Simeon Djankov, Yingyi Qian, Gérard Roland and Ekaterina Zhuravskaya:
...find that family characteristics have the strongest influence on becoming an entrepreneur. In contrast, success as an entrepreneur is primarily determined by the individual’s smartness and higher education in the family. Entrepreneurs are not more self-confident than non-entrepreneurs; and overconfidence is bad for business success.-BID Network
Dennis Matanda at the Sub-Saharan African roundtable comments on the Mo Ibrahim prize:
In a classic case of “African solutions for African problems,” Mohammed “Mo” Ibrahim, a successful London-based Sudanese entrepreneur and multimillionaire with more than $ 500 million to his name - he owned Celtel in Uganda until last year - is offering present and future African leaders the richest annual prize in the world. Announced on October 25, 2006 in London, the prize challenges African heads of state to govern and lead their people properly, which is where the Professor Rotberg index will come in...I agree that there is need to reward honesty, but to reward an African leader to do his job is like pouring milk on a fire when you can use water!
Since my my last post (My Personal Experience Fighting the Worship of Earth Hour) was so serious, I'm going to follow it up with a lighter post today, about stuff that I find funny.
First, take a look at the picture of the bear- according to the US Fish & Wildlife Service office in Kalispell, Montana, that little fella has taken to sitting every day at the picnic table apparently waiting to be fed and to have his winter den dug by government employees. Although he once was self-sufficient, he now begs for a handout every day from our generous government. Because of this, residents have taken to calling him Bearack Obama!
Next, according to the Detroit News, a new industry is starting up in Detroit, and I suspect that it actually is the fast-growing industry in the city (other than working for the government). The new industry is urban hunting and skinning. Yes, like a scene out of I Am Legend, the wilderness is retaking the city of Detroit, and the animal population is moving into areas that were once inhabited by productive men. Years of Democrat control in action!
The story in the Detroit News is the story of a young 69-year old entrepreneur, who has to supplement his Social Security checks by hunting raccoons in the city of Detroit. Apparently this guy kills coons with the help of his rifle and coon dog, butchers the meat, and sells it to local residents, and he also sells the skins- but doesn't pay taxes on these sales (must be a Democrat). The meat is not USDA approved (probably something to do with rabies), but the video about the story (go to the link for the article to watch it and howl with laughter) shows coon meat being served with liver and onions and Faygo red pop- just the way mom made it!
In other news, Obama recently was in England, and since he had to talk to people over there, he brought with him 5 speech-writers and 12 teleprompters for the weekend. I don't think that was enough- I heard some of his stammering and stuttering in a press conference- but still- 12 teleprompters? Can't you just bring one and move it from place to place? Or do they have to put a separate one up everywhere he goes and load it with his thoughts?
Sadly the teleprompter didn't let his wife know that you aren't supposed to touch the Queen of England- it's apparently a big no-no. Doesn't anyone on his staff do any research on this stuff? I guess not- Michelle put her arm around the Queen and gave her a noogie on national television- probably not a good idea, but at least her arms were fantastic!
Lastly, least we forget how low the bar was for Presidents (and yet Obama still gets under it), here is a hilarious clip from a George W. Bush press conference where he is talking about fighting the biggest threat to our lives- zombies. That's right- laugh if you want, but apparently zombies are a big threat, and I am glad our President did everything he could to wipe them out- click on the link if you don't believe me. Enjoy!
NOTE to NEW READERS: New readers, please feel free to also check out some of my recent good posts like Obama is a Caudillo, The Inside Deal: Obama's Economic Program, Employment-Population Ratio Drops to 58.5%, Earth Day: Is it just one big Communist Plot?, Gifted Programs in Schools Training Future Liberals, or Obama On Inner and Outer Circles of Leadership. Also feel free to link to blog-curhatanku.blogspot.com on your blog, and bookmark conservativeteacher.blogspot.com so you can become a regular reader of the battles of a conservative teacher's attempt to advance the principles of liberty and freedom.
