Beware self-made ‘genius’ entrepreneurs promising the earth. Just look at Elon Musk | Kenan Malik | The Guardianhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/nov/20/beware-self-made-genius-entrepreneurs-promising-earth-just-look-at-elon-muskThe icon of the self-made entrepreneur of genius has survived only because of fabulous state subsidies. Nor is it just public money that Musk arrogates.
According to his biographer Ashlee Vance,
Musk constantly appropriates for himself the credit for the work of his engineers and programmers.“I don’t really have a business plan,” he has boasted, never letting, in the words of Vance,
“the fact that he knew very little about [an] industry’s nuances bother him”.Musk’s real genius is in creating an aura around himself, of making vast promises and getting people to believe that he can deliver. Sometimes he does deliver; many times he does not. It is an approach, however, that yields dividends in an age in which people yearn for the visionary, without particularly scrutinising the vision, who will on the disrupter without necessarily caring what the disruption will be.
Inherited Wealth & The Myth of the Self-Made American Billionairehttps://www.bschools.org/blog/myth-of-self-made-billionaireThe concept of the “self-made man” is as outdated as its origins. Coined in 1842 by Senator Henry Clay, it was used (and is still used) to describe those who owe their successes primarily to themselves, and not outside conditions, such as inheritance. Still, the self-made myth persists largely because financially successful people want to believe that they are chiefly responsible for their own success, while those who aspire to financial success want to believe that all it takes is hard work and dedication.
Hard work and dedication still matter. Individual achievement still deserves recognition. But these things don’t operate in a vacuum—and massive wealth is never solely attributable to the actions of a single person. The nation also maintains a tabloid-esque obsession with Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Elon Musk. A defining narrative of the self-made billionaire is that entrepreneurial success comes primarily from an enormous appetite for risk. But a 2003 study shows that America’s nascent entrepreneurs are actually more risk-averse than non-entrepreneurs, and suggests that most entrepreneurs are motivated by non-financial elements.
Not all risks are equal. Entrepreneurs like Gates or Zuckerberg, both of whom come from well-off families, are able to take on more risk, and defer self-payment longer, than entrepreneurs without such a safety net. Given the high failure rate of new businesses, the ability to tolerate higher levels of risk and unprofitability for a longer period of time amounts to a significant advantage.
Not all failures are equal, and the consequences of failure look very different depending on an entrepreneur’s starting position.