Entrepreneurs Do Not Take Risks

When I first read this in Peter Druckers' Innovation and Entrepreneurship, I was astonished.  How could he say such a thing?  I read on. He explained why.  I thought back to every successful entrepreneur I had ever met.  None had ever taken any risks.  Drucker was right.  How did I come to believe "entrepreneurs take risks?"  Like everyone else, the nonsense is repeated over and over, until we all "know" it is "true."  Such is pavlovian conditioning.

Of course there is risk in life, such as I may crash skiing or die in a plane crash. C'est la morte, when your number is up, it's up.

But entrepreneurs are motivated out of suffering (passion) and the joy they find in working on ameliorating the problem they experience.  And from this work, the lifestyle follows, and the money follows...  here is a discussion, mid-stream, on this point:

You philosophy got straight to "do," as opposed to "have."  You want nice house in a nice neighborhood, so you can walk down the street unmolested.  You want the choice to eat a better meal.  You want to do altruism.

Money does not equal freedom, it remains what it is, and that is a medium of exchange and a store of value.  You can exchange it for goods and services at the going rate.  Freedom remains where it is lodged, and that is in choice, where we decide what to do.

Two errors: time, and "money is the lifeblood of the economy."  You leave out that with time, one can do all of the things that money buys.  Money may speed things up, but not always.  And when time runs out, your choices are over, even when you are still alive.  It takes time to earn the money, and time to spend it.  Self employed, you control when and how you engage in the act of spending money, and where and on what.  That takes time, doing what you are doing.  Before and after taxes.  I defined success (in another one of these inquiries) as when you worry more about time than money.  When time is in the equation, money is managed as just another means to an end.

Human action, not money,  is the lifeblood of the economy. Most, almost all, of the economy is non-monetary.  The grandma who takes care of the kids.  The volunteer fireman (70% of the firefighters in USA, unpaid).  A friend who put together a meal, throws a party.  At any given night, most people are sitting down to a meal made at home, not sitting in restaurants.  An clear example is the Amish community,  thriving community wherein all is relationships, barter and community effort, and very little money.  They are so interdependent that the are legally exempt from paying money into social security.  Because of what they do, they need not pay.  Now in our wider economy, we have vast swathes of people who build houses based on credit (not money) for people who produce other goods and services, and so on, tallied by promises to pay, at some point.  The Amish system down in writing, on a gargantuan scale. It ain't money, it is a mind-boggling aggregation of promises to pay money, but it is not money.  Problem is this is so hard to track, and so easy to scam, that it is very unstable.  Many rich fail, although some get richer.  The self-employed, like the Amish, plod along, happy with what we have, because the focus is in "do."

Most neighborhoods are safe, but fear grips both extremes, the poor with the drug deals outside, the wealthy in their gated communities.

I've been to plenty of $250 a plate dinners, for business.  It makes sense there.  A few with family, which make little sense.  Why put up with the pomp and circumstance of such fine meals, when the real meal I look forward to each year is the family reunion feast at a shack on the beach where we eat the free crab, clams, oysters, shrimp and mussels and home brew.  For all meals, it is the company that matters, and what the say and do that make it memorable and enjoyable.  Setting can be lovely, and camping can be a lovely setting.

Everyday, any given day, we are dealt a hand.  The hand we are dealt never matters, it is how we play the cards, what we do that matters.  A lot of money does not change that day.  And I think that is the delusional thing, believing it will.

It is people's actions that divide and separate, not money.   I think maybe you are assigning an emotional value to money: how much can I get, what can I do with it? Some psychological calculation: the more I have the better I'll feel.  You would not be unique in this, almost everyone does.  I happen to think that is a conditioned response, and I think it keeps people from being as creative as they might, I think it denies the rest of us the good of others creativity.

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