Theme: Incentives

All.

I succeeded in business because I applied what we call austrian economics to various industries using technology.

I am trained as an artist. I think as a scientist, and I practice either social science or philosophy depending upon your point of view.

When I was in business full time it was common (since the time I was 21) to ask why I was not teaching in university. (Because I am not tolerant of authority or slave labor, and I like making money.) In business I felt a philosopher that was ‘slumming’ for cash.

I’m a philosopher. That is my art. Business is a craft. I build technology. Some men sell books. Some men sell teaching. Some men work in Patent Offices. Some learn their craft in Law or Politics. Some like Spinoza grind glass lenses.

No one is going to remember me for building one of ten thousand technology companies during the birth of mass information age.

And certainly not for creating services companies. Technology is a way of making money. Technology gives you access to many, many businesses and business models. Working with technology is a little like pscyhology of facilitation rather than the psychology of dysfunction. Working with philosophy is a little like working with the psychology of cooperation and morality rather than people who are broken. But for me, business is an experimental workshop that pays me money, and where I don’t have to justify my work to some committee. Profit is enough justification.

But I”m a philosopher. Not a business man. Spinoza was a philosopher not a lens grinder. The fact that I undrestand business is a consequence of understanding man. Those who do not understand business merely do not understand man.

If you put it that way, then you understand just how little the world understands of man.

Learning philosophy, history, and economics, is to learn man.

Everything else is the subject of the physical world, or the lies we tell one another to avoid costs and gain premiums.

😉

Why aren’t more philosophers entrepreneurs? There are many entrepreneurs and few philosophers. Entrepreneurship and philosophy are time consuming activities. And honestly, contributing to philosophy is far harder than contributing to the economy via entrepreneurship. To combine entrepreneurship and philosphy requires selling books. Selling books for income requires writing books frequently. Philosophical problems are not solve with frequency, or in short time frames.

Spinoza ground lenses and lived poorly and died young having the same asthma as I. I write software, live well and have outlived him despite the asthma. He spent his whole life writing a parsimonious two hundred pages.

The university allows you to report your progress while teaching, to practice the art of lecture and distillation of ideas. And to capture the results of both in your books. And so the university provides the optimum environment for writing whatever you’re writing about.

The question is wether writing in that environment leads you to conclusions and whether writing in the business environment leads you to different conclusions.

It appears so.

It also appears that it is far costlier and therefore less common to write philosophy while also working on entrepreneurship.