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There seems to be considerable inertia in the supply of entrepreneurs. One reason is that the culture affects
the supply, and the culture itself changes only very slowly. Entrepreneurship is one of the major avenues of so-
cial and economic advancement, along with sport and entertainment. But the Horatio Alger myth that the typi-
cal entrepreneur has risen from rags to riches disguises the fact that as Frank Taussig and others have found,
many of the most successful entrepreneurs are the sons of professionals and entrepreneurs. They owe much of
their success to parental training and inherited family contacts. Thus, in most societies there is insufficient so-
cial mobility for entrepreneurial culture to change simply because of the changing origins of the entrepreneural
elite. In any case, "self-made" entrepreneurs often adopt the culture of the elite, neglecting their business inter-
ests for social and political activities and even (in Britain) educating their children to pursue a more "respect-
able" career.
In the long run, though, changes can occur that have profound implications for entrepreneurship. In modern
economies large corporations whose shares are widely held have replaced the family firm founded by the self-
made entrepreneur. Corporations draw on a wider range of management skill than is available from any single
family, and they avoid the problem of succession by an incompetent eldest son that has been the ruin of many
family firms. Corporations plan large-scale activities using teams of professional specialists, but their efficiency
gains are to some extent offset by the loss of employee loyalty that was a feature of many family firms. Loyal
employees do not need close supervision, or complex bonus systems, to make them work, because they are self-
motivated. Historically, family firms have drawn on two main sources of "cultural capital": the paternalistic
idea that employees are adopted members of the founder's family, and the founder's own religious and moral
values. The first is effective only within small firms.
A modern corporation that wishes to build up a family spirit must do so within its individual business units.
These units can then be bonded together by a unifying corporate culture – the modern equivalent of the foun-
der's system of values. The dissemination of corporate culture may be assisted by the charisma of the chairman
or chief executive. This suggests that senior management in the modern corporation requires not only entrepre-
neurial skills, but also leadership skills, which means the ability to inspire trust and affection, rather than just
fear, in subordinates. The need to combine entrepreneurial skills and leadership skills is, of course, universal,
but its significance has increased as organizations have become larger and societies have abandoned traditional
religions for secular values.
Free Market
By Murray N. Rothbard
"Free market" is a summary term for an array of exchanges that take place in society. Each exchange is un-
dertaken as a voluntary agreement between two people or between groups of people represented by agents.
These two individuals (or agents) exchange two economic goods, either tangible commodities or non-tangible
services. Thus, when I buy a newspaper from a newsdealer for fifty cents, the newsdealer and I exchange two
commodities: I give up fifty cents, and the newsdealer gives up the newspaper. Or if I work for a corporation, I
exchange my labor services, in a mutually agreed way, for a monetary salary; here the corporation is repre-
sented by a manager (an agent) with the authority to hire.
Both parties undertake the exchange because each expects to gain from it. Also, each will repeat the ex-
change next time (or refuse to) because his expectation has proved correct (or incorrect) in the recent past.
Trade, or exchange, is engaged in precisely because both parties benefit; if they did not expect to gain, they
would not agree to the exchange.
This simple reasoning refutes the argument against free trade typical of the "mercantilist" period of sixteenth-
to-eighteenth-century Europe, and classically expounded by the famed sixteenth-century French essayist Mon-
taigne. The mercantilists argued that in any trade, one party can benefit only at the expense of the other, that in
every transaction there is a winner and a loser, an "exploiter" and an "exploited." We can immediately see the fal-
lacy in this still-popular viewpoint: the willingness and even eagerness to trade means that both parties benefit. In
modern game-theory jargon, trade is a win-win situation, a "positive-sum" rather than a "zero-sum" or "negative-
sum" game.
How can both parties benefit from an exchange? Each one values the two goods or services differently, and
these differences set the scene for an exchange. I, for example, am walking along with money in my pocket but
no newspaper; the newsdealer, on the other hand, has plenty of newspapers but is anxious to acquire money.
And so, finding each other, we strike a deal.
Two factors determine the terms of any agreement: how much each participant values each good in ques-
tion, and each participant's bargaining skills. How many cents will exchange for one newspaper, or how many
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