Joshua Gans: Entrepreneurship and Inequality

Do you agree with this?:

Entrepreneurship and inequality, by Joshua Gans: So I was reading Felix Salmon’s account of a debate here in Toronto between Paul Krugman and Larry Summers. ... I was struck by this passage.

Summers also tried to defend inequality, at least in part, by saying that “suppose the United States had 30 more people like Steve Jobs” — that, he said, would be a good thing even as it increased inequality. “So we do need to recognize that a component of this inequality is the other side of successful entrepreneurship; that is surely something we want to encourage.”

Now there is nothing new in this view. It is an argument for inequality that reminds me of Ted Baxter (from the Mary Tyler Moore Show) who intended to have six children in the hope that one of them grows up to solve the population problem. The inequality version is that we accept inequality in the hopes of getting the fruits of entrepreneurship.

So no one disagrees with encouraging entrepreneurship. ... But when we link it to inequality in this way we are asking ... whether the poor (or middle class) are happy outsourcing knowledge creation and are each willing to pay a bit to see that happen.

Seen in this light, the problem of inequality is a design problem. This is something that Jean Tirole and Glen Weyl have recently investigated. They ask a related question: when is it a good idea to confer entrepreneurs with market power (as a reward)? The answer turns out to be, when the government does not know much about the nature of demand for innovative products. In this world, by exposing entrepreneurial rewards to what they can get through monopoly pricing, we screen for innovations that maximize the gap between innovative benefits and innovative costs. The implication here is that if we outsourced innovation to creative geniuses, we would do it in a way that allows them to charge high prices.

But does that carry over when there is real inequality? Let’s face it, the actual products Steve Jobs produced were not priced for the poor. The best we can say is that when they were imitated the poor received some benefits (which may also be arguable). So is it really the case that poorer people would be willing to be taxed more (by government or through monopoly pricing) in order to