I am not sure how I feel about the way entrepreneurship is defined here but I am not surprised that being a conniving petty criminal as a kid is a good indicator that you’ll be a successful entrepreneur. I have come to think of the entire conservative movement as a club for rule-breaking entrepreneurs. They fucking hate rules. They hate the IRS and the EPA and OSHA and the NLRB. They don’t want anyone telling them what to do and they don’t want to admit that they owe even one penny of their wealth to anything but their hard work and cunning. They are as sociopathic in their individualism as they are in their religious belief, which is all about their personal salvation and not at all about social justice.
I’ve come to actively dislike this class of people and doubt that they are compatible with a sustainable civilized future. The white privilege aspect of this interests me less than the political implications. But I’ll give my own anecdotal assessment.
When I worked for ACORN in the North Philly ghetto, the really smart kids were the ones who had figured out a hustle. There weren’t any legitimate jobs that didn’t require a long bus ride, so the name of the game was to work the black market. Some people made and sold bootleg copies of movies. Others counterfeited car registration and inspection stickers. Others jacked t-shirts off trucks. Others ran unlicensed taxis. These kids stood out for a couple of reasons. First, they were smart enough to stay away from gangs and drugs, which would land them quickly in jail or the morgue. Second, they weren’t waiting around for something to happen. They set their alarm clocks, got up early, and went to work on their hustle. They worked hard and didn’t stop until they’d reached their goal. These folks were my best employees. They were good with people. They could follow instructions and carry out complex plans. They were natural leaders. And it was obvious to me that they could succeed at legitimate business if they got a combination of start-up capital and some kind of road-map.
There were plenty of other kids who were really kind, nice people but who didn’t have the skills or motivation or direction to be successful. They were too meek to gang-bang. They weren’t sure how to figure out a hustle, let alone how to be good at it. They lacked self-confidence and people skills. And they just weren’t good at registering voters or motivating them to get to the polls. Some of my saddest days in the job were when I had to fire these kids. Counseling them was even harder. When I heard about their family life and lack of resources, just trying to get them set up in a vocational school could seem like a Herculean task. What do you tell a kid who comes to you for advice if you can’t figure out any way that they can pull anything legitimate off?
Now, these people I’ve been talking about were all black. And there’s no doubt that society was itching to lock them up for the slightest infraction. In the suburbs, I see white kids getting away with all manner of crime without having to pay any consequence. I’ve seen white teenagers break into a home and have a little drug party and get off with nothing more than a stern talking-to. I’ve seen serious vandalism result in a small fine. I’ve seen naked kids out of their minds on hallucinogens turned over to their parents without a record being made of it. These white kids aren’t locked up; some of them are setting off for college as I write this. But the black kids I knew in North Philadelphia didn’t get second or third chances. And many of them showed a lot more self-starting motivation and smarts than the white kids I’ve met in the suburbs. If we invested in them, I know they would pay us back many times over.
Some of them might even become conservative Republicans.
I’ve come to actively dislike this class of people and doubt that they are compatible with a sustainable civilized future. The white privilege aspect of this interests me less than the political implications.
The political implications are that they’re ruining the Philadelphia schools. Would Brian Roberts be the CEO of a company if his father was some middle manager? Could you be just as good a CEO as Brian Roberts if given the chance? I bet you would. I guess what I’m saying is money just wants to perpetuate and hold everyone else down. Ever notice how, usually, old money looks down on new money(or upstarts)?
Your comment is really off topic.
I’m not talking about Old Money vs. New Money. I am talking about the fact that a character trait of highly successful entrepreneurs is a willingness to commit crimes as a kid, and that white kids get enough second chances to succeed while inner city black kids do not. And I am talking about how there are plenty of black kids who fit the profile of a successful entrepreneur but they have no way out of illegitimate commerce. The system forces them to hustle, but it doesn’t forgive or reward them for their transgressions.
Part of what I’m talking about is that connected, in most cases, white people get all the breaks. No matter what it is. Just compare the cases of Vince Fumo and Corey Kemp(you remember him, right?). Basically, those inner city kids you mention don’t have the connections/contacts that someone like Fumo, or Brian Roberts, do.
