I've been seeing a lot of that lately on Twitter: accounts post inspirational quotes/images about being an entrepreneur and 'transparency' about how much money they've made. Always followed by a link to their Gumroad: "Pay me to tell you how to take advantage of people like you, who just paid me."
Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
51–60 of 89 posts
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
Never said it does, was it confusing? Maybe my English needs more work.
> Never said it does Then I don't understand who this question is supposed to be directed at: > Are there any activities left that doesn’t function as a form of conspicuous consumption? My answer would be that none of the activities you list (with the possible exception of the kind of wannabe entrepreneurship the paper is talking about) are conspicuous consumption. But it seemed like you were directing the question a…
> Then I don't understand who this question is supposed to be directed at:
To the HN community of course.
> My answer would be that none of the activities you list (with the possible exception of the kind of wannabe entrepreneurship the paper is talking about) are conspicuous consumption.
That’s a valid response, although I don’t agree. Note that I’m not regarding these activities to be entirely about conspicuous consumption, just like the paper doesn’t claim all of entrepreneurship is veblenian. Fwiw the paper does cite another work that claims some internships can be viewed as a form of conspicuous consumption.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#53So universities are conspicuous consumption, internships are conspicuous consumption, entrepreneurship is conspicuous consumption. Perhaps the simple fact is that most people are motivated by the need for social validation, and only a tiny tiny fraction of the population is driven instead by things like intellectual curiosity, desire to help others / solve societal problems, etc. So any class of activity that becomes…
>Are there any activities left that doesn’t function as a form of conspicuous consumption?
I would guess anything that doesn't involve exchanging money for an object or experience, in which the quality and/or duration of the object/experience increases with increased cost.
Some ideas off the top of my head:
- Volunteering your time locally in your community (soup kitchen, tutoring underprivileged kids, coaching youth sports, etc.)
- Building interpersonal relationships with new people
- Putting work in to maintain existing interpersonal relationships
- Meditation, mindfulness
- Building a tangible skill that takes intense study/practice over a time scale of multiple years to be considered an expert (craftsmanship, visual arts, martial arts, athletics, etc.)
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#54So universities are conspicuous consumption, internships are conspicuous consumption, entrepreneurship is conspicuous consumption. Perhaps the simple fact is that most people are motivated by the need for social validation, and only a tiny tiny fraction of the population is driven instead by things like intellectual curiosity, desire to help others / solve societal problems, etc. So any class of activity that becomes…
Surely anything is conspicuous consumption if you do it conspicuously and consumptively enough?
(That's a joke, but it also isn't - in a media panopticon society everything is conspicuous, and in an industrial/consumerist society everything is consumption .. that leaves only activities which are productive or collective but done privately. That leaves .. a few of the religions? Someone should break out the Baudrillard at this point, we are not the first to address this question)
Edit: I forgot the major media event of the time, duh; protesting, while very conspicuous, is intrinsically anticonsumerist, and getting injured and teargassed as part of it is sacrificial rather than consumerist.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#55So universities are conspicuous consumption, internships are conspicuous consumption, entrepreneurship is conspicuous consumption. Perhaps the simple fact is that most people are motivated by the need for social validation, and only a tiny tiny fraction of the population is driven instead by things like intellectual curiosity, desire to help others / solve societal problems, etc. So any class of activity that becomes…
No. All human endeavour is social signalling.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#56Is it more desirable to "actually want to create real economic value" and less desirable to "doing this just so I can tell people I'm an entrepreneur"? Maybe there's some value in "people who shouldn't be owning companies" owning companies, as it demonstrates a kind of economic freedom in a society. Whether a small business is able to make a dent in the economy or even an industry or a vertical is probably another topic of discussion. It's not actually that easy to start and run a business, there's a lot of yak-shaving admin work. Again, this is something that can be solved by throwing money at it (accountants, attorneys). So it does seem like entrepreneurship is prone to be used as social signaling by those who are already privileged. I don't know what argument I'm getting at, but I just know to be more discerning between the two types of entrepreneurs in my own networking activities and the people I choose to build relationships with, so I don't waste time.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#57This 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.
IMO the VC industry as a whole is losing money because a large fraction of them suffer from luck/survivorship bias & lack the wisdom to recognize that was the key to their past successes, and they all have a serious case of FOMO. A lot of tech hype is just hype and the reality is, if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#58This 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?
I wonder if this particular cancer is not more widespread than that?
What I mean is this - What if there is a very real perception among the populace, that insta-youtube-dreaming is, in actuality, a good way to make money? Maybe the problem is deeper than simple "peer pressure"? Maybe the issue is that at this point, having seen so many seemingly successful people doing this, the populace has come to believe this is how you can make a living? Just as previously the lower socioeconomic side of the populace believed the way to make a living was to go out and get a job at the town's factory. While working at a grocer was something you did only until you got that job down at the plant. Today, working at Starbucks may be getting viewed as something you do only until your Twitch-Youtube-InstaFaceChat channel gets enough followers.
It's a bit depressing when you think about it.
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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.
IMO the VC industry as a whole is losing money because a large fraction of them suffer from luck/survivorship bias & lack the wisdom to recognize that was the key to their past successes, and they all have a serious case of FOMO. A lot of tech hype is just hype and the reality is, if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make mon…
>if you don't understand a technology and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you almost certainly aren't going to make money off it.
Something closely related, but if you do understand a technology, and if/why it really is superior to existing solutions, you would almost certainly already be making money with that technology.
So you do need to question a lot of investments into technology firms that have no revenue? They have no enormously expensive hardware component. (Like there is with, say, concentrated solar thermal technology.) There is often no onerous federal regulatory framework they need to navigate. (As exists for FDA compliant health care tech for instance.) Why are people laying out these enormous investments if not something of a combination of vanity and entertainment?
Re: Towards an Untrepreneurial Economy? Rise of the Veblenian Entrepreneur (2019)
#60Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
Yeah, I tend to agree with you there. I get the impression that was just more work, or not the focus of this specific paper. For what it's worth, they do say
> Rather, we seek to provide a description of a subset of the population of ventures which appear to be growth-oriented entrepreneurship but on closer inspection are not. The exact size of this sub-set is a matter for further empirical study.
So, I'm looking forward to the follow up I guess :)