What role do entrepreneurs play in today’s economy?
Today, everyone is an entrepreneur — but does that benefit us? Or institutions?
Entrepreneurship for humans? I jotted the line down in a brain dump I did at the end of 2021. I was thinking about what the next stage of my work would be — how I wanted to frame it, what I wanted to build, and how I would continue to integrate a cultural and political analysis into the ideas I share with you.
I immediately liked the phrase. Initially, I was naming that I wanted to produce work that helped small business owners and entrepreneurs-at-heart stay grounded in their full humanity, honoring their needs and limitations. But this weekend, I was deep in research for an upcoming What Works episode on the ideology of “doing what you love.” And I started to think about the affective quality of entrepreneurship as its expressed today — especially on social media and in relation to gig work.
I asked myself whether this affect — pioneering, risk-taking, freedom-seeking — served a broader purpose economically.
