Heh, my definition of entrepreneur is somewhat more subversive.

A couple days back, I was talking to one of my close friends who is still
stuck in high school and unhappy with constantly being under her teachers'
thumb of authority, and I tried to show her how her dissatisfaction and
rebellious nature is actually a huge source of potential. Here's an excerpt
of what I wrote:

The other thing about entrepreneurship is that *entrepreneurship is
inherently anti-authoritarian*. Being an employee is about respecting the
system, being an entrepreneur is about being hubristic and disrespectful of
established ways and thinking you can make the system better. Most of the
time you fail and are mocked and forgotten; but a small portion of the time
you succeed and other people end up respecting you. The motto is: it is
better to seek forgiveness than beg permission.


As an entrepreneur, you do not actually create anything with your own labor
(some do, but that's because they're entrepreneurs and employees at the
same time); rather, you are setting up a platform (whether a company, a
cooperative or a charity) which other people (specifically, investors,
employees and customers) can use to interact with each other if they choose
to. What is that platform? Once you boil it down to the essentials, for
each of its participants it's nothing more than a way of acting - a
pattern. If that way of acting produces superior results to what the people
achieved before, then people will keep acting that way, and your pattern
prospers and grows.

Entrepreneurship is "society gone meta"; human beings and society in
general live by following patterns, but entrepreneurship is the pattern of
creating new patterns yourself.

On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:57 PM, Adam B. Levine <adam@???>wrote:

