It's probably just because I'm drunk, but think about it... when was the last time you seen a movie come out of Hollywood of a true, successful, entrepreneur story? There's lots of movies like Wolf of Wall Street and whatever, but by the end of the movie they're always the bad guy sitting in a jail cell. Nowadays, you never see a movie of some guy starting with nothing, making it, then continuing on with the dream. No, no... he always ends up being a criminal behind bars by the end of the movie.
The entire media, movies, music, everything... has been geared towards being anti-entrepreneurial. Or am I just being drunk? Seems like that though...
I've imbibed too, so from one drunk to another.
Like most things in reality, it doesn't spring from a single source or influence, but rather a convergence of events and tendencies each originating from the last group of events and tendencies in a never ending chain.
There are movies that go against what you are saying (facebook movie). Still, you have a point. But correlation does not equal causation.
The reality of success isn't as exciting as they put on the movies. It is a grind. And most people don't care to go to the movies to see a grind. They are looking for escapism. Movies like the wolf of wallstreet provide that escapism with clearly defined characters that aren't mentally challenging to digest.
Entrepreneurship is discouraged a bit, but nothing as much as you think. Try to start a business in Thailand or China and you'll see what I'm talking about.
The main reason it isn't discouraged more is because every market will have low hanging fruit that are not profitable in an easily scalable way (yet) for big capital to come and take over.
So yes, the big boys would rather not see movies promoting entrepreneurship (to a degree) but it isn't exactly hard to 'contain' given people's preferences.
Seriously though, what I'm saying is true. Back in say the 50s, people went to the theaters, and watched movies about the "American dream" coming true for some poor schmuck who worked hard.
Nowadays, people watch movies about someone who cheated the system, became rich for a while, and ended up in a cell at the end of it. The only "heros" you see in movies now are US soldiers who sacrifice their lives during war for this or that reason.
Prove me wrong.
Systematic brainwashing at its best.
I believe you are idealizing the past. 50 years ago people were less inclined to entrepreneurship because a good % of the population had a much greater level of job stability, and another good % didn't want a job because they wanted to smoke pot all day and form communes.
If you wanted to draw a line in the sand and say entrepreneurship died in America, it would be at the great depression.
But even then, when you talk about 'entrepreneurship' in a mostly agrarian society, you might as well be talking about survival, since they didn't view themselves as entrepreneurs, but farmers doing what farmers do. Many if not most of them would have obtained family land from homesteading. Which was basically land obtained by the gov from a massacre of the previous population. So it wasn't exactly a bed of roses and good will back then either.
Humans are vicious little creatures, even among and perhaps especially among the 'kindest'. In fact the spectrum of society tends to work to go full circle, with convergence between the two most polar extremes (so that the kindest might have more in common with the most ruthless rather than someone in the center of the spectrum)
