President Obama has proclaimed today to be National Entrepreneurs’ Day. The president who has brought us regime uncertainty, more regulations, more government intrusion into the economy, more debt, and is proposing to raise taxes on productive businesses and individuals wants to celebrate entrepreneurship?
I was alerted to National Entrepreneurs’ Day via an email (not online) from the Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration. The EDA email makes it clear that the administration wishes to celebrate political entrepreneurship, not market entrepreneurship.
In his book, The Myth of the Robber Barons, historian Burton Folsom explains the difference:
A key point about the steamship industry is that the government played an active role right from the start in both America and England. Right away this separates two groups of entrepreneurs — those who sought subsidies and those who didn’t. Those who tried to succeed in steamboating primarily through federal aid, pools, vote buying, or stock speculation we will classify as political entrepreneurs. Those who tried to succeed in steamboating primarily by creating and marketing a superior product at a low cost we will classify as market entrepreneurs. No entrepreneur fits perfectly into one category or the other, but most fall generally into one category or the other. The political entrepreneur often fits the classic Robber Baron mold; they stifled productivity (through monopolies and pools), corrupted business and politics, and dulled America’s competitive edge. Market entrepreneurs, by contrast, often made decisive and unpredictable contributions to American economic development.
As Obama administration achievements, the EDA touts increased Small Business Administration subsidies and a smorgasbord of industrial planning contained in last year’s stimulus package:
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act served as the cornerstone for this new foundation by pumping $100 billion into the economy to help us tackle some of the grand challenges of the 21st century in diverse fields from healthcare IT and health research, to clean energy, to smart grids, and high speed trains. Recovery Act investments are creating a virtuous cycle of investment, innovation, and job creation that have so far led to the creation of 3 million new jobs.
Wrong. The stimulus has fueled an unvirtuous cycle of political entrepreneurship in which business interests chase federal hand-outs for endeavors sanctioned by inside-the-Beltway planners. Political entrepreneurs have less incentive to innovate and are naturally reluctant to criticize the government because they don’t want to bite the hand that’s feeding them. As Chris Edwards puts it, they become “tools of the state.”
If the administration were really interested in promoting entrepreneurship, it would repudiate the anti-market policies it has pursued thus far. That’s obviously not going to happen, so it’s going to be up to congressional Republicans to repudiate their own history of supporting federal subsidies. In other words, the GOP’s re-found fondness for limited government rhetoric is going to have to actually be matched by action.