Jon Stewart: Lower entrepreneurial risk

You misunderstand individual freedom. Freedom, in the context of a "free nation", isn't freedom from consequences or risks (even those out of a person's control), it's freedom from the imposition of state-sponsored force. This is an important distinction. We all invite a little state-sponsored force into our lives (i.e. the persecution of violent crimes, the civil court system, etc). Your version of "freedom" actually requires state-sponsored force at a fairly low threshold: if someone can't pay for their own health insurance or medical bills you're going to force others to pay it for him. You're not asking for voluntary donations, you're taking with the threat of legal consequences. That can't be congruent with any meaningful definition of freedom.

We need to define risk here. Startups are risky and most fail. That doesn't change, even if we gave people free health insurance and other benefits.

Jon Stewart is arguing to increase the safety net so that downside of failure is less harsh. It won't make the downside scenario less likely, just not as brutal for those who experience it.

But I bet his proposal would INCREASE the risk of failure for precisely that reason. People are more likely to hustle harder when their livelihood depends on it [1]. For example, the social safety net is higher across most of Europe and I bet the level of entrepreneurship is higher in the US (I wish I had data about this, please share it if you do).

[1] This reminds me of the AirBNB founders selling Obama O's. Such great hustle: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/03/airbnb.html

Jon just nailed the problem in the head: frankly I'm tired of hearing rich kids talking about how easy it is just to leave everything you are doing and make a startup, and to add insult to injury the new buzzword is to say that you don't even need an idea.

Yeah sure you can leave your job or college and just start throwing darts at post-its to come up with an app idea if you have a rich dad who is willing to bankroll your adventure in the Bay Area. You need at least $36k a year just to rent a decent flat in that place, some families, not just people but actual families, live on less than that in this country.

I had friends on highschool who had tremendous hacker potential, but they also had problems, REAL problems like bad health and a poor family. Most of them are quite happy right now working for the evil corporations that pay them those $75k a year salaries that the rich kids laugh at. They depend on company healthcare and can't even dream to let that and their paychecks go just to give startups a try.

And that is just one side of the problem, the other is the facade of equal opportunities in startups, the idea that everyone applying to YC or other incubators is in the same level.

The social network movie made a lot of generic hacker culture statements but it forgot to mention that the zuck had a private programming tutor paid by his parents. Seriously, how many of you here had parents who could afford that? I tried to hire a Java tutor when I was in highschool and it was incredibly expensive, more than hiring several tutors for most of my school subjects.

I have met entrepreneurs with amazing companies that didn't get into YC, yet the guys from diaspora, the same guys who burned through a quarter of a million and did next to nothing, they got in, and with what? a meme app, because that's important, another memegenerator clone.

I'm using a throwaway account because I know this is going to be downvoted to hell, many of these rich kids make an overwhelming clique in HN and other sites, and they don't like when it when someone speaks up and shatters their BS.

The irony here is that this country is fast becoming like the third world hellholes that immigrant entrepreneurs where escaping from. The stories you hear from those places are becoming eerily familiar: a guy from South America told me how over there all entrepreneurs are rich kids, legacies from generations of crony capitalism and favoritism. Practically none are coders or hustlers, they get their parents to bankroll a clone a cookie-cutter startup and take advantage of the wage slave condition of engineers over there, after all what are those poor souls going to do? they can't afford to make a startup and don't have any connections to investors, so what is left for them? get a visa and come here? nice try...

And that is what America is becoming, a place not of opportunity but of class lockdown, social mobility is at an all-time low and everywhere you hear pundits whose idea of equality in America is actually that of Sweden's, which ironically is a socialist country.

But go ahead, keep believing we are all in the same league, by all means try to defeat my point by saying how you help other less fortunate entrepreneurs with your link-bait blog full of empty advice, keep saying that all of us who are not in the same position than you are a bunch of envious and resentful pricks, or that you are where you are right now because you worked for it when actually you are where you are right now because you were half the way ahead to being with.

The risks that exist today "weed out" failures before they ever exist (failures are very expensive/bad for the economy). Most people realize that they do not have a good enough concept, enough time/dedication/work ethic lack a high level of life/business/leadership/social skills/self confidence.I could go on and on here.

If people have little/no risk to follow a venture, we will see a lot more people quitting their 9-5s and starting garbage businesses.

HMM - This sounds a lot like people getting home mortgages who have no business getting them... I know that John was a big fan of the affordable housing act as well.

Why does John Stewart stop there? why not lower entrepreneurial risk even more and guarantee that if someones startup business fails that they get money to live on from the govt for the next 18 months? Oh wait we already have that (unemployment)

How about I become a full time entrepreneur then? I could probably make more money per year starting failed business after failed business. I have money to live on and free health care so why not? This sounds great for the economy. This Stewart guy is sure a genius!!!

It is you who misunderstands individual freedom. Freedom is not some formalist anarcho-capitalist construct, but meaningful ability to take individual action. That requires, as Hayek argues, that a functioning state exists, which provides basic physical safety, a minimum of economic security, and contract enforcement, within which people can act as individuals. Absent that, in the "state of nature", people are forced to cling to tribalist groupings (religions, extended families/clans, etc.) for security and coverage of the "risks common to all", which is not individual freedom but collectivism.