Unless you're reading Ayn Rand and a small handful of other authors, you're not going to find many positive descriptions of entrepreneurs in literature. One of my favorite books, Catch-22, by Joseph Heller, does its absolute best to cast unfavorable aspersions on the entrepreneur in the guise of Milo Minderbinder, the Mess Officer. The chip on Heller's shoulder is mainly focused on authority, but business and entrepreneurs become collatoral damage in the process.
Some of the funniest parts of Catch-22 are the dialogs between Yossarian and Milo regarding "the syndicate" and how Milo can make money by buying eggs for 7 cents and make a profit by selling them at 4 cents. The conversation is spread out over the entire story and it isn't until the end that you learn how Milo pulls it off.
Another funny interaction is this excerpt below, where Milo gets back McWatt's stolen bedsheet. Notice Heller's attempt to make entrepreneurial activity look absurd:
...
Milo had rigid scruples that would not even allow him to borrow a package of pitted dates from the mess hall that day of McWatt's stolen bedsheet, for the food at the mess hall was still the property of the government.
"But I can borrow it from you," he explained to Yossarian, "since all this fruit is yours once you get it from me with Doctor Daneeka's letter. You can do whatever you want with it, even it sell it at a high profit instead of giving it away free. Wouldn't you want to do that together?"
"No."
Milo gave up. "Then lend me one package of pitted dates," he requested. "I'll give it back to you. I swear I will, and there'll be a little something extra for you."
Milo proved good as his word and handed Yossarian a quarter of McWatt's yellow bedsheet when he returned with the unopened package of dates and with the grinning thief with the sweet tooth who had stolen the bedsheet from McWatt's tent. The piece of bedsheet now belonged to Yossarian. He had earned it while napping, although he did not understand how. Neither did McWatt.
"What's this?" cried McWatt, staring in mystification at the ripped half of his bedsheet.
"It's half of the bedsheet that was stolen from your tent this morning," Milo explained, "I'll bet you didn't even know it was stolen."
"Why would anyone want to steal half a bedsheet?" Yossarian asked.
Milo grew flustered. "You don't understand," he protested. "He stole the whole bedsheet, and I got it back with the package of pitted dates you invested. That's why the quarter of the bedsheet is yours. You made a very handsome return on your investment, particularly since you've gotten back every pitted date you gave me." Milo next addressed himself to McWatt. "Half the bedsheet is yours because it was all yours to begin with, and I really don't understand what you're complaining about, since you wouldn't have any of it if Captain Yossarian and I hadn't intervened in your behalf."
"Who's complaining?" McWatt exclaimed. "I'm just trying to figure out what I can do with half a bedsheet."
"There are lots of things you can do with half a bedsheet," Milo assured him. "The remaining quarter of the bedsheet I've set aside for myself as a reward for my enterprise, work, and initiative. It's not for myself, you understand, but for the syndicate. That's something you might do with half the bedsheet. You can leave it in the syndicate and watch it grow."
"What syndicate?"
...
The character Milo is re-created in the kinder, gentler form of Radar O'Reilly in the book / movie / TV series M*A*S*H. He's more fully expressed in the character Klinger that inherits Radar's role on the TV show.
In addition to envy, there are deep philosophical and ideological currents in our culture that cause an instinctual mistrust of the entrepreneurial ideal. Literature is chalk full of examples that show most authors have had the static view of economics -- that the world has a fixed amount of stuff and it's a zero sum game: you can't get ahead without someone else falling behind. Bedsheets are no different in the end to Heller than oil, jobs, or cotton.
The fact that most of us chuckle at Milo's ventures and mind-twisting explanations shows how deeply ingrained this viewpoint is. We're all too ready to swallow hook, line, and sinker, the morality play that Heller hands us: business is bad, unethical -- it takes advantage of us through misdirection and confusion to trick us out of our money. To Heller, Steinbeck, and so many others, business is either some faceless, bureaucratic, souless machine, or it is the more personal embodiment of the trickster, snake-oil salesman.
Reading from a different perspective however, there is much of Milo to be desired. A respect for property rights, a disdain for coercion, a constant searching out for new opportunities to make a profit, and the ethic of making everyone better off by serving their interests in our attempt to satisfy our own. Even in the hands of Heller, where these ideas are expressed more like an "honor among thieves" ethic, the good at least partially seeps through despite his best efforts.
Works like Catch-22, The Grapes of Wrath, A Light in August, and authors like Dickens and so many others have taught me much about the human condition and I recommend them highly. But most of them had an appalling lack of the economic insight into the nature and causes of prosperity in a society. We should approach them, as everything, with the openness, curiousity, and skepticism of a critical mind.
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