>stop complaining about externalities keeping them from success and just go out and succeed.
The majority of people do not want to be entrepreneurs so their only option is to work for someone else where you are faced with more external forces. When you're in that situation, most people want to do the minimum and earn the maximum which we know rarely works. Let's face it, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It's a lot of work and responsibility; something the majority of 20-somethings can't handle.
>Another quipped about a living wage
I would feel discouraged too if I was only being paid $15 an hour after going to school for 4 years.
I agree with you, there are definitely things you can do to ameliorate yourself and improve your chances of finding a job. You don't seem to have the "average person" mentality of doing just the minimum to achieve your goals, so I sense some disconnect there. I could just be reading into it too much.
Not to mention the costs associated with beginning a business on your own. Of course this varies a lot depending on the business too.
Even for say doing some freelance programming which has low costs since all you need is a computer and some open source software. As soon as you start your business you will be cut off from government benefits so you will not have any income until you get your first payment.
Since most companies interested in hiring you for a job will not want to pay you up front since as a new business your going to be seen as pretty high risk your going to need a way of covering your living costs for at least 2-3 months most likely.
If your fresh out of college and already riddled with debt the chances that you have those kind of savings in the bank is pretty minimal.
Small business (or as call it "cottage industry") was the way many people survived in cities before the industrial revolution hit it stride.
I don't believe its beyond the capabilities of mere mortals today to do.
What people dislike about entrepreneurship is the search for something to sell to people. On the otherhand, many would prefer working for themselves if it could pay, and they had a clearly defined role to slip into.
The difference between pre-industrial and now is that you now not only have to find a product/service to sell but you have to find something that the large wallmart style corporations can't do quicker, better and cheaper than you can.
Even small software companies now have the risk of Apple etc completely removing their distribution channel on a whim
or a larger software company (or open source project) just replicating their entire product.
>a larger software company (or open source project) just replicating their entire product.
Agreed for products that are specific service, but if your product is driven by a users(facebook and twitter for example), it's damn near impossible for other companies to push you out of the way and achieve the same results once you reach a large enough user base. I'm not saying it doesn't happen, especially between generations of software, but usually not concurrently. (google+ vs facebook?)
Therein lies roughly the same problem though.
It's not really practical for anybody to start a new social network unless you think you can compete with the likes of facebook / google+ etc.
It's a go big or go home type game and requires a fair amount of risk. It's not really a career choice in the same way as doing a trade would be.
True, post-industrial society has forced everyone to act like traders and back in the day no one wanted to be a trader because you had to contend with guild monopolies, merchant princes, thieves making off with your goods, wolves in the brush, having your ship sink, having your horse go lame from beneath you, and ofcourse... the excessive taxes leveed against anyone not doing exactly what the extablishment wanted.
At least now adays, we don't have to worry about wolves.
During the depression, I had a grand-uncle who went from farm to farm offering to squeeze the farmers' dogs' anal glands for a nickel (or some other tiny amount). It wasn't glamorous but it paid for food.
There's always some kind of work to be done for those willing and able to identify a market.
> Let's face it, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. > It's a lot of work and responsibility; something the
> majority of 20-somethings can't handle.
It's easy to forget that software is probably the least capital intensive industry that's open to a lone entrepreneur. Think about someone wanting to start, say, a basic small bakery operation. My wife did this, and the capital costs necessary to just get started and make that first batch of sales - ingredients, packaging materials, special implements like decorating tips - could easily be enough to deter someone who has little capital to work with. (And we already had a good kitchen with the majority of tools one would need). It's one thing to risk a month of time when you're otherwise idle, it's another to risk next month's rent payment as well.
How about dog walking? Lawn care? Those are just unskilled examples. There are all kinds of small business that you could do without significant investment, so long as you are willing to grow the business out of your earnings.
Dog walking and lawn care put you in competition with illegal aliens charging less than minimum wage, and parentally-subsidized teenagers for whom minimum wage is a gold mine.
The majority of people do not want to be entrepreneurs so their only option is to work for someone else where you are faced with more external forces. When you're in that situation, most people want to do the minimum and earn the maximum which we know rarely works. Let's face it, being an entrepreneur is not for everyone. It's a lot of work and responsibility; something the majority of 20-somethings can't handle.
>Another quipped about a living wage
I would feel discouraged too if I was only being paid $15 an hour after going to school for 4 years.
I agree with you, there are definitely things you can do to ameliorate yourself and improve your chances of finding a job. You don't seem to have the "average person" mentality of doing just the minimum to achieve your goals, so I sense some disconnect there. I could just be reading into it too much.