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After watching the lecture from Dr. Burt Folsom, who is a history professor at Hillsdale College in Michigan. Dr. Burt Folsom is also a bestselling author of ‘The Myth of the Robber Barons.’ He gave a special lecture to YAFCSC which stands for Young America's Foundation Conservative Student Conference. He talked about the current system of entrepreneurship and how that can help better society. He also talked about past examples.
From my questions to my response, I was wanting to know the difference between political and market entrepreneurs. The answer is… they are all different. They look different, act differently, but they all have one thing in common which is being an entrepreneur. It is easier to put it into categories. A political entrepreneur is someone who takes their ideas to the government or congress. A market entrepreneur uses their own funds that can be private.
One thing I found very interesting was the race between the United States and Britain. I have never thought about how much other countries base things off each other, specifically business. One of the biggest examples he used was steamboats. Britain has a lot of technology to make the boats, but one person in particular, who was named Mr. Collins, wanted to do it better. After very high prices a man named Cornelius Vanderbilt could do it for half of the price. They went to congress and congress picked the more expensive person because they thought he was more skilled. When the boat was built there was an even bigger boat next to it belonging to Mr. Cornelius Vanderbilt himself. That immediately caused competition because Vanderbilt's boat beat Mr. Collins boat. After more and more money that was spent Vanderbilt was the most successful because Vanderbilt turned a profit. When the competition had a tremendous loss. Mr. Vanderbilt was a market entrepreneur and Mr. Collins was a political entrepreneur.
These are very important things to remember because they paved the way of our system. Literally paved the way, meaning different ways of transportation. They created competition but they also got the job done in a good amount of time. It also created a divide or category for entrepreneurs. Yes, most of this was a learning experience but our world is better. Under the tree of entrepreneurship there is one section of political where they hope to get a subsidy to help with the idea. A subsidy can help with staff and other employees because we all know this isn’t free. It also helps with the resources, so Mr. Collins maybe built the ship, but congress paid for it. Mr. Vanderbilt went to congress but got turned down, so he did it himself.