Herbert Meyer says that one of the reasons that we don't have as many jobs is that we punish entrepreneurs.

Perfect. Thanks for the post. I had forgotten that Nevil Shute book. We have several copies of "Slide Rule" in the office, will have to get "Kindling" RSN.

Aleta, my mind boggles. What else does XCor have on their bookshelf?

Rand, nice post. As the writer said .. entrepreneurs won't stop being creative .. they'll just channel their energy where it's productive. The end result might be a horde of small businesses that employ themselves and put zero net jobs back into the community.

I'd suggest Marshall Brain's Robotic Nation for a companion article.
http://roboticnation.blogspot.com

What else does XCOR have on their bookshelf?

Well, we have everything from "Railroads Triumphant" and "Ship of Gold on the Deep Blue Sea" to a bunch of stuff by Heinlein, Hogan, Pournelle/Niven, and Anderson along with some Gundam manga to a handful of Janes to "The MBA Handbook" to a selection of CRC Handbooks to several dictionaries, astronomy books, a couple of anthropology tomes, "Bullard of the Space Patrol" and Jay Miller's "X-Planes." "Living in Space" and others by G. Harry Stine. Ayn Rand too. You can find a partial list of our technical stuff on our web site.

Why would your mind boggle that we have "Slide Rule?" Among other things it's a great comparison between a government run program and a commercial one.

The article says, "...the only thing that President Bush and Senator Kerry agree about is that today we are not creating enough new jobs. The question is, "Why not?"

I can answer that question in two words... red tape. Starting a company years ago required you to fill out one piece of paper, pay a fee and get a tax id. I tried to do the same thing last year and gave up because of all the stupid hoops they wanted me to jump through, so no new employee payroll here.

The other issue is that capital seems to be tighter than I've ever seen it. Now if I were to start a business to provide capital (more than just making private loans) the lawyers would probably eat me alive with all the rules that are out there. Get the (-expletive deleted-) government off the backs of people and watch the explosion of jobs... then we'd be hiring every body breathing, the poor, the uneducated, people from across the border... French Canadians even. ;)

Bottom line, I think the author nailed it when he said, "People who create jobs are entrepreneurs" and society today doesn't seem to understand or support that. Personally, I'd like to see everybody become as rich as they'd like (this is the correct way to counter balance monopolies, but that's another subject for another time.)

"Why would your mind boggle that we have "Slide Rule?" "

Perhaps I've been working for the wrong companies. I'm used to the standard "philosphy of the year" books (currently we like "Who Moved My Cheese").

And you have a great view out of your window. Nice!

Well,

The situation is no better in Australia. My wife and I run our own little business out of home and have no intention of ever employing anyone. We've seen what happens to people who employ.
We do have subcontractors who run their own businesses out of their own premises.

Our bookshelf sounds fairly similar to that at XCOR.