When I was young it seemed possible for most people in
relatively high income countries to choose a career suited to their personal
abilities and inclinations, obtain the qualifications necessary to pursue that
career and then look forward to working in the same occupation until their
retirement. It seemed possible for people to plan their lives around stable
career paths, in order to obtain the optimal combination of income, interesting
work, job security, or whatever else they were seeking. Educational
opportunities depended to a larger extent on wealth and/or ability, and career
opportunities for women were more restricted that at present. Nevertheless, everyone
who applied themselves diligently was predicted to end up having a successful
career.
From an individual's perspective, such predictions were always problematic.
For one reason or another, some people were more successful than predicted. Others made mistakes in their career choices and
either changed paths, or came to perceive themselves as square pegs trying to
fit into round holes. There was always a lot of adjustment going on in the
labour market as people moved between firms and industries in search of better
opportunities, or as a result of retrenchments. Most people ended up with
satisfying careers, but some didn’t.
These days there is much greater uncertainty about whether
young people will be able to pursue the careers they prepare for, even though
educational opportunities are more widely available. Predictions can be made
about the kinds of skills that are likely to be in demand in future (see, for
example a post I wrote last year on this question) but we cannot be confident
that any particular academic pursuits (including STEM subjects) will
necessarily produce the skills that potential employers might want. Acquiring useful skills and obtaining rewarding
employment seems to be becoming more akin to an entrepreneurial process of discovering
and gearing up to supply a market niche.
In thinking about the process of skill acquisition and job
search it may be helpful to reflect upon Israel Kirzner’s view of the way entrepreneurial
decision-making differs from economizing decision-making i.e. efficient use of
known means to achieve known ends. Kirzner notes that entrepreneurial
decision-making requires a posture of alertness:
‘In addition to the exploitation of perceived opportunities,
purposive human action involves a posture of alertness toward the discovery of
as yet unperceived opportunities and
their exploitation. This element in human action – the alertness toward new
valuations with respect to ends, new availability of means – may be termed the entrepreneurial element in the
individual decision’ (Perception,Opportunity and Profit, p 109).
Of course, occupations are just one aspect of life. How does
the forgoing discussion relate to the question I asked at the outset was about human
flourishing? Is it reasonable to argue that the entrepreneurial alertness
discussed by Kirzner is an important component of the practical wisdom required
for individual human flourishing?
In my view, Douglas Den Uyl and Douglas Rasmussen make a
strong case for that in their recently book, The Perfectionist Turn, aspects of which have been briefly
discussed in the last two posts on this blog (here and here). After
acknowledging Kirzner’s insights, the authors suggest that just as
entrepreneurship involves a discovery process, so too does human flourishing.
This is contrary to the view of people who imply that pursuit of our final end
in life is merely an optimisation process:
‘Knowing what our end is, so it is said, will leave us only
the task of utilizing the means at our disposal to effectively achieve that end.
Yet, as we have tried to show in our various discussions of freedom and
self-direction, our end of a perfecting or flourishing life is not like one of
using known resources in their most effective manner. Rather the perfecting is
more like discovering means available to such an end that are as yet unknown,
or only partly known, to us. Moreover, once those means are discovered, it is
equally mistaken to suppose that efficient usage is the only remaining
challenge. Because perfecting or flourishing is not a passive state but an
activity, there is virtually a constant reassessment of the adequacy and
appropriateness of the means; this, as a consequence, suggests openness and
alertness to new opportunities amidst changing circumstances. Finally,
optimization suggests efficiency along only one dimension, but flourishing (at
least in our view) is inclusive of multiple dimensions’ (p 287-8).
While such observations about the qualities required for individual
human flourishing would probably have been as relevant in ancient Greece as
they are today, we are helped to comprehend them by a sympathetic understanding
of the qualities required for successful entrepreneurship.
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