Kenyan Entrepreneur reacts to a David Brooks Haiti Op-Ed about "Progress-Resistant Cultures"
...culture has a lot to do with a country’s progress. I’ve said before that Africa’s poverty can be attributed to the fact that Africa does not have a culture of production. If something cannot be extracted from the ground (e.g. oil, gold, etc, etc) – we simply will not create or make it and this culture of non-production is the main cause of Africa’s poverty. That’s why foreign aid hasn’t worked. It’s because the do-gooder’s of the world have refused (out of fears of being labeled “racist” – have refused to confront this underlying question of culture).More here
This week is the Oakland County (Michigan) Republican Convention, and to be honest, I'm still a little annoyed about the last one. At the last convention- which I wrote about here- each precinct choose leaders for the county executive board, which plays a large role in shaping the direction of the party at the county and state level.
I stood up and volunteered my services, and spoke about my youth, enthusiasm, and new conservative take on politics- and lost to a group of old same-old moderates. Many people liked me, but were unwilling to support me for any sort of leadership, fearing change and lacking hope.
If there is one thing that I took from Obama's rise to victory, it is that as Republicans, we need to embrace change and speak once more of the hope for the future- and both change and hope are indeed deeply conservative ideals.
Let me quote a bit from William Kristol's article:
I'm all about chaos, debate, and testing new methods of politics- what I am running up against as a conservative Republican are those people who lost us the last election, those people who want to play it safe, stifle debate, and do things the old way- those people who want to play not to lose rather than play to win- I'm running up against the Republican Party that wants to lose again.Republicans, newly liberated, need to resist calls to shackle themselves to prematurely announced agendas and already anointed leaders. This is the time for a thousand Republicans to bloom. Congressmen used to looking to the White House for guidance or approval--or fearing disapprobation--should show some healthy ambition and unleash their inner policy entrepreneur. Backbenchers need to come forward with heterodox ideas. There should be vigorous debate. Disharmonious disarray is in the short term much less of a danger than a false and stultifying unity.
If party leaders and ideological guides had succeeded in buttoning everything down, if there had been harmonious unity and a coordinated strategy and an agreed-upon message in early 1977, there would have been no Reagan Revolution. And if politicians--or for that matter pundits--had been deterred from changing their minds, worried over charges of inconsistency, there would have been less progress during those years. When you're out of power after having been in power for a long time and when there are new realities requiring fresh thinking, a foolish consistency really is the hobgoblin of little minds. Or at least politically unsuccessful ones. So a little chaos, lots of debate, tons of political entrepreneurship--that's what we need.
Aneel Karnani chimes in on the debate regarding the insufficiency of Microfinance:
My analysis of the macroeconomic data suggests that although microcredit yields some noneconomic benefits, it does not significantly alleviate poverty. Indeed, in some instances microcredit makes life at the bottom of the pyramid worse. Contrary to the hype about microcredit, the best way to eradicate poverty is to create jobs and to increase worker productivity.
To understand why creating jobs, not offering microcredit, is the better solution to alleviating poverty, consider these two alternative scenarios: (1) A microfinancier lends $200 to each of 500 women so that each can buy a sewing machine and set up her own sewing microenterprise, or (2) a traditional financier lends $100,000 to one savvy entrepreneur and helps her set up a garment manufacturing business that employs 500 people. In the first case, the women must make enough money to pay off their usually high-interest loans while competing with each other in exactly the same market niche. Meanwhile the garment manufacturing business can exploit economies of scale and use modern manufacturing processes and organizational techniques to enrich not only its owners, but also its workers. As these scenarios illustrate, a surer way to ending poverty is to create jobs and to increase worker productivity, rather than investing in microfinance...[continue reading]
Mfonobong Nsehe asks? in an American Chronicle article:
Are there any universities at all which are as supportive of student entrepreneurs as to organizing business plan competitions to fund businesses of students which have mega potential?...Where are you going to find venture capitalists in Kenya or elsewhere in Africa who will be willing to swallow their pride and listen to a student entrepreneur who is armed with nothing but a world-shaking idea?
