Who built the house you live in, who made the coffee you drink in the morning after you put on your pants that someone made, who opened the cafe where you had your breakfast, who transported the food across country, who produced the food, who made the bed you slept in, the table you sat at, the shoes you walked? — Brett

I think the point Brett is making is that I have purchased stuff, and since this is made by companies that were started by entrepreneurs then I have personally benefitted from what entrepreneurs do.

this is not on the face of it an unreasonable point. except that me owning a pair of shoes and a bed isn't really illustrative of the claims made for entrepreneurs that I was refuting. the claim was, "Entrepreneurs create wealth, they put ideas into practice, They make the world a better place for everyone."

me owning a bed isn't an example of wealth being created for anyone other than the entrepreneur. capitalism is a system designed to specifically make money for the folk who put money into a business to get it going. these investors are called capitalists and the money they invest is called capital, which is why the system is called capitalism. the system is designed to benefit them. if anyone else benefits at all that is a coincidence not the purpose. take, for example, the system of buying cheap electronics from China so that more profits can be made for the entrepreneurs, but this also destroyed the manufacturing industries in the West which has cost millions of folk their jobs. and it abuses the human rights of the folk working in those electronics factories so your cheap computer benefits one consumer and a bunch of entrepreneurs, but destroyed many jobs and ignored the human rights of many. if that's what you call making the world a better place for everyone then I can't help you.

me owning a bed also ignores the millions of folk who live on less than three dollars per day.

me owning a bed doesn't offset the fact that we had to make laws to force websites operated by entrepreneurs be available to handicapped people. if entrepreneurs benefit everyone, why did they have to be forced to do this, with threats of fines.

me owning a bed does not offset the millions of folk who have no indoor plumbing, or affordable health care, or the huge wealth gap that entrepreneurs have created, and folk who sit in their ivory towers clapping their hands with glee because they're all right Jack because they can buy books from Amazon, are the problem, not the solution.


Kaarlo Tuomi

:up: :clap: :100:

"
— Kaarlo Tuomi

which benefits them and, no one else. — Kaarlo Tuomi

The above is what I disagreed with, not your refutation of this;

"Entrepreneurs create wealth, they put ideas into practice, They make the world a better place for everyone".

The above is what I disagreed with, not your refutation of this; — Brett

okay we're getting down to the fine detail now and Brett wants to concentrate on wealth formation. Brett thinks that entrepreneurs create wealth and that this is somehow a net benefit to society. I guess if you grew up on the economics of Paul Krugman and Alan Greenspan that might not be a sloppy assumption to make but there is very little evidence that it works. it used to be called "trickle-down economics" but today books on it are found in the section devoted to Fairy Stories.

I'm going to start by pointing out that Brett has not yet answered the question I asked yesterday:

how do you benefit from the wealth of Jeff Bezos? — Kaarlo Tuomi

not only has he not answered this, he has also not provided any evidence that "wealth" is a thing that can benefit folk who do not possess it, or that the benefits of "wealth" can somehow filter down to the folk at the bottom of the poverty ladder.

that there is a poverty gap is not contestable. that this poverty gap is getting wider is not contestable. that the rich now own a greater percentage of the wealth than they did a mere twenty years ago, is not contestable. all of these facts suggest to me that wealth does not trickle down. and if you read that article I linked to you will already know that the rich get more of their income from investments and securities than they do from salary and wages or business. which means that the rich acummulate wealth and invest it in themselves. the only folk who benefit from this, other than themselves, are investment brokers and life insurance salesmen.

please prove me wrong. don't just say I'm wrong. don't just accuse me of not knowing what I'm talking about. say something that demonstrates why you believe the things you believe and make a point you can back up with data or examples.

I am, for the purposes of this discussion, going to temporarily accept the possibility that wealth can somehow benefit folk who do not possess it. which would require someone to provide some evidence of an actual process by which I, and millions of folk just like me, benefit from facts such as Elon Musk owns a town in Texas, or Jeff Bezos earns more money per day than I earned in my entire professional life.

whilst figuring out how to demonstrate any of those things you might also like to consider the following questions. all of these start: if entrepreneurs are a net benefit to society, and they are actually interested in the greater good of everyone, and wealth does actually trickle down, then how come...

