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Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

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Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#31

Post by [deleted] »

autokad wrote: post #12
antognini wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Historians write papers. As do philosophers and classicists. There are papers in literary criticism, law, music theory, and theology, and none of them have experiments, mathematics, or data (at least in the scientific sense of the word). I don't think that makes those endeavors invalid. The difference between an academic paper and a blog post is that an academic paper needs to fit into the context of the academic lit…

But this is economics, not music theory. And while a history paper titled 'Hitler did not start world war 2' may not have any data to back up its claim, if it didn't then it wouldn't be a very good one.

[deleted]

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#32

Post by rini17 »

talentedcoin wrote: post #16
stupidcar wrote: post #5

It's weird to see stuff like this published as a "paper", as if it were a scientific endeavour, when there doesn't seem to be any experiment, mathematics, or even data involved. Just a lot of conjecture sprinkled with citations. It seems like the epitome of Feynman's cargo cult science. I'm actually very sympathetic with the idea being advanced, I'm just not sure what really separates this and a blog post.

A paper needs an idea that is well-thought-out and well-cited. Outside of math or the natural sciences, it does not need experiments, mathematics, or data.

If you label one sector of economy as harmful and another one as beneficial, why not use actual data to support your claim? Unlike thesis like "goto considered harmful" there are enough data out there. Authors even mention the actual size of the untrepreneurial industry in $, but don't dig any further.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#33

Post by NicolasGorden »

I read the actual research and it seems to me the authors are confounding a lot of things. I believe people with a decent background in business and economics should see this. A few things that jumped out at me:

1- The rise of specialized services that lower the entrance bars for many industries.

2- The rise of the wantrepreneur.

3- "Inefficient market offerings" that reduce innovation.

The answer to these:

1- Yes by lowering the entrance bar with SAAS products, regular people can create companies more easily. This means many people that shouldn't be company owners are now. But this is hardly a bad thing. The converse to this is that many people who should be entrepreneurs that weren't are.

2- This is really complex. And yes, the ease of starting a business and businesses that service businesses will always play into this segment. But it's hard to blame mailchimp for the rise of the wantrepreneur, which seems to be a logical conclusion if we follow the premise of the study. Since that's not a logical conclusion, it follows the study's premise isn't very sound.

3- As I understand it, inefficiencies in the production of services means more people offering a service than can be sustained by the demand of such services. Such events are normal when industries are in flux. It's actually a good thing, as it fosters competition and the surviving brands are stronger, leaner and smarter than they would be if there wasn't such 'inefficiencies'.

I'm really not sure what people see in this study. Even the language used is... emotional? lacking? I mean, it's just not language that lends to nuance and understanding. It's almost marketing like. And I say this as someone who is a digital marketeer, so I'm not using it as an insult. It just feels out of place, I expect analytical language in a study.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#34

Post by groby_b »

vikramkr wrote: post #2

Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…

You know that you're in essence saying "While I'm uneducated in the field, I demand all dialogue happens at my level", right?

This is not how science works. Never has, never will. Like any specialty, it will - inevitably - develop its own jargon. Not as gatekeeping, but because shorthand matters for efficient communication.

If you'd like to understand topics at a more layperson level, science papers are not what you want to read. You want to look to science communicators, who do the work of breaking it down, dejargonizing, and making it understandable for a wider audience.

Demanding science is conducted at the lowest common denominator level makes science impossible.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#35

Post by _2d30 »

neilk wrote: post #22

This is fascinating. In passing, they mention how the highly privileged may conspicuously consume 'immaterial' goods for status, and the less privileged do more traditional conspicuous consumption of expensive goods. So if wantrepreneurism is a form of conspicuous consumption for the privileged - or those who desire to become so - what's the equivalent for the less privileged? I think it has to be MLM and Instagram i…

Ha, I really like this analysis. Has a Venkatesh Rao feel to it.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#36

Post by rmrfstar »

stupidcar wrote: post #5

It's weird to see stuff like this published as a "paper", as if it were a scientific endeavour, when there doesn't seem to be any experiment, mathematics, or even data involved. Just a lot of conjecture sprinkled with citations. It seems like the epitome of Feynman's cargo cult science. I'm actually very sympathetic with the idea being advanced, I'm just not sure what really separates this and a blog post.

I haven't read this paper, but...

What separates a good paper from a blog post is the attention it devotes to second and third order consequences, its discussion and dismissal of likely counter-arguments, and the author's framing of the new idea in the context of existing literature. This is true for social science papers and law-review articles as much as it is true for machine learning and engineering papers.