We have such bright student entrepreneurs in Africa. But until African financiers and the self-proclaimed 'Venture capitalists' are easily accessible and listen to student entrepreneurs in our African Universities, Africa may never have its own answers to such mega, internationally famed corporations like Google, Yahoo, TicketAdvantage, CollegeHumor and Facebook which were all the brainchildren of student entrepreneurs. We need financiers who will believe in and support the dreams of African student entrepreneurs and get those big ideas out of the boxes and into the pages of history. African student entrepreneurs are equally as smart, gifted and visionary and if supported can come up with big, world-changing ideas that would change the world.
And so, will the venture capitalists in Africa please stand up?
R. Todd Johnson writing in Friends of Ethiopia:
Outside of direct relief aid and some of the amazing health and education research and development, much (perhaps most) of what is done in the developing world through non-profits and NGO's, could actually be accomplished through a business model, even if it would be harder to raise investment funding. Instead, someone begins selling tax subsidized and donor subsidized water pumps in Africa, because it is easier to raise the funding through tax deductible donations rather than through the rigors of proving out the business model for investment dollars, with the great result of increased deployment of inexpensive water moving technology in the developing world to aid rural farmers, but the negative results of (1) killing the market for future indigenous entrepreneurs attempting to sell water pumps at a profit and (2) locking a potentially valuable distribution channel in a non-profit, making it difficult for other for-profits to use.A friend of his an entrepreneur in answer to a question about how he was doing stated:
"Africans don't see a reward system in place for being entrepreneurial. In fact, they view it as a matter of survival, not an opportunity to lift themselves out of poverty. Rather, what they learn at a very early age, is that in order to make good money, they should learn to speak English incredibly well and then maybe, just maybe, they can get a job driving for an NGO. In a few years, if they play their cards right, they might be able to land an NGO job as a project manager and even advance further."More here
Della Bradshaw reports in the FT on Ian MacMillan who asserts that:
If philanthropists endow the seed funding for societal wealth enterprises, in many economies, particularly developing ones, it should be possible to attract local entrepreneurs who are quite happy to live with the smaller profit streams eschewed by their counterparts in wealthier economies..."A powerful appeal to philanthropists is that their contributions have a chance to remove problems ... and the associated recurrent 'annual tin cup' dependencies. Perhaps the idea behind the proverb -- give a man a fish and he soon goes hungry, teach him to fish and he eats forever -- represents a viable option in today's world.
MacMillan's methodology is simple. "You don't just go in with your cowboy boots and spurs," he says. Instead, he and his students from across the university develop ideas they think will combine the dual function of creating businesses while addressing social problems(pdf), then put the initial idea into practice with seed funding and appoint a local entrepreneur to run the business.
Image by skasuga via FlickrBenin Mwangi at African Path reports:
Paul Kagame has cut a striking image throughout the world as a leader who has been willing to go against the grain on so many levels to bring about real and lasting change in Rwanda.
Whether we are looking at the ICT industry, the tea and coffee industry, education, women's rights, or reconciliation he seems to always be at the forefront of his class-that class being the class of current African presidents and political leaders. And his leadership has not gone unnoticed in the since that since he came to leadership Rwanda has made a slow but very steady march towards stability and prosperity...[continue reading]
There are many aspiring social entrepreneurs out there who are trying to take their passion and ideas to the next level. What is one piece of advice you would give to them based on your own experiences and successes? Learn more about how to become a great social entrepreneur from all of the TED Fellows on the Case Foundation blog.More hereThat’s an interesting question because I’m just at the point of trying to realize our dreams. The Nigeria Health Watch blog, FGCE Project Hope, TEDxEuston … we do it alongside what we do to earn a living. We’re just at the point of thinking now, “How can we actually earn a living by doing what we really want to do?” That’s a huge, huge challenge, especially if you’re in a field or profession that you like and pays relatively well, and you’re comfortable. I don’t think I’m in a position to give very good advice, because I’m in the process of finding that myself..
