Entrepreneurs as the source of wealth-diffusion

Here's a good video about entrepreneurship made by the Kauffman Foundation:

Video also in YouTube here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7VZIbeUrSU

This same topic; innovators, entrepreneurs etc as wealth creators, job creators in society is also a hot topic here in Finland at the moment. The country would desperately need precisely those things.

The global crisis of oversized governments, with reckless overspending and debt taking has already all but ruined the economy and will continue to haunt us for the near future. The governments will not be able to solve a problem they themselves have created.

Finland also has a massive oversized and bloated behemoth of a Government. Currently the 2010 figure for GDP % of the public sector in Finland is 55.3%, according to Eurostat, that means that the public sector in its entirety is larger than the private sector. How long can this madness go on? Not for long. I have been told that no nation in the history of the world has survived for long with a larger public sector than it's private sector.

The Finnish Statistical Bureau, Tilastokeskus, Also has some 2009 data available: they state that the public sector is 56.3% of GDP in 2009. Source here.

As the public sector expenditure is so massive % from GDP this forms a particular problem: it makes the economy increasingly dependent on the public sector and its cash flow. If simultaneously the public sector purchases from the private sector are conservative in attitude and always favor the big corporations then we have another particular problem as the spending never flows to the new. Public sector spending is massive and to large extent its just maintaining the status quo. A cynical person might comment that perhaps this is by design, working as intended?

Needless to say this is totally batshit insane and cannot be sustained for long. The public sector needs to diminish to half it's size, or possibly more, immediately. And the longer we wait, the more massive the cut will have to be later on. The only alternative to this is to rapidly grow the private sector in such a massive way that the GDP% balance shifts and the private sector quickly becomes much larger than the public sector. What do we need for this?: you guessed it; successful innovators and entrepreneurs. By the thousands.

This brings us back to entrepreneurs and innovators. They are the solution to turn this around and get the country, the EU and the economy back on a healthy track.

Every time a brilliant innovator and entrepreneur successfully takes a magnificent product/service/whatever to the markets we all benefit from it in a massive way;

Imagine someone inventing a free, easy to produce, endless energy source and taking that to market. Something like a quantum zero point energy source possibly. We would all benefit and be enriched by it in a massive way. Such an innovation would bring disproportionate amounts of wealth, extra free time in our lives, etc.

Imagine someone inventing a cell-phone (and network) that operates with gravitons and gravity-micro-ripples in the gravity field instead of the usual electromagnetic radiation and distortions in the electromagnetic field of earth as our current cell phones operate in. This tech, taken successfully to market, would mean massive benefits and cool stuff for us all. Making the cell phones work underground (or undersea) amongst other cool things.

The examples could go on forever. Every time an innovator or an entrepreneur creates something new, something valuable and successfully takes that to the markets - we all benefit as a result. We all receive a gift of more free time, the gift of increased performance, etc.

Imagine having to cook a chicken for dinner without any technology; taking a knife (or a sharp stone), butchering the chicken at first, then skinning it, processing it, taking a few hours to light a fire without any tech (or is fire tech also?, yes it is, in fact..), and perhaps after a full day of work you could have it cooked. Imagine having to visit Oulu without any tech: walking there from Helsinki would take more than 5 days according to Google Maps directions. Tech and successfully commercialized innovations make our life fabulous, rich and give us free time to do other things with our lives besides live in caves and hunt for food every day (as we would be without innovations and technology.)

The wealth created by such success would be diffused throughout the society in every level; making the poor richer, and also the rich richer. This diffusion happens through mutually voluntary exchange of value-for-value and ends up effectively diffusing wealth to every level and corner of society. Today, however this doesn't happen optimally: as the public sector is so freaking massive, larger than the private sector, we have a parasite in the system: instead of healthy natural diffusion we get suction. We have a massive freeraiding vermin in the system that sucks away the wealth created, and intercepts the diffusion - by means in intervention, excessive taxation, regulation, the non-producing public sector sucks a lot of it away, and doesn't allow for the diffusion to happen. Instead of voluntary value-for-value exchange we get involuntary value-for-nonvalue exchange. That isn't an exchange at all; it's more like a violation of individual rights and legalized robbery.

The Finns often think that "society" is the same as "government" or "the state". We must be pretty much the only nation thinking this way. Finns are government-worshippers, statists. In just about every other part of the world people tend to think that society = the people, and the that the people pay for the government, the people allow the government to exist by their mandate, and that the government works for the people. Lately I have seen interviews in the media here in Finland from the Green Party politicians saying that "we must increase taxes because the government needs to be pay for the society".. it's amazing how fucked up this issue can be in people's brains; it's the society that pays for the government, certainly not the other way around.

Innovators, entrepreneurs and growth companies cannot flourish in an environment of massive taxes, larger public sector than private, over-regulation and over-intervention at every level. Governments simply can't regulate and tax innovations and growth companies into existence and success. Cannot be done.

Today we have a crisis. This would be our way out. Currently however I am worried that the public debate on the issue is going to the other direction: more restrictions, more taxes, more tackling down this process of innovation and the new that could benefit us all. It's almost like the government would not want people to be better, would not want everyone to benefit from cool new things that enrich our lives and massively benefit us all. Is this the case for real? I'm starting to suspect that it is. I'm beginning to suspect that because one massively successful entrepreneur might capture 0.5% of the value for herself (and the 99.5% goes to the rest of us) the Finns are so jealous that they won't allow or accept this to happen. This is pure evil. Unethical behavior that leads to maximizing human misery and making the poor more poorer, along with making the rich more poorer too.

Think about it for a while, and consider how you can affect this attitude. We are in crisis, the clock is ticking, every day our oversized government is spending and going deeper into dept. Courageous urgent action is required and this topic needs to enter and stay in the public eye.