These are the hallmarks of careful analysis that are generally lacking in hot-take blog posts.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#37

Post by DenisM »

neilk wrote: post #22

This is fascinating. In passing, they mention how the highly privileged may conspicuously consume 'immaterial' goods for status, and the less privileged do more traditional conspicuous consumption of expensive goods. So if wantrepreneurism is a form of conspicuous consumption for the privileged - or those who desire to become so - what's the equivalent for the less privileged? I think it has to be MLM and Instagram i…

> Maybe it's about what forms of success one is exposed to and what one sees is popular among one's peers?

Fashion is fashion. For some it's a rebellion, a coming of age story, for others it's a way to blend in with the peers, be one of the cool guys.

On a tangent: many (most?) investors are playing the same game, only by proxy. This is why the VC industry is losing money as a whole - they aren't there for the money.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#38

Post by vikramkr »

dang wrote: post #28
vikramkr wrote: post #2

Truly a miracle it is to witness the birth of new jargon. For academics working on understanding things like societal/economic dynamics, perhaps take a moment to consider that for the work to have any real impact, it needs to be understood by laypeople? Biologists can get away with naming things all sort of nonsense because the everyday person doesnt interact with it, but if you're trying to highlight destructive dyn…

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Reflexive, generic comments are much more boring to read than they are to write, and they take threads in uninteresting directions. With a submission like this, if you don't find something to engage with in the article, there are lots of other thin…

I didnt mean this as a shallow dismissal. I tried to write examples into the comment and discuss how the way the article was framed is counterproductive to it's own stated goals in its conclusion paragraph of generating change in how entrepreneurship is taught. I apologize if it came across as shallow, but I spent time trying to make it substantive by including counterexamples etc.

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#39

Post by dang »

vikramkr wrote: post #38
dang wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

" Please don't post shallow dismissals, especially of other people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html Reflexive, generic comments are much more boring to read than they are to write, and they take threads in uninteresting directions. With a submission like this, if you don't find something to engage with in the article, there are lots of other thin…

I didnt mean this as a shallow dismissal. I tried to write examples into the comment and discuss how the way the article was framed is counterproductive to it's own stated goals in its conclusion paragraph of generating change in how entrepreneurship is taught. I apologize if it came across as shallow, but I spent time trying to make it substantive by including counterexamples etc.

I hear you, and I know it stings to get a moderation reply like that, so I hope you won't take it personally or feel discouraged.

I'm not really seeing other examples in the comment. In any case, the main problem is that its core point is a misunderstanding. As other users have pointed out, the term "Veblenian entrepreneurship" means a lot: it instantly communicates the idea of entrepreneurship as a status signal, rather than for an economically productive purpose. In fact, if there's a problem with the term, it might be exactly the opposite: it already communicates so much that the mind could start to assume that it's a thing, and then find rationalizations for believing it.

That's the reason I called the comment a shallow dismissal: it dismissed an entire field based on a misreading. Also, there was snark at the beginning.

By the way, the problem with such comments is not that they're so bad in themselves—it's that threads are sensitive to initial conditions and they tend to choke out better, more specific discussion. This has something to do with the reflexive/reflective distinction: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)

#40

Post by Animats »

NicolasGorden wrote: post #33

I read the actual research and it seems to me the authors are confounding a lot of things. I believe people with a decent background in business and economics should see this. A few things that jumped out at me: 1- The rise of specialized services that lower the entrance bars for many industries. 2- The rise of the wantrepreneur. 3- "Inefficient market offerings" that reduce innovation. The answer to these: 1- Yes by…

I've read Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class", and I don't see that it applies here. The author writes:

"This rapidly growing industry has transformed the nature of entrepreneurship and encouraged a particular form of low-quality entrepreneurship. It has done so by leveraging the Ideology of Entrepreneurialism to mass-produce and mass-market products that make possible what we term Veblenian Entrepreneurship."

I'd agree with the first sentence, but not the second.

We really do have "entrepreneurship as a service" now. Or did, pre-epidemic. Wannabe writes a pitch deck or a white paper, and convinces VCs, Kickstarter users, or ICO investors to put in money. Get space from WeWork, technology infrastructure from AWS, and turn traffic into revenue with Google Ads. Show the traffic climbing and you're a success, even if not profitable. Some such businesses even succeed in the end.

The question is, is this diverting people from doing hard, useful things? Like refurbishing buildings in bad neighborhoods. Installing solar panels and inverters. Tree trimming near power lines as a service. Automating meat-cutting plants. Don't know. We don't have enough of the latter, though. Those things have no low-probability big upside, which is what VCs want.

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