However, to offer a small piece of advice I give myself all the time. I think you’ve got a small window in a life time , when you have the most energy, exposure, experience and competence. So there’s not really that much time. The earlier you do start with something you really like doing, the better.
Steven Shapin writes about the unconventional career of Craig Venter and his attitude to the "dead hand of government or academic bureaucracies","If you want free, unconstrained and risk-taking science, then you more or less need to do it in, or with the support of, the commercial sector. Science and capital have a relationship as vital as it is sometimes uneasy"
Dibussi Tande writes in African Path about the impact of educational systems that do not foster ingenuity,resourcefulness and invention amongst other things.Quoting the World Bank:
The ability of a society to produce, select, adapt, commercialize, and use knowledge is critical for sustained economic growth and improved living standards. Knowledge has become the most important factor in economic development.And comparing Cameroon to India
Today Cameroon is where India was some two decades ago – and it has the potential to become what India (or even Mauritius) is today. However, unlike India, Cameroon is crippled by the “civil service mentality”, and it lacks a crop of creative economic and political visionaries similar to those who transformed Bangalore from a sleepy backwater Indian town into an IT outsourcing and software Mecca.He alludes to a point made in the The Entrepreneur
Nowhere has that absence of vision been most manifested than in the country’s higher education system which was established primarily to train administrators for the post colonial government. Time has not changed the focus of Cameroon’s higher education system even as the world has moved on.
The deficit of knowledge and learning is killing Cameroon and Africa softly. Despite a proliferation of schools and colleges, the lack of true learning and creativity has held the African captive to underdevelopment. In Cameroon we have graduates who are just producing what they were taught in school, instead of producing new things…This has left Cameroon with millions of qualified illiterates and graduates who are failures as far as life and service is concerned. A Master's degree holder moves with little or no creativity. Thousands of poorly educated Cameroonians only wait for opportunities to work where others have worked. Few are involved in the creation of new things. The outdated education they received then gives birth to confusion.And brings to our attention a critical piece of analysis by Jeremy Weate on his observations about Nigeria.
The longer I live here, the more I realize that technological interventions or money pumped in by donors will do little to transform, unless there is a primary focus on business processes (whether in the commercial or the public sector)… Nigerians enjoy the benefits of cars, laptops, mobile phones and other modern technology, but live in a society which does not understand the discipline and rigour it takes to produce such technology. This creates an alienated culture where technology and modern industrial processes are seen as a mystery. No one seems to be able to solve the aviation crisis. No one seems to be able to create value-added manufacturing processes; no one seems to stem the tide of an import-economy, turning into an export-economy. So few technological interventions (in any sector) meet with any kind of success.
Expect more of this once Obama is in charge. In Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality declared that a temporary puddle on a business owners property was 'wetland', and so that business owner had to set aside that property until the end of time and not develop it. This puddle exists as snow run off from a recently built parking lot, and is only in existence for several months, and was not in existence when the property owner bought the land, and has never been declared to be wetland at any time ever. But, just days before this property owner was ready to pour concrete to expand his parking lot over the puddle, the DEQ swooped in and made this decision. The property owner defied the DEQ, saying that this was an arbitrary exercise in bureaucratic power, and now the DEQ is now fining him and threatening him with jail time.
Here is the full story. Notice also that many of the commentators support the DEQ, claiming that it was the property owners fault, and that he needs to justify developing the land, not that the DEQ needs to justify why he can't develop it. Most of the people leaving comments are going to vote in a police state that will rule your lives.
This is the type of state we are entering. Unelected bureaucrats are going to be making decisions about what can be developed and what can't be developed, all on their own whims, under pressure from environmental groups and left wing nuts. They will chase jobs out of our country, drive down our prosperity, and make our world a worse place than it is now. We need to fight this. What can we do to help this guy? Write letters? Contact the DEQ? Don't let injustices like this one stand my friends- do something.
