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Comment by mhurron | Hacker News Reader

> Hence, I am an entrepreneur.

Petite bourgeoisie. How wonderful, everything that was old is new again.

I suppose that is a derogatory remark, but I never claimed that to be an entrepreneur is a new thing. It is demonstrably not. What I did try to suggest is that it is perhaps a good way to deconstruct this problem.

He didn't say that being an entrepreneur is a new thing. He made a reference to this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petite_bourgeoisie ("Petite bourgeoisie ... is a French term (sometimes derogatory) referring to a social class comprising semi-autonomous peasantry and small-scale merchants whose politico-economic ideological stance is determined by reflecting that of a haute (high) bourgeoisie, with which the petite bourgeoisie seeks to identify itself, and whose bourgeois morality it strives to imitate.")

Ultimately, I think business, whether you're talking about small ones or big ones, socially responsible ones or irresponsible ones, are neither the problem nor the solution. In a market economy, the health of the middle class is function of the supply versus the demand for labor.

Being a well-intentioned entrepreneur isn't going to have any impact on the equilibrium. The minute you become big enough to have a non-zero impact, you'll be big enough to feel the heat of competition from China, India, etc, and will be forced to adopt whatever labor-saving measures they adopt.

I understand the term. I was trying to underscore (unsuccessfully, apparently) that my original point was to be an entrepreneur whose principles depart from that of the current establishment. In other words, what I was suggesting was the exact opposite.

I could only interpret the response as a glib remark that to be an entrepreneur in any sense necessarily makes you an imitator of this establishment. My view on this, however, is slightly less cynical.

>Being a well-intentioned entrepreneur isn't going to have any impact on the equilibrium. The minute you become big enough to have a non-zero impact, you'll be big enough to feel the heat of competition from China, India, etc, and will be forced to adopt whatever labor-saving measures they adopt.

Well said.

Is there a game going on already.. once you get in, you are just another player that must play by the rules.. so how you could change the rules?

The way i see it, you need to create new games, with distinct rules, in a way this alternative game could get so big as the other one to make a stand against it in the first place..

Some ideas that can subvert the current rules for instance, are the ones like the social entrepreneurship.. companies that do profit, with a proper working economical engine; but are not for-profit..

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