Carl Schramm on Enterpreneurial Capitalism

Carl Schramm spoke today at the Athenaeum about capitalism, entrepreneurship, and education.

Though he had a few interesting fiews of capitalism more neatly expressed in his book, Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, I found him to be one of the more interesting Ath speakers yet.

He delved into growth and how we're in a time of both tremendous economic prosperity and yet paradoxically, it looks like jobs are less and less secure. Unlike a lot of analysts who view this paradigm as unstable, Schramm suggested it is by no means dangerous. Indeed, he remarked that we're at historic levels of wealth creation, employment, and growth. Over 60 percent of Americans of my generation will grow a business and many of us, 50% will work for a firm that is 5 or fewer years old.

Most of the talk boils down to a view that American entrepreneurship is a social good and that it meets needs of everyday people in ways never before imagined. And unlike elsewhere, when U.S. entrepreneurs make serious amounts of money, they go around and put it into philanthropic foundations of which the Koffman Foundation is a part.

He rightly criticized the anti-growth crowd as being all in the first world and how that first world mentality is ultimately hurting the third world. He went after the State Department for being too concerned about institutions and ignorant of the role culture plays in entrepreneurship -- as if we could just plunk down U.S. institutions in Africa, for instance, we'd somehow get a return on our investment.

He had a few words about social capitalism (or social entrepreneurship) and how in essence, it's a socialist critique of capitalism. The phrase he says that gets everyone riled up is that all entrepreneurs are social entrepreneurs. I couldn't agree more.

He points out how little we've had to show for our investment of billions of dollars into African countries. Sounds like he's read William Easterly to me! What a breath of fresh air post-Bono!