In April I wrote about a story that I saw in the Detroit News about the Coon Man (Coon Hunting, A Bear Named Obama, Teleprompters, Queen Touching, and Bush Fighting Zombies), and today there was a follow up to it in the Detroit News. Here is what I wrote when the story first came out:
Next, according to the Detroit News, a new industry is starting up in Detroit, and I suspect that it actually is the fast-growing industry in the city (other than working for the government). The new industry is urban hunting and skinning. Yes, like a scene out of I Am Legend, the wilderness is retaking the city of Detroit, and the animal population is moving into areas that were once inhabited by productive men. Years of Democrat control in action!Today the Detroit News has a follow-up story about Detroit's Coon Man, who is busy hunting away finding meals for people for the holidays. This is great reporting, by the way, and the type of stuff that makes you want to buy a newspaper- it isn't slanted, biased, or massaged to produce some sort of political action- it is simply a great story well reported on. But as I read it, I do come to some conclusions.
The story in the Detroit News is the story of a young 69-year old entrepreneur, who has to supplement his Social Security checks by hunting raccoons in the city of Detroit. Apparently this guy kills coons with the help of his rifle and coon dog, butchers the meat, and sells it to local residents, and he also sells the skins- but doesn't pay taxes on these sales (must be a Democrat). The meat is not USDA approved (probably something to do with rabies), but the video about the story (go to the link for the article to watch it and howl with laughter) shows coon meat being served with liver and onions and Faygo red pop- just the way mom made it!
Many people in our nation are unemployed as a result of the liberal policies of Obama and Bush, of Democrats and liberal Republicans, who didn't respect private property rights, who created barriers and limits to our freedom and liberty, and who failed to embrace and love human life in all of its glory. These liberal policies manifested itself in high taxes, cumbersome regulations disguised as 'safety' or 'environmental', new entitlements, increased federal control over disaster relief and education and energy production, increases in barriers to production and investment, and the giving away of taxpayer money that the government doesn't even have to those who haven't earned it.
Unemployment is difficult, and it doesn't look like the situation is going to get a whole lot better, especially if Obama and the Democrats don't extend the Bush tax cuts. In order for jobs to be created though, you have to allow people to make free choices, and what is happening right now with unemployment benefits is not right. The government is using money taken from my children and from my grandchildren (ie, debt) to pay people to sit home and not work. It isn't paying these people enough to really pay the bills or buy any new products (so it isn't 'stimulus payments') and these unemployment benefits can only be earned when people aren't working, so they aren't producing anything for our society. At some point, unemployment benefits must be scaled back or cut off, or else unemployment will simply turn into yet another entitlement program, paid for by debt, acting as a drag on our economy and preventing jobs from being created.
Tough choices have to be made at some point by unemployed- to either get retrained, to switch careers, to retire early at a reduced standard of living, to get a job at a retail chain or fast food joint, or to take a risk on themselves and go into business as an entrepreneur. Of course unemployment is a safety net that people do pay into, and thus should be there for those to cushion their fall and buy them time to recover and readjust, but unemployment should not be a long-term solution, or else it will be come a long-term problem.
