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Are entrepreneurs in general libertarians or not?

Tammuz

Senior Member
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Sep 1, 2006
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Scientific skepticism
I have noticed that libertarians like to claim entrepreneurs for their cause, like showing the real world effects of libertarianism. This is pretty clever of them due to popular culture nowasays celebrate certain entrepreneurs as heroes. If you can call yourself an entrepreneur, that gives increased social status in mainstream society.

However, are entrepreneurs in general libertarian or not? I don't see a lot of them being political activists at all.
 
Do you mean libertarians or Libertarians?

There is a huge difference.

One simply believes in increasing liberty. The other has a religious devotion to capitalism.
 
I can't weigh in on this until jason and the other libertarians, like loren, give us a definition of libertarianism.
 
I've done a lot of work specifically with entrepreneurs, and I've never met a libertarian one. I wouldn't describe most of them as right wing, and certainly not conservative. In the main, they struck me as kinda like hippies - they were all people who, for reasons of their own, decided not to pursue the traditional career path and instead to do something else. In some cases, this means following a particular idea or passion, in others it was simply travelling around looking for business opportunities that noone else had the energy or vision to do something with.

It's worth pointing out that the people I was dealing with were serial entrepreneurs - people who set up a business and then sold up once it was a going concern in order to start another one. I didn't deal with your classic small businessman, cottage industries, or middleman hustlers.

Obviously it takes all types. The guy who was trying to revolutionise the oil industry by cross-applying biomedical technology was pretty right wing, as were the ex-CIA people who wanted to use their expertise in computer systems to sell custom solutions to defence companies. There were rich guys who set up their own businesses because they could afford to do it without borrowing any money. One was right-wing, one was left wing.

But the most common were basically hippies. The guy who set up a mobile phone manufacturing business because he knew any number of obscure rural places where people could be hired cheap and taught to use plastics extruders. The guy who was literally on a backpacking tour when he found a bunch of cheap military vehicles for sale, and realised they could be repurposed for the tourist industry. The guy combined his biochemistry degree with a love of DIY, and patented a bunch of biomechanical devices. The two bleeding heart liberals who worked out how to set up a series of chemical based businesses using employees who didn't speak the local language, but were still smart enough to do industrial chemistry.
 
I have noticed that libertarians like to claim entrepreneurs for their cause, like showing the real world effects of libertarianism. This is pretty clever of them due to popular culture nowasays celebrate certain entrepreneurs as heroes. If you can call yourself an entrepreneur, that gives increased social status in mainstream society.

However, are entrepreneurs in general libertarian or not? I don't see a lot of them being political activists at all.

Entrepreneurs are generally busy running businesses, not being political activists.
 
I've done a lot of work specifically with entrepreneurs, and I've never met a libertarian one. I wouldn't describe most of them as right wing, and certainly not conservative. In the main, they struck me as kinda like hippies - they were all people who, for reasons of their own, decided not to pursue the traditional career path and instead to do something else. In some cases, this means following a particular idea or passion, in others it was simply travelling around looking for business opportunities that noone else had the energy or vision to do something with.

It's worth pointing out that the people I was dealing with were serial entrepreneurs - people who set up a business and then sold up once it was a going concern in order to start another one. I didn't deal with your classic small businessman, cottage industries, or middleman hustlers.

Obviously it takes all types. The guy who was trying to revolutionise the oil industry by cross-applying biomedical technology was pretty right wing, as were the ex-CIA people who wanted to use their expertise in computer systems to sell custom solutions to defence companies. There were rich guys who set up their own businesses because they could afford to do it without borrowing any money. One was right-wing, one was left wing.

But the most common were basically hippies. The guy who set up a mobile phone manufacturing business because he knew any number of obscure rural places where people could be hired cheap and taught to use plastics extruders. The guy who was literally on a backpacking tour when he found a bunch of cheap military vehicles for sale, and realised they could be repurposed for the tourist industry. The guy combined his biochemistry degree with a love of DIY, and patented a bunch of biomechanical devices. The two bleeding heart liberals who worked out how to set up a series of chemical based businesses using employees who didn't speak the local language, but were still smart enough to do industrial chemistry.

Thanks for that reply, very interesting! In many cities across the Western world there seems to emerge an entrepreneurship subculture of sorts. Wondering what that will lead to...
 
I've done a lot of work specifically with entrepreneurs, and I've never met a libertarian one. I wouldn't describe most of them as right wing, and certainly not conservative. In the main, they struck me as kinda like hippies - they were all people who, for reasons of their own, decided not to pursue the traditional career path and instead to do something else. In some cases, this means following a particular idea or passion, in others it was simply travelling around looking for business opportunities that noone else had the energy or vision to do something with.

It's worth pointing out that the people I was dealing with were serial entrepreneurs - people who set up a business and then sold up once it was a going concern in order to start another one. I didn't deal with your classic small businessman, cottage industries, or middleman hustlers.

Obviously it takes all types. The guy who was trying to revolutionise the oil industry by cross-applying biomedical technology was pretty right wing, as were the ex-CIA people who wanted to use their expertise in computer systems to sell custom solutions to defence companies. There were rich guys who set up their own businesses because they could afford to do it without borrowing any money. One was right-wing, one was left wing.

But the most common were basically hippies. The guy who set up a mobile phone manufacturing business because he knew any number of obscure rural places where people could be hired cheap and taught to use plastics extruders. The guy who was literally on a backpacking tour when he found a bunch of cheap military vehicles for sale, and realised they could be repurposed for the tourist industry. The guy combined his biochemistry degree with a love of DIY, and patented a bunch of biomechanical devices. The two bleeding heart liberals who worked out how to set up a series of chemical based businesses using employees who didn't speak the local language, but were still smart enough to do industrial chemistry.

Thanks for that reply, very interesting! In many cities across the Western world there seems to emerge an entrepreneurship subculture of sorts. Wondering what that will lead to...

Hm.. I hope so. Being an entrepreneur can be quite lonely.
 
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