economic impact remains unproven. That doesn’t bother Brian McGowan, former chief operating officer of the U.S. Economic Development Administration, who applauds the uptick he has encountered this year in local programs to encourage entrepreneurship.

Losses to the taxpayers for funding this charade?

Losses to the poor people that start a business after this education?

Don't worry about it! The important thing is there's an uptick in these types of programs.

Bottom line: The chance of government teaching you how to be an entrepreneur is about as likely as Donald Trump teaching you etiquete skills.

Want a real education on sharpening your entrepreneurial skills? First you have to learn how markets work. Learn about exchange, prices, the importance of profit & loss signals, and how central banks throw wrenches into the economy and create unbelievable distortions.

Read Rothbard for all of the above.

Then you'll at least be in the right mindset to start using capital to take advantage of potentially profitable opportunities.

You'll also understand that the very last place to ever learn entrepreneurial skills are from government.