That being said, our elected leaders (mainly Democrats in Congress and the Presidency but also some Republicans) are unable to make the tough decisions that need to made regarding unemployment. There are increased calls to extend these benefits, indefinitely I imagine, by many in the media. Via RealClearPolitics, Robert Reich (whose book The Work of Nations: Preparing Ourselves for 21st Century Capitalism was required reading in two of my University classes)
Yet Republicans and some Blue Dog Democrats in Congress say we can't afford another extension of jobless benefits. The deficit is too big.But wait. These are the same members of Congress who say we should extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. Extending the Bush tax cuts for the people at the top would cost more than extending unemployment benefits for struggling families without a breadwinner. These families need the money. The rich don't.This Reich is the same person who advises Democrats on economic policy, and he thinks that in the zero-sum game of wealth creation, it is better to take money from jobs creators (ie, the wealthy, those people who worked hard for their money, who invest in businesses, who buy products, and who run businesses) and transfer that money (through government bureaucrats, who take a large cut for themselves) to those who are unemployed, so that they can continue to not produce anything and drain wealth from society. Reich is proud of the 'tough decision' that he is making and thinks that it is 'really brave' for politicians to take money by force and give it to someone else for doing nothing (being unemployed) and then take credit for it. Reich ends his editorial by saying:
Quick action is needed. About 800,000 unemployed workers will run out of benefits this week. Two million more will stop receiving benefits by the end of December. Millions more after that. The choice couldn't be clearer.The choice is clear- make the tough decision Congress and do something different than creating another entitlement program. Perhaps it is some sort of reduced unemployment program, designed to transition people off government dependence to independence and freedom, or perhaps it is some sort of unemployment program that rewards people for getting back to work in any way rather than bribing them to stay in government-induced dependent poverty, but the choice is clear- do not just simply make the easy call and extend benefits, but instead make the tough call and move people closer to freedom while increasing protection of private property.
Banji Oyelaran-Oyeyinka and Padmashree Gehl Sampath write:
Our analysis of the innovation process for biopharmaceutical research within Nigeria reveals specific obstacles at different stages of work that the institutions were engaged in, for three reasons. First, lack of facilities and financing to move the research to the concluding stages.Second, we found situations where significant research results had been collected, with evidence of possible utility of the process and product, but no demand by the end-users10.Third, failure to commercialize sometime resulting from institutional rigidity much of which relates to the ways traditional PRIs and universities are set up. There are two issues that recurred in our interviews namely, who initiate the process (the PRI[public research institutes] or a
firm/entrepreneur?); and what form of formal or informal contract guides the process? In advanced developing and highly industrialized countries, two broad types of formal contract are common, which are, academic entrepreneurship, and spin-off companies from public research or universities...[continue reading]
In the Globe and Mail Tristan Coloma reports on the African immigrant/trader community network in China:
On the question of who Chinese should be dealing with:This place is not really China, nor is it Africa; it lies in the midst of major highways in Guangzhou, southern China (formerly known as Canton). Officially, 20,000 Africans – probably more like 100,000 – live in or pass through the 10 square kilometres of “Africa Town,” where Igbo, Wolof and Lingala mingle with Mandarin and Cantonese. Some Chinese call it “Chocolate Town.”...In this roaring city of 18 million inhabitants and tens of thousands of micro-factories, the commercial activity is very different from the oil deals and huge public-works contracts the Chinese have secured in Africa.“We’re not here for fun,” said Ibrahim Kader Traore, an entrepreneur from Ivory Coast. “We work hard and do well. In Abidjan, people still swear by France, where you might be able to save $13,000 over 25 years; in China, you can have $130,000 in just five years.”...[continue reading]
A new transnational African business class may be emerging, which could flood sub-Saharan Africa with low-cost products from China. “China is trying to keep things at government level,” said Mr. Barry, “but the Chinese people will soon realize that it’s better for business to deal directly with ordinary Africans.” China would prefer Africans to do business with China without living here, yet 90 per cent of Guangzhou’s Africans act as intermediaries between the African continent and Chinese factories.
Luke Johnson asks in the FT "What’s so terrible about making money?":
He's convinced that many intelligent, ambitious individuals would adopt a self-employed way of life if they could strip away all the cultural bias and realise that building a venture can be a creative, even an heroic, endeavour. In truth, becoming an entrepreneur is a vocation, like fine art or quantum physics or teaching. But intellectual snobbery, prejudice and the comfort blanket of big organisations means business frequently fails to win the moral arguments...Most people focus on the risks of free enterprise and are scared to join the ranks of the self-made. Some have learned to play the system of government and institutions like a game, and enjoy power, pension and profit from their position in the state sector.
Why should they encourage choice and competition when they have such a safe haven as a bureaucrat, trade union official, academic, etc?
