Wanna Runum?

Well I guess your observations are very accurate, Runum (as all the comments to your original post indicate).

We do live in a society where all our most important and basic needs are met. But this does not mean, that there are no big challenges waiting to be tackled like for example: environmental and energy resource issues and the global gap between rich and poor. Problems that are constantly getting more and more pressing.

Sometimes it seems to me, like we are putting all our focus on always creating new and more sophisticated needs, just in order to sell the corresponding product. But I do believe that sooner or later we will be forced to turn our attention to the big challenges that will ultimately determine the future of our planet and the well being of the next generations.

Runum,

I respectfully disagree with your interesting analysis. I agree that there is something to being content with comfortable, but I worked in numerous other countries (3d world, developing nations) where the people are not comfortable, but still as a whole "most" do not demonstrate entrepreneurism. There are a lot of reasons for this, some of the reasons are the lack of rule of law (private property and business ownership are not protected, thereby effetively increasing risk and removing incentive), lack of education (without the ability to read is challenging to self educate), lack of infrastructure, etc. I suspect if we look hard at the history of the industrial age, we would find that the percentage of entrepreneurers we're relatively low, and most folks were employees who traded their time for dollars as laborers. I don't necessarily think there was a greater spirit of entrepreneurship then as compared to now. The nature of businesses the new entrepreneurers are opening are generally more focused on information age technologies and selling wares to the growing global middle class. True we don't see new industrial age businesses booming in our country (maybe due to the ever increasing complexity of our legal system and cost of doing business here as compared to working overseas) like airports, highways, cars, etc., but we're still inventing and building businesses. I could be wrong, the above comments are a hunch based on my readings.

Welcome to the fastlane Bill. Thank you for your comments.

Since this is an entrepreneur forum it would be only natural for one to assume that is what I was referring to. I guess in some respects that would be right.

However, I am also referring to generally working hard, solving your own problems, without asking permission, learning in school(public, private, magnet, home, etc), quit blaming everyone else for your problems, quit waiting for someone to fix your problems, quit waiting for a handout, etc.

Our culture would rather sit around and watch a criminal court case on TV for 3-4 weeks than get up and do something for themselves. Our culture would rather invest in that case and express outrage about that case than get out and solve problems.

Our culture would rather sit and watch 7 foot tall guys shoot a ball through a hoop than get off their butts and try to do it themselves.

I appreciate your input Bill, but we will have to agree to disagree.

Many of our messes (financial, obesity, educational, ....) in this country can be attributed to one word, LAZY.

This is a great conversation - a much needed one across the Nation.
I have to agree with Runum. We have been conditioned to be a "do-nothing" society.
I hear a lot of people complain about their current situations. But, that's all they do - complain.
Not willing to do anything about their situations or have an excuse of why they can't.
The media loves to promote fear and helplessness and we bite every time!
Here in California there was a day when we constructed amazing things like the Pacific HWY., The Golden Gate Bridge, among many other things - And, that's just in California. We can build a heavy list of all the wonderful infrastructure that was taking place at the turn of the cenury. The airplane, railroads, the automobile...
Today, we say we can't do these things. We can't build High speed railways because of costs, etc..

“Do the thing and you will have the power.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nike broke it down and said; "Just Do IT!"

We allow these politicians, and the media break our spirits down and now our response is; "We Can't!"

I think a more accurate way to say this is that we can't cost effectively build a lot of things we used to build due to globalism and the disparity of labor costs between the U.S. and developing nations, not to mention the numerous tax and regulatory burdens our businesses must endure. Sadly another component that limits our ability to compete in the high tech manufacturing area is the poor state of our education system, which in my view has been destroyed by excessive political correctness. We can't fix education overnight, so to compete we need to import educated foreign workers, but that is harder to do since 9/11. Just do it sounds good, and I generally agree with it, but if you're going to lose money doing it, is it really worth it? America needs to mobilize and oust the weak politicians and reform the laws that hold us back. America needs to hold their kids to standards in school, even if that involves hurting a few feelings, not every kid is an honor student, we have to get rid of these feel good ideas that have no merit behind them. You get recognized for hard work and achievement, not just because it makes a lazy person feel good about themselves. That isn't abuse, it is preparing your kids to survive in the real world. By the way, we still do build the best planes in the world, what we need to get back is the ship building industry.