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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)

#71

Post by scottishcow »

pdonis wrote: post #70
scottishcow wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 con…

> Note that I’m not regarding these activities to be entirely about conspicuous consumption If your definition of an activity being conspicuous consumption is that somebody, somewhere, can use it for conspicuous consumption, I think you're right that it's going to be hard to find an activity that isn't "conspicuous consumption" by this definition. But I would say that's a problem with your definition.

Well surely it's a matter of degree (and also chronological trends) we're talking about here. My writing may not be perfectly clear but other commenters seem to understand my point, nuanced discussions may be difficult but not impossible if we're engaging in good faith.

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

#72

Post by wpietri »

baybal2 wrote: post #68
Enginerrrd wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I always thought that VC funds always had a bit of a cargo cult atmosphere around them.

Before coming to CA, I worked for financial traders. It was a commonplace that investors are herd animals. VCs are no exception.

The cargo cult thing makes a lot of sense to me, honestly. Venture funding is a field where the feedback loops are long and noisy. It takes literal years to see results, and a lot more years to see if somebody is truly good, instead of glib and lucky. By that point, the technologies and trends have changed so much that there's not a lot of reason to think they're still good.

And I think the way stakes have gotten larger since Bubble 1.0 makes it so much worse. The amount of money really increases the incentive to do, say, think absolutely anything that might get you a slice of the expected returns.

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

#73

Post by neilk »

notahacker wrote: post #63
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…

> 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 influencing. The wantrepreneur wants to be a mini-Jobs, but the MLM/Insta dreamer wants to be a mini-Kardashian, hawking products with a glamorous image. But their desire is exploited ruthlessly by a system that pr…

I think the negatives are often underappreciated.

I know founders who ruined their credit, destroyed their friendships, ended lifelong relationships, lost their sanity, and in one case, probably committed suicide. Some do move on to other things and have a lingering sense they are failures, because they knew one or two people who exited with millions who seemed no better than they were. And they don't think they can talk to anyone about any of this, because who would have sympathy?

I don't have data, but I think the negative or ambiguous outcomes hit the founders from middle-class or working class backgrounds way harder. This was their one shot. Someone who falls back to their parents' millions will get other chances.

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

#74

Post by unexaminedlife »

I genuinely believe most of the entrepreneurs who "make a dent" went in with the best of intentions. I sort of feel that once the wrong investors get involved (or the entrepreneur gets sucked into bad terms) the whole thing (from an outsider's perspective) starts looking more like a ponzi scheme than a traditional business that creates real value for consumers.

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

#75

Post by Thorentis »

Some fascinating observations here. What they describe perfectly explains the rise of places like IndieHacker. IndieHacker is basically a website for Veblenian Entrepreneurs to show off how successfully they are, and how far along they are to being real entrepreneurs. It is a place where their real desires (success, social status, etc.) can be easily signaled to other people.

The increasing number of innovation hubs, incubators, development grants, boot camps, etc. are taken together, what the article terms the "Entrepreneurial Industrial Complex". An entire industry now exists around making money off people that want to be entrepreneurs, or posturing so that they can profit from the potential success of unicorns (e.g. Incubators that take a cut). SaaS that let's you make a SaaS to provide people with tools for SaaS creation anybody?

As others have said here before, in a gold rush, it is the tool makers that make the money. And I think in this current "unicorn rush" that's exactly what we're seeing.

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

#77

Post by jackcosgrove »

Grades are inflated. Ambitious high school juniors are running bogus charities and non-profits. The smart kids do track and cross country so they can be two sport athletes. Harvard has the same curriculum as Penn State honors. Instagram lives are fabulous and fake. Wantrepreneurs start shell companies to put on their resume.

It's all down to our increasing ability to satisfy human material needs. Instead of allocating stuff so people can survive, the economy allocates status so people can be popular. It's an economy of likes rather than an economy of needs.

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

#78

Post by analyst74 »

Benjammer wrote: post #53
scottishcow wrote: post #41

So 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…

Time and money are both resources you have, why is spending time valued higher than spending money?

I believe this widely held view comes from people who have more money than time, so they value time more.

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

#79

Post by ReticentVole »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #77

Grades are inflated. Ambitious high school juniors are running bogus charities and non-profits. The smart kids do track and cross country so they can be two sport athletes. Harvard has the same curriculum as Penn State honors. Instagram lives are fabulous and fake. Wantrepreneurs start shell companies to put on their resume. It's all down to our increasing ability to satisfy human material needs. Instead of allocatin…

We need a grand strategy. Our first order of business should be to end the burning of fossil fuels, second order being to establish permanent presence beyond Earth.

Otherwise it feels like we are just twiddling our thumbs, redistributing wealth (upwards), and slowly dying.

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