Mises
At times, I have odd hobbies. One of these is reading stuff from the more extreme end of economics, such as the wonderfully entertaining goings on at The Mises Institute. Some people might get either scared or bored by what goes on here, but I’m always intrigued. Take this little tidbit, from a review presented as a “thrill” and as written by someone “brilliant and courageous”.
Mr. Keynes obviously arrives at this view by an artificial separation
of the function of the entrepreneurs as owners of capital and their
function as entrepreneurs in the narrow sense. But these two functions
cannot be absolutely separated even in theory, because the essential
function of the entrepreneurs, that of assuming risks, necessarily
implies the ownership of capital.
Uh, what? Not only entrepreneurship, but the very act of assuming risks “necessarily implies the ownership of capital”? What an odd notion. The problem not only with Mises, but with the horde of entrepreneurship researchers that more or less consciously follow his lead, is that they create statements such as this, and then when pressed backtrack and claim that the phrase “entrepreneur” and “capital” should include any possible form of human phenomena one wishes, all in order to save their precious formulations. For instance, it is obvious that our imaginary friend Frank, who prostitutes himself in an area where male (gay) prostitution has not existed heretofore (such as a small town in the Appalachians) , is engaging in a form of entrepreneurship — potentially a very lucrative such. He also assumes a lot of risks, including social ostracism and the threat of violence, but can be handsomely rewarded for this. But does this imply “ownership of capital”? Well, obviously one could call his body “capital” or his social standing “capital” or whatever else “capital”, if one wanted to stretch the meaning of the concept to the point of absolute and total nullity. But let us for a moment assume that his perky little ass cannot be called “capital” in any sensible use of the word. This necessarily implies that he can well be assuming risks and engaging in entrepreneurship without owning capital, which would also necessarily imply that Mises was basically just making shit up as he went along.