1. ...the entire tobacco industry lied to us for decades about the benefits of their products?
2. ...the entire oil and gas industry has destroyed billions of acres of irreplaceable environment in a quest for more profits?
3. ...class action lawsuits exist? these are necessary so that small folk like me can join together to fight the illegal oppression of massive companies that care not one jot for the little people who buy their products.
4. ...the entire hospitality industry has to rely on tips to make a living wage?
5. ...folk with full time jobs have to rely on food banks to feed their families?
6. ...minimum wage laws exist? these are only necessary because entrepreneurs refuse to pay folk a proper wage for their work.
7. ...Uber were refused a licence to operate their service in many cities around the world? this happened precisely because they refused to give their drivers the benefits that employees are legally entitled to.
8. ...the oceans are full of micro plastics generated by the products entrepreneurs who "put ideas into action" put there but refuse to do anything about?

folk like Brett point to a company like Amazon and marvel at the utility of being able to order a replacement light bulb and have it delivered the next day, and they see this as a marvelous and wonderful thing that helps millions of families shop for essentials without wasting time driving to the shops and carting bags of essentials home again. instead, they get to spend more time with their kids, doing gardening, or playing online strip poker.

whereas when I look at Amazon what I see is a great long line of delivery trucks poisoning everyone's environment for the benefit of a few folk too lazy to do their own shopping. to me, Amazon is the definition of selfish consumerism. it ruins it for everyone for the benefit of a few.


Kaarlo Tuomi

Brett thinks that entrepreneurs create wealth — Kaarlo Tuomi

I’m pretty sure I haven’t said that.

how do you benefit from the wealth of Jeff Bezos? — Kaarlo Tuomi

I didn’t say all entrepreneurs were moral. Why ask me to defend Bezo? What does that have to do with your denial of any benefits from entrepreneurs?

he has also not provided any evidence that "wealth" is a thing that can benefit folk who do not possess it, — Kaarlo Tuomi

Nor did I state this. I said entrepreneurs benefit people through what they produce. Without entrepreneurs there would not be the products people use every day to get by.

Nor did I say wealth trickles down.

they are actually interested in the greater good of everyone — Kaarlo Tuomi

I didn’t say that so I’m not going to address your long list of complaints.

folk like Brett point to a company like Amazon and marvel at the utility of being able to order a replacement light bulb and have it delivered the next day, and they see this as a marvelous and wonderful thing that helps millions of families shop for essentials without wasting time driving to the shops and carting bags of essentials home again. instead, they get to spend more time with their kids, doing gardening, or playing online strip poker. — Kaarlo Tuomi

This is just an attempt to trivialise my point about what entrepreneurs create.

Once again, if you believe this;

which benefits them and, no one else.
— Kaarlo Tuomi — Brett

then you don’t know what you’re talking about. But you do, don’t you? It’s just your ideology getting in the way.

philosophers are by their very nature, thinkers. which means that "doing philosophy" consists of sitting in a room with the curtains drawn, thinking, very hard, for long periods of time. this does not, on the face of it, seem to be the sort of thing that get up and go entrepreneurs do. — Kaarlo Tuomi

How do you know this?

I want to apologise for making assumptions about you. and to thank you for pointing out that I was doing that. you have in fact told me nothing and actually made no substantive point of any kind. all you have done is ask questions, and then played the, "I never said that" game. the sum total of everything you have said in this thread (apart from a minor debate with another poster on the definition of entrepreneur) is to first claim that I have no idea what I 'm talking about, than list some consumer goods you think I might have purchased.

I therefore have no idea what point you are trying to make, or which claim I made that you disagree with, or why you are even engaging here. maybe this is just sport for you, I can't tell.

you did however, disagree with my claim that wealth creation is only of benefit to entrepreneurs. I think I have already presented sufficient evidence for my claim, or at least sufficient evidence for why I believe that, and your refutation appears to consist entirely of the fact that I can buy shoes in a shop. you choose to ignore all the negative effects, including that every single person involved in the production, distribution, marketing and sale of those shoes is being exploited by the entrepreneur, and you reply that the only reason I disagree with you is my ideology. which I consider to be potentially true but irrelevant.

What does that have to do with your denial of any benefits from entrepreneurs? — Brett

I didn't say that. (see, two can play that game). I did not claim that there were no benefits from entrepreneurs. I said their wealth benefits only them.