> Yeah +1 to that, well said Amir - Focusing on details and symptoms is the
> path to not getting anything done when the problems are all systemic and
> failure of the system can never be allowed at the price of compounding the
> problems, spreading them all over the world instead of being localized as
> they would in a sane environment. What's the point of having redundancy in
> society and culture if failure is only allowed to occur when no force in
> existence can stop it? Just means the failure is that much more horrible,
> AND inescapable.
>
> Regarding robinhood debt, that works until it doesn't. If the belief is
> the change is required, it is also important to pick battles that don't
> give an obvious reason to put you in jail. We're not to the point yet
> where that happens, but if governments broadly are determined to save the
> banks at any and all costs, it's only a matter of time.
>
> I see the role of an entrepreneur as a person looking into a community
>> or market, getting into the minds of those people and trying to
>> satisfy a need. The business is simply a vehicle for sustaining the
>> work. It isn't about trying to offer the minimal work for the maximum
>> pay scamming off everyone around you. It's about building
>> infrastructure, and supporting good people around you to improve the
>> lives of people. I like Bitcoin because it empowers this group of
>> people (artists, small business, any service).
>
> This is a great definition!
>
>>
>
>
>
> Adam B. Levine
> Editor-in-Chief
> Let's Talk Bitcoin! <http://www.letstalkbitcoin.com>
> 1-855-WETALKBITCOIN Ex.700
> [image: Inline image 2]
> Talk to me on Gli.ph, my preferred communications platform
>
>
> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Vitalik Buterin <vbuterin@???>wrote:
>
>> Wow, that was beautiful.
>>
>> I'm actually in Calafou right now; just arrived so I haven't had a chance
>> to explore it too much, but from what I've heard from other people it's
>> really interesting. Looking forward to seeing more.
>>
>> On Thu, Jun 27, 2013 at 9:10 PM, Amir Taaki <genjix@???> wrote:
>>
>>> >>> I'm not often reading political books or fiction. Mostly it's science
>>> text books or computer manuals. I don't have much respect for the
>>> leading sentences and weasel words that is so often prevalent in
>>> political reasoning.
>>>
>>> My perspective is based more on practical experience from being around
>>> different communities over the years. Mike told me his views are more
>>> from deep thought and reasoning. We arrived at the same conclusion
>>> from different vantage points. I see this happening around me with
>>> everyone arriving at the same position.
>>>
>>> I want to simplify the political discourse. I believe it's been too
>>> weighted down by dogmatism and complex visions tenuously drawn out
>>> from unproven first principles. The truth is simpler. We don't need to
>>> complicate what we know.
>>>
>>> Our society is not natural, and this is now the way people are meant
>>> to live. It's isolating and degrading meagre living that preys on
>>> people to shoehorn them into wage work and debt slavery. The more we
>>> look to gangsters to protect us, the more people will be preyed on.
>>> You will always be outside that closed circle begging for higher
>>> wages, shorter hours or better working conditions. Concessions are
>>> buying your compliance and obedience.
>>>
>>> The environment is fucked and we're facing an ecological crisis. The
>>> system is becoming overbearing and draconian surveillance is
>>> exponentiating. Mass protest movements from the tea party, Occupy,
>>> middle east, Brazil, Spain and Turkey are evidence of a balkanising
>>> world. It's rapidly becoming chaotic, and the only way for governments
>>> to maintain unity is growing fascism.
>>>
>>> When you live in a community (especially political ones), it's obvious
>>> how the system hates competition. There is always a legal this or that
>>> to halt any challenges to established order and hierarchy. If there
>>> isn't, then the agents of the system make something up. Police are
>>> wilfully corrupt _regularly_. It is not a rare occurrence. They steal
>>> evidence, instigate violence (and arrest people for assault) and twist
>>> laws to carry out protectionist action. Am I supposed to like
>>> gangsters because it's 'their job', or am I just meant to dislike the
>>> ones that love their job and go way beyond the line of duty (acting
>>> outside the law).
>>>
>>> Right now, I'm convinced it's all sliding downwards anyway. I'm not
>>> bothered to fight against that. Neither is it worth my time to try to
>>> convince others to leave. What does feel constructive is building up
>>> spaces for our people and leaving doorways open.
>>>
>>> I really like this project in Barcelona called Calafou. It's a
>>> techno-industrial ecovillage. They own the land with ~60 apartments on
>>> there and lots of space. It's a community of people working on various
>>> projects. They source electricity from the local dam and are
>>> researching renewable energy sources. You can pay ~150 EUR a month (in
>>> Bitcoin) for an apartment but it is only "pay for use" - if you leave,
>>> you get all the money back. But this isn't necessary as you can live
>>> for free.
>>>
>>> The collective administrating it, is called La Integral Cooperativa
>>> Catalan which helps manage economy. If you want to make money, you can
>>> do jobs like making marmalade which they buy off you and then sell on
>>> the market. If you want to start a business, they provide a legal
>>> interface to the bureaucracy which does things like balance incoming
>>> and outgoing taxes from all businesses (so you don't have to pay much).
>>>
>>> One of the people (Enric Duran) who helped found this borrowed 500k
>>> EUR from various Spanish banks which he donated to social movements
>>> then didn't give back to the banks. I favour this idea of taxation.
>>> Stop complaining about banking criminality, and start re-appropriating
>>> stolen goods on behalf of the people.
>>>
>>> They use the word "post-capitalist" lots, but it's misleading to read
>>> into that too much. What many Bitcoiners imagine as capitalism is not
>>> what most people conceptualise. The word is problematic and dividing.
>>> We would probably term the concept as corporatism. It's not communist
>>> or socialist to dislike corporations, and favour individuals and small
>>> businesses.
>>>
>>> I see the role of an entrepreneur as a person looking into a community
>>> or market, getting into the minds of those people and trying to
>>> satisfy a need. The business is simply a vehicle for sustaining the
>>> work. It isn't about trying to offer the minimal work for the maximum
>>> pay scamming off everyone around you. It's about building
>>> infrastructure, and supporting good people around you to improve the
>>> lives of people. I like Bitcoin because it empowers this group of
>>> people (artists, small business, any service).
>>> >>> _______________________________________________
>>> unSYSTEM mailing list: http://unsystem.net
>>> https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/unsystem
>>>
>>
>>
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