Majicman Notes

The artist as entrepreneur

Artists and entrepreneurs are blessed with similar convictions. Both are innovators. They see possibilities where others see limitations, bringing the previously unimagined into being. Both have skin in the game, living in the theatre of risk, performing on the public stage of jeopardy. Failure can be brutal and success is often a prelude to future disappointment but they are driven ever-forward by self-expression; it’s in the DNA of these independent, slightly unreasonable, regularly difficult people. Cussed mindsets have no alternative. Both the artist and the entrepreneur suffocate when shackled by a boss, a wage or an insurance premium.

Born disrupters, truly great artists and entrepreneurs are modernists, creating demand where none previously existed, conjuring something out of their imagination and courage. Unlike the critic, the artist and entrepreneur are eternally optimistic. They must believe in the future. The optimism of their will overcomes the pessimism of their intellect. Originality is their currency and constant adaptation their tool. The artist and the entrepreneur, so often pitted against each other, are in fact on the same side. Historically, societies that welcome these dissenters are rewarded with the most dynamic economies. Healthy economies, like healthy artistic cultures, thrive on dissent and diversity. As the 20th-century economist Joseph Schumpeter noted, the essential fact of any economy is innovation, or what he termed the “relentless gale of creative disruption”.

Any country open to independent thought, that venerates diversity, is also likely to generate innovative energy. Societies that dignify outsiders prosper economically and artistically, as courageous types express themselves creatively and commercially. These are the traits of a liberal society: open, nonjudgmental, preferring rationality over superstition, science over falsehood, proof over conjecture, reason over religion, and questioning over dogma

David McWilliams is an economist

FT

https://www.davidmcwilliams.ie/post/the-potential-threats-to-ireland-now-come-in-four-guises