How do you know this? — Brett

I didn't claim to "know" it. I said that it seemed, on the face of it, to be that way. entrepreneurs have to first have an idea, then persuade other folk to believe in them and invest in them, and persuade other folk to come and work for them, planning, organising, number crunching and all this requires a lot of social and inter-personal skill and an outgoing personality with a persuasive mentality and demeanour to get people on their side. philosophy does not require any of those skills or manifest any of those qualities, beyond having an idea. but what happens after they have had the idea would be quite different. divergent, even.

consider that you were the first person to discover that you can do GPS tracking through a mobile phone so that your position at any time over the last ten days could be plotted on a map.

an entrepreneur would go to find a coder who could produce an app so that parents can keep track of where their kids are and the police can locate missing persons and the fact that ads can be displayed to produce some income from this is obviously not a bad idea, too. can we licence this to the coastguard for locating surfers?

a philosopher would write a paper on whether or not this constitutes knowing.


Kaarlo Tuomi

Who built the house you live in, who made the coffee you drink in the morning after you put on your pants that someone made, who opened the cafe where you had your breakfast, who transported the food across country, who produced the food, who made the bed you slept in, the table you sat at, the shoes you walked?

Workers.

:up: :100: :clap:

that there is a poverty gap is not contestable. that this poverty gap is getting wider is not contestable. that the rich now own a greater percentage of the wealth than they did a mere twenty years ago, is not contestable. — Kaarlo Tuomi

Try going back 200 years.. when the reverse was true.

We should not go back 200 years.

How about just 50 then. Your avatar suggests there's something you value about that time.

Another reason could be as far as why entrepreneurship has declined in general... is that some believe something along the lines of "everything that can be invented already has" and the same with thoughts, words, concepts, and ideas.

I don't think there are many strip malls or plazas I could visit today that, assuming they keep everything in stock, wouldn't be able to keep me alive, happy, and then some for several lifetimes. Of course, for all we know they said the same thing 2,000 years ago...

Seems to be the future is technological innovation. Advancing medicine, computers, science, all that. Not so much neat trinkets or personal devices. Though it will produce plenty.

The idea of a philosopher using his knowledge and insight to "set up a company" and earn money in a way that becomes exponentially easier after the initial hard work up front is what we're talking about I gather.

Well aside from the fact that competition and variety for the consumer is needed to spur innovation and be a natural guard against price gouging, there's always gonna be hard or at least constant work to stay ahead or even afloat. It can be done. With patents. But unfortunately logic alone won't guarantee a successful and profitable business, especially in today's moneymaking fields of technology, science, medicine, defense, etc. You need technical "nitty gritty" knowledge as well. Gotta either learn it all yourself or find someone who does you can trust (which is the real challenge) and go from there.

I imagine some interesting apps could be made using philosophy, if one was to wish to do so.

I only chose this avatar because I enjoy Hedy's imagery here.

I only chose this avatar because I enjoy Hedy's imagery here. — Azimuth

Right. Fashion as dictated or defined rather by the society of that time.

An issue I see with your suggestion that philosophers should be entrepreneurs is that philosophy isn't something like rocketry a subject removed from the actual process of living, having a life. Philosophy is about living, living the good life as it were. That being so, it's not just entrepreneurs who should do philosophy but everyone, from the farmer to the rocket scientist, must be philosophers capable of thinking rationally and in possession of a knowledge bank where deposits of critical information pertinent to how to live one's life have been made.

↪A Seagull
We should not go back 200 years. — Azimuth

Well if you want to look at trends that are real it is pointless looking at short intervals as they will show random variations. It is necessary to look at long intervals.. such as 200 years.

The idea of a philosopher using his knowledge and insight to "set up a company" and earn money in a way that becomes exponentially easier after the initial hard work up front is what we're talking about I gather. — Outlander

Thales is a good example.

True, but I try to appreciate design and imagery for what it is rather than for the time period it happened to be in.

Who built the house you live in,
Workers. — Azimuth

Bricks and mortar?

And thanks to those who lived there now we can.

Not a necessity now sure, but there's something to be said about the life, society, and culture of a period that inspired the art, idea, or creation in the first place.

These days we just have things like "Duchamp's Urinal" and "Work No. 837". If that's fine then wonderful. But don't act like you didn't or don't appreciate what was. Rather how it came to be for our own use and vain enjoyment.