They don’t have the connections, the money, the educational opportunities, the role models, the institutional memory, the experience, the expectations, the chance to redeem themselves…
They often don’t have the nutrition and environment necessary to be all they can be.
They live in an environment of predators, both from within their community and from the businesses that suck the last dime of expendable wealth out of their community.
But they know how to work. They know how to look at a situation and figure out how to make a buck off of it.
They just need a chance to do it in a legitimate way.
They just need a chance to do it in a legitimate way.
And outside of sports they are rarely offered one. There is still a lot of racism(UTR or otherwise) in corporate America.
They often don’t have the nutrition and environment necessary to be all they can be.
Especially when you have an evil scumbag, BFF of the President, in Chicago destroying their library/community center.
I wonder, how many of them if they had a chance to do it in a legitimate way would abandon their illegitimate ways entirely?
Crime after all, is not a thing unknown among white entrepreneurs.
They hate the Irish Republican Army? Did you mean IRS?
Yes. Sloppy pinky finger.
Black children get no slack to just be kids. They are never allowed to make ‘youthful mistakes’.
I agree. And I’m white.
And part of making youthful mistakes is what you learn from them. Black kids very often don’t get to learn from their mistakes in a way that doesn’t devastate the rest of their lives. So many older black men are rotting away in prison for some stupid shit they did when they were 18 or 19. A sane society would recognize that they learned their particular lesson long ago, paid their debt, and deserve to return to the normal world.
It harms all of us to have so many potentially productive people pointlessly trapped in prison. How much talent, art, scientific, ethical, and economic contributions to society have we lost because of this stupidity? The cost is incalculable but surely immense.
Or, for that matter, all those people simply trapped in the economic sinkhole of the ghetto that BooMan discusses above.
A lot of this gets expressed in racial terms, but in really its all about money. Capitalism extols itself as a meritocracy, but in reality, it is the exact opposite.
The whole point about money is that it is passed on from generation to generation as a means of avoiding the effects of meritocracy or real competition.
Money means any idiot waster of a son can inherit daddy’s business and run it into the ground if he wants to. It means he can kill off the competition who have better products/services because they don’t have the same access to capital, economies of scale, political connections, and social supports.
Competition isn’t just about having better products/services, but about erecting barriers to entry into the market of any potential competitors. It’s about destroying potential competitors before they can get really started and become a threat.
Even within the white community, the real entrepreneurs/innovators often start of with very little and have to fight off the the repressive defenses that old money has erected around itself.
Old money is about inherited businesses/wealth, connections, privileged education, and the ability to quite literally get away with murder because your daddy can claim to be a fine upstanding taxpayer who pays the policeman’s wages.
The ghettoisation of potential competitors, the destruction of public schools, the police repression and racist labeling is all part of the plan to make it easier for son to survive and thrive without really having to work very hard or be particularly smart.
And all of this is covered up with the ideology of freedom, opportunity, and meritocracy. If you really wanted a meritocracy you would make it illegal to inherit wealth or to buy educational advantage through private education. That is why hatred of inheritance taxes and the right to private education are so central to conservative ideology: How can you give your kids as much unfair advantage as possible.
It’s not as if private education is necessarily all that much better than public education – especially as spoiled brat kids can be such wasters. But the point isn’t necessarily to learn all that much, the point is to make the right connections and learn to fear and hate all those on the other side of the tracks who could potentially be a threat.
That is also why conservative ideology depends so heavily on demonising the “others” as wasters, takers, criminals, drug addicts and cheats in general. It’s the only was stupid, lazy. rich kids can compete in the real world.
And that is also why the USA is failing to compete in the world without resort to military bullying, unfair competition against smaller local businesses by global corporates, the stealing of others intellectual property by not recognising foreign patents in US courts, and unfair business practices generally.
Most US political and business leaders are relatively insensitive and stupid because of their privileged background. We laugh at class ridden societies like the Brits – especially their arrogance at the height of their imperial might in the Victorian era – but US leaders today are just as bad, and social and economic mobility is less in the USA now that it is in many former “class-ridden” societies.
