AnCap Entrepreneur Network

During our interview at Agora.IO, Peter Klein observed that entrepreneurship could not be taught as skills. The entrepreneur makes judgments about resources and finds creative ways to address market needs, and neither judgment nor creativity are trainable skills.

Gil responded in the chat window, saying he thought it was possible to teach entrepreneurship. Chat messages being what they are, Gil didn’t expand much on the idea. But, I expect he meant that there were ways to teach higher level thinking, such as judgment and creativity.

When I think about my own creative moments, I can spot a trend. They generally come when I recognize that there is some assumption I have been taking for granted. I realize the assumption can be replaced with a conscious decision. I can explore alternatives that I never realized were available before, and compare the results I anticipate for the different choices.

The great assumption that market anarchists recognize is that mainstream society is built upon violence against innocent people. Having made that discovery, a thousand other ideas that are derived from that assumption can be challenged. We can start to imagine new goods and services to offer the market, or better ways to deliver existing ones. We can find ways to compete in markets where we have been told that competition is forbidden.

Forty years ago, world telecommunications were run by large, monolithic, national corporations. Now that decentralized, peer-to-peer communication between individuals has changed the game, it is hard to remember we once had to put up with telephone service like this. What can happen as other market sectors make this transition?

Read Peter’s most recent book, “The Capitalist & the Entrepreneur”.