I don't disagree on some levels, however you can separate the creation from the society that surrounds it if you wish to. If I appreciate Catholic Iconic art, that does not mean I need to appreciate Catholic doctrines or even the time period it was created in (just an example, nothing against Catholics). If I appreciate an image of a woman with a star tiara, it does not mean I must appreciate all the rest of that time period that comes with it.

We have a finite length of time in order to get our life’s work done, so of course we don’t have time to do everything, therefore we tend to go where our interests and abilities lead us. Philosophy and entrepreneurship are vastly different disciplines, so very few individuals would be able or even interested in making that sort of crossover.

Philosophy and entrepreneurship are vastly different disciplines, so very few individuals would be able or even interested in making that sort of crossover. — Stan

This seems to over simplify things to me.

I know a few people who we would call entrepreneurs. Each of them has a particular philosophy they live by, and it’s not about making money. The making of money supports their chosen way of life which is based on a view of life they have and how they engage with it.

For instance one of them decided he wanted to be free and independent in the world instead of being beholden to someone who decides what he gets paid, what his hours will be, how he’ll do the job, and what his future might be. He has four children, he wants to raise them in a similar way. He believes in honesty and integrity. He takes nothing from the state and receives nothing from them. If things go badly he loses and takes it on the chin and hopes to recover in the near future. He has a set of beliefs about society, family, government and business. He’s created jobs, given people the opportunity to develop and grow and even go out and start their own business. I would regard him as having a particular philosophy in life. This is the philosophy of action instead of contemplation. That’s why philosophers aren’t interested in entrepreneurial activities, it requires risk and actually engaging with the chaos of the world.

Just to be clear about who I’m talking about when it comes to entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs exist all over the world in incredibly varied circumstances. I would hazard a guess that it’s the entrepreneurial spirit that keeps many families in India housed and fed. Their business might be in translating letters, or riding bikes, selling second hand phones or fruit at a roadside stall.

Closer to home; a couple or individual decide they want to open a cafe. They borrow money from the bank and contribute their own savings towards the investment. They find a space and sign a long term agreement, they fit out the space, buy the equipment and hire staff. Or they borrow more money and buy an existing cafe. Whatever the profits they make each week they pay the staff, rent and utilities first. They take a wage themselves and they reinvest everything they make. Generally no one expects to do well in the first year, they just want to survive. But whatever the ups and down the bank still expects their payments to be made, the landlord expects his rent, the energy company expects their payments, the good suppliers expect theirs. There’s no charity. In time things even out a bit more. They might grow the business, employ more staff, take on a chef to create a new menu, create a bigger customer base, and finally begin to make some money. What’s wrong with any of this? If they can’t deliver the goods the customers stop coming. Then everyone loses. Who are the risk takers here?

He has a philosophy of life in the everyday and colloquial sense, as do we all: a basic set of principles for operating in the world, but that isn’t mostly what we’re doing here. We’re participating in something, a set of questions and answers, discussions that resemble academic philosophy, the most salient aspect of which is a set of rules. Formalism is the best word I can think of right now.

True, some of us are better at formal language than others, and there’s no strict requirement as such, but I see that as the ideal. I’m only self-taught, but it seems to me that for many philosophical questions the ideal formalism would be the syllogism; 1. Major premise 2. Minor premise 3. Conclusion.

No, that’s not a requirement here, and it’d probably make some discussions less interesting, but to return to my original argument, this’s probably not the sort of discussion the typical successful entrepreneur would be interested in. He or she would, I think, have little patience for that.

To oversimplify even more, I evaluate most philosophers as introverts and most entrepreneurs as extroverts. Yes, I know those personality traits are arbitrary models, and even so most individuals are both in some degree.

We’re participating in something, a set of questions and answers, discussions that resemble academic philosophy, the most salient aspect of which is a set of rules. — Stan

Who said it was that? And what’s it for even if it is that? What’s its purpose?

“ He has a philosophy of life in the everyday and colloquial sense, ”

Edit: if it’s not for this then what is philosophy for?

this’s probably not the sort of discussion the typical successful entrepreneur would be interested in. He or she would, I think, have little patience for that. — Stan

Another broad simplification.

Ahem. Everything we write or speak or think is a simplification, an estimate of reality. My last word on this for a bit. Maybe later..