Friday, June 3, 2011

The entrepreneurial fallacy


"So why are entrepreneurs being so shy? Don't they want to create wealth? They probably do. But the fact is this: the entire entrepreneurs-create-wealth thing is a fallacy, and the government is wrong to place its faith in it. Entrepreneurs don't create wealth. Banks create wealth, only banks. If you wonder why politicians seem so powerless to "rein them in", then wonder no more. It is for this simple reason: banks have a monopoly on wealth creation."

1 comment:

Gavin said...

It's a great article, and I agree with Orr, but where I'd take issue is with the definition of 'wealth'. I think she'd be more accurate if she said banks create money or currency. As a letter in today's Guardian points out, wealth can only come from real-world resources, usually the various physical products of the land. We shouldn't be confusing money with wealth - the two are not synonymous. And one of our fundamental problems in these times is that money has become detached from real-world wealth: hence the spiralling amounts of paper (or electronic) money in the world even as the natural resource base of our wealth is depleting.