Wednesday, March 31, 2021

A Rapper and Kirznerian Entrepreneurship?

Israel Kirzner

 Mark Addleman emails:

Here's a guy who is living Kirzner's entrepreneurship:

 RW response:

This is certainly one way an entrepreneur can act in a Kirznerian way without capital to succeed in a free market. However, this is not the essence of Kirznerian entrepreneurship.

It is not necessarily about picking scraps on the way to success. It is about knowing how to acquire all the capital that is needed even if it is not scraps but MAJOR CAPITAL.

It is about an entrepreneur being alert to an opportunity including where to get the capital necessary, be it scraps or major money.

The best object lesson of an entrepreneur, without any money, using much more than scraps is the co-founder of WeWork which is now a billion-dollar corporation. He had a great vision but had nowhere near the capital to buy or rent his first office space, so he went about finding a building owner who supplied the capital (a building) for his first office space.

I repeat because many miss this, Kirznerian entrepreneurship is about being alert to the entire opportunity whether it can be put together with scarps or knowing where major capital can be found for a project.

As I have stated before, Prof. Kirzner deserves the Nobel Prize in economics for this insight. It explains how the stereotypical poor boy with no capital of his own but with superior alertness can succeed.

This destroys the idea that some special privilege is needed (including capital) to succeed in a free market economy. This is not the case. It is all about entrepreneurial skill.

2 comments:

  1. "This destroys the idea that some special privilege is needed (including capital) to succeed in a free market economy. Thist is not the case. It is all about entrepreneurial skill."

    Mises said the same thing. I just can't find the quote.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yeah, Tom MacDonald is probably and example for the Kirzner thing as far as I understand it but I recently just became aware of the dude and even though I generally dislike rap/hip hop etc and most modern era popular music, the guy is pretty interesting ( and no, not because of his appearance that is irrelevant to me) and is from what I gather a two man show with his lady; they control everything. He is using the platforms available and taking advantage of that like others before him. Whether that is revolutionary entrepreneurship , nah probably not but then I think the guy is a different kind of thinker. Artists are sometimes more caught up in their creative mind. Money, success, etc - what the typical entrepreneur pursues is sometimes lost on the artist. Not a value judgement. Just an observation from someone who has dealt with the very same issue for several decades.

    ReplyDelete