"Entrepreneurs" deserve wealth, because they take risks?

[Unclebananahead]

As of late, I have been endeavoring to inject class politics into the discussions on the Occupy San Diego Facebook page, and have come up against a small number of aggressive, and very active rightist libertarian/propertarian types. I was wondering if any of you might assist me in formulating a response to his latest line of reasoning:

" it's not about amount of effort. everybody knows the workers work hard. it's about more than just work. first of all it's about risk. the entrepreneur takes a big risk that workers will never take. you complain about low wages? most starting entrepreneurs might work for free for six months or more. most regular people cannot survive in the school of hard knocks. they can't take the failure, and can't muster the willpower to stand up and do it better the next time. the willingness to take that initial jump into the unknown and keep going is what separates the worker from the entrepreneur. the other reason the entrepreneur gets rich and the worker doesn't is because, contrary to popular belief, a successful entrepreneur must delay gratification for many years, saving and investing the earnings into income producing assets, and not on frivolous things. the working class could do this, as many have before them have, but many choose not to live frugally, instead spending his or her money and saving none of it. so this is why savers and risk takers deserve to be rewarded for their efforts. the best of them are able to return money to communities by creating jobs and feeding families. too bad the government incentivizes companies to ship jobs overseas with free trade agreements."

[Comrade Gwydion]

Try living with the risk of being fired in a mass lay-off that has nothing to do with your own efford. Doesn't matter if you've worked hard, been frugal, sacrificed personal relationships an basically lived for the company. You'll still get your ass fired.



Also, note how to this person 'feeding your family' comes as a priority only after you've become 'one of the best' entrepeneurs....

[robbo203]

The idea that risk per se should be rewarded seems strange. When I risk my money betting on the horses I dont demand repayment when my horse comes in last. Besides, ever since the institution of limited liability was introduced, entrepeneurs have been considerably cushioned from the adverse consequences of their faulty guesswork; if anything, it is is the workers themselves who bear the main burden of such consequences e.g losing their jobs and possibly also their homes if they cannot keep up with the mortgage -but of course they dont get a look-in the decisionmaking process despite doing the work and enriching the entrepeneur in the process


Also, the idea of delayed gratification is a bit of myth in my view. It presents a completely distorted view of the wealth production process in capitalism in which inheritance plays an inordinate role. Most people think that inheritance happens only after the demise of the benefactor. In fact most inheritance takes the form of inter-vivo transfers during the lifetime of the benefactor (Annual Review of Sociology Aug 2000 Vol 26: 63-81). Mummy and daddy give little Joe/Jane the dosh to start up their cute little business selling chic merchandise to their bourgeois clientele. This is why the role of inheritance tends to be downplayed when it is actually a very significant factor in entrepeneurial start-ups

Besides you could always point out that socialism will relieve the long suffering entrepeneur - poor things - of the trauma of risk by making the means of production the common property of everyone

[Thirsty Crow]

This represents nothing more than an attempt at a moral justification of the way value is produced in capitalist societies. It's a justification of exploitation, and not a coherent, well grounded explanation of how value is produced.

As such, it should be complemented by another question - does the working class deserve to be "rewarded" by griding, mind numbing toil, by the ever present threat of redundancy and wage cuts, by a lack of control over their labour and the decisions which affect their lives (decisions with regard to the operations of the company, and political decisions), by increasing precarious labour they are forced to perform, by the flexible labour time going along with it that eats up a human being's life affecting their relationships and activities outside the sphere of work - do we all deserve to be "rewarded" like this just because we are not in a position to take the risk, and we cannot be since risk takers need people who cannot do so?

[Erratus]

Honestly my problem is that it goes back to the basic problem of capitalism; there are those who deserve to eat, and those who don't. Just the very notion that some people -innocent, hard working people too- just aren't worthy to live comfortably. They don't deserve a secure job. That rubs me wrong. People are not a means to an end.

[Cencus]

Want to talk about risk? What's a life worth? I've worked in factories where near deaths were a common occurance and deaths happened all in an effort to try n keep a roof over my head and food on the table.

Next time someone pulls that arguement ask them how many entrepreneurs have died as a result of shonky health n saftey standards then ask how many workers have died. Kinda puts the whole risk bollocks into perspective.

[ZeroNowhere]

This should be alright. In any case, our concern isn't primarily whether capitalists 'deserve' their wealth, and such moralizing, but rather how it comes into existence, and how this leads necessarily to its end. The profits of a capitalist are not exactly proportional to the risk taken, either, and indeed tend to be in inverse proportion. For that matter, let's say that there were two capitalists producing the same good, and one spent $5 on 5 workers, making them all work for 4 hours, and the other spent the same on workers working for 8 hours with equal productivity, the former is taking a rather greater risk of losing money, but would receive less profits, because capitalists ultimately receive money from selling products.