Acting Entrepreneurially and Acting Academically
15th August 2015
Don Boudreaux, a Real Economist, draws a distinction.
A Typical Entrepreneur: Someone who, spotting exploitable profit opportunities – that is, spotting currently existing but exploitable failures of the market to operate as productively as possible – puts his or her own money where his or her mouth is to take productive and voluntary actions that make the market operate better than before….
An All-Too-Typical Academic: Someone who, unduly impressed by his or her own academic studies and methods, concludes that the market does not work in reality as well as his or her academic studies and ruminations suggest that it should work. This academic, however, is both too incompetent and too cowardly to act in the real world by staking something of his or her own. He or she instead wishes to convince people with guns – government officials – to force other people to take his or her findings seriously….