The USA today is about private wealth and public squalor, and the squalor is all about preventing the true genius of American youth breaking out and shining through. Yes, the USA has an amazing inheritance as the world only superpower, and just like the Brits before them they are doing their best to squander it.
This explains well why real entrepreneurs like Henry Ford and Steve Jobs came from middle-class families. Only the extremely rare super-super-talents can make it from the bottom to the top. The top is a reservoir of no-talent lounge lizards that really don’t want change.
This reminds me of the recruiter from MIT when I was 17. He explained to me that when at MIT besides the first class technical education the most important thing was finding a low talent rich kid to mentor. I would become his buddy, tutor him, help him with his projects. Then when we graduated, he would take me along with him, both of us riding the ladder of his contacts and my talent. I couldn’t see living my life as a gofer, maybe changing my name so nobody would know I was Italian. So, I rejected MIT. Sometimes I think I was right. Sometimes I think I was wrong.
I’m surprised the recruiter was so explicit about the process. Usually low talent rich kids are lionised as spectacular achievers or celebrities with loads of groupies around them singing their praises. Any views to the contrary are kept strictly private which also explains why such “entrepreneurs” think their success is entirely down to their own talent and hard work. Being raised in a “culture of success” generally means being surrounded by lots of money and sycophants all idolizing money as a goal in itself. I can think of few less rewarding environments…
I’m still not sure if he was trying to encourage me or discourage me. The former, I think. He was sitting in our living room so he new we had very little money. My test scores were in the highest percentile. I think he was sincere and wanted me to succeed.
This is excellent insightful analysis, which especially applies to the Kochian Liber-servative wing. Our plutocrats and their helot white male Liber-servatives, of course, see themselves as intellectually superior to the medieval Christianists (social “conservatives”) whom they have allied with to ruin the country (and planet).
I wonder if other advanced countries contend with this plutocrat-funded crapola? The German energy minister, when remarking on the German consensus to invest in green energy, observed “of course, we do not have the situation like you in the US, where you have [these] Koch Brothers…”
Germans are much more socially oriented than Americans. This can be good and bad.
Can’t even believe that I’m reading this from Booman but I totally agree with every word! I grew up in Dayton, Ohio and when there are no jobs hustling becomes a way of life. These are not violent criminals. Some of my relatives led this lifestyle and they saw it as a means of survival because they had lost hope of finding legitimate jobs. Selling a little weed for extra money was largely viewed as harmless, and for the most part, the police looked the other way. When crack came on the scene it changed the game. A lot of the same dealers that had been selling MJ before started selling crack because the profit margins were so much better. But these are still just people that have been locked out of the mainstream and in desperation have found a way to make a living. At least in Dayton, it was not a gang thing but about small entrepreneurs taking their money and figuring out a way to create income for themselves because they knew that no one was going to hire them. It becomes a vicious cycle because once you get arrested for these hustles you really don’t have much choice when you get out of jail accept going back to the hustle that put you in jail to begin with.
Perhaps you’ve made some false assumptions about me, or just haven’t been reading me long enough.
“I’ve come to actively dislike this class of people and doubt that they are compatible with a sustainable civilized future.”
Warming up the ovens, are you? Dusting off the old Nisei concentration camps?
Yes. Round up the kulaks. That’s what I’m advocating.
Hustling has always left a bad taste in my mouth because I’ve always associated it with scamming people. Like the schemes detailed in The Salty Droid… peddlers of MLMs, false dreams of wealth, perpetual health and happiness, etc. The idea of manipulating and screwing customers, of inventing tall tales as to why they need to buy my product when they don’t need it (or possibly even want it, for longer than a few minutes); has always been too much for me. Which is why I’m glad I’m in tech support, and my job is not to pitch credit cards or cable packages.
The idea of having no choice but to try to make a living at MLM is even worse. And that, in a nutshell, is what Republican economic policies do, especially with the gutting of public jobs. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that MLM is a bigger share of the economy in right-to-work states.
But there still is a big difference between your hustlers and a Jeremy Johnson, an Amway, or an Herbalife. Your hustlers were not operating pyramid schemes, and your hustlers were offering a product or service customers were actually likely to want/need. So, in fact, that “illegitimate economy” is the more honest example of entrepreneurship.