VIDEO: Fresh Lecture on Entrepreneurship (@Mises‘s definition)- recorded today. Speaker is author Peter G. Klein.
http://www.ustream.tv/recorded/8534157
Recorded at Mises University 2010.
website home page of mises institute
When I’m looking for common sense analysis of the economic turmoil, I like to read articles on Ludwig von Mises Institute’s website. They are dedicated to advancing liberty by teaching the principles of Austrian Economics.
Yesterday, they published an article written by Gabriel E. Vidal that caught my attention. It’s a critical analysis of the Pope Benedict’s encyclical “Love in Truth,” published July 7th.
Vidal’s critique is very well written. He challenges Benedicts economic analysis and policy recommendations, especially when the pope urgently calls for “a true world political authority” and calls for wealth redistribution.
Vidal lays out 5 faulty arguments that Benedict makes, then he addresses each false premise one by one applying reason and logic. Highlights from Vidal’s critique:
Benedict “misunderstands the function of the entrepreneur in creating wealth and ameliorating poverty.” -Vidal
Vidal explains further:
It is an individual’s entrepreneurial action in the pursuit of the goals he values most, using scarce factors of production, taking into consideration his costs, and guided by expected future prices in an unhampered market economy that creates wealth and diminishes poverty for society. Motivated by profit, the entrepreneur plans and then acts to satisfy the needs of other individuals. The common good is the unintended, but logically necessary byproduct of the entrepreneurial process. There exists no other rational mechanism to achieve the common good.
I highly recommend this article! Well worth a read!
Reference:
About 70% of college students want to own a business in their lifetime. But with our nation’s misguided attack on capitalism, how can that be realized? Carl Schramm, President and CEO of Kauffman Foundation, addresses the audience at the Schumpeter Symposium 2008, by asking what can be done to save capitalism, the philosophy that can “expand liberty and welfare far faster than any other social or economic order ever tried or ever experienced.”
Schramm (@ 34:00 minute):
“Schumpeter tells us loud and clear that the most important citizen is not the politician, nor is it the big business men, nor is it the banker on Wall Street. They are important, but they are not central to the renewal of democratic capitalism. They don’t do it. That role, that burden, that honor falls to our fellow citizens that in the face of the challenges we see all around us are ready to undertake the pursuit of what it is that entrepreneurs do. They birth the new, they create our jobs, and the make the wealth that will be more necessary than ever before to purchase a future worth living.”
Carl Schramm, President and CEO, Kauffman Foundation speaks at Schumpeter Symposium 2008
Where ever I go and tell people what I do, I find someone who knows an entrepreneurial kid. I love to hear these stories. And it happens more often than you’d think. I was in Vegas last week and met a man Kyle whose 9-year-old daughter Raegan is learning all about sales and the basics of economics, and in a really cool way.
She sells bracelets, but not just any bracelet. Her bracelets are made by Filipino families and she
Bracelets from Threads of Hope
sends her profits back overseas to those families. The revenue goes a long way in the Philippines and is transforming lives by helping them stay out of prostitution.
Read more about Raegan and the organization that set up the exchange, Threads of Hope, on this blog.
Meanwhile, DO YOU KNOW an entrepreneurial kid?
Here’s a very interesting presentation by Robert Frank, author and economist, where he demonstrates how students learn complex concepts much easier through storytelling. His point is made through a series of interesting examples of how he teaches economics to his students. “Tell the message in a familiar context,” he says. At the very end of the presentation, minute 54:00, he speaks about a parent who read bits of Frank’s book to his 11-year son. Every night, the boy would ask for more, demonstrating that a kid can learn more about economics than a college student.
Robert Frank’s book: The Economic Naturalists
Jennifer Bouani is the author of the Future Business Leaders' Series (TM)
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