I heard @mollywood say this on a podcast. It caught my attention. I was also listening to another podcast-and I can’t remember which one-where they were talking about different types of entrepreneurship. There is entrepreneurship, a good one, that is beneficial and helps not just the entrepreneur but the industry or the discipline.
Then there’s a not so good one – the one that @mollywood was talking about today. The kind that just exploits – selfishly. I’m not saying that exploiting is a completely bad thing. There are times when exploiting works.
Entrepreneurship that is innovative and forward moving – good. Exploitative Entrepreneurship – bad. Tell me what you think.
identitySPECIALIST 
I wrote about something similar on my Google+ account today: https://plus.google.com/117492971950333666268/posts/MWxxo61gtfL
Basically, I compared a Marxist’s analysis of the current economic crisis with a radical free-marketer’s criticism of corporatism. They made the same essential point: much of the entrepreneurship in our economy is based on getting the government to intervene to circumvent natural checks on the ability of businesses to extract economic rent (to make a profit without actually doing anything useful; see ).
(And yes, I love sounding like a raving socialist and a free-market fanatic at the same time. Breaking through the mental frames we’ve inherited from mass culture is a hobby of mine.)
…see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rent_seeking
Don’t know why that didn’t show up.
That’s awesome. I’ll check it out. It’s sounds like I’m not going to understand that post, but I’ll check it out.
Thanks for sharing this.
Your response made me realized I’d started using a buzzword — “rent” — that I wasn’t entirely clear on in my head. So, naturally, I felt the need to elaborate: https://plus.google.com/117492971950333666268/posts/eyUd9g3FB3y
Hope that helps you understand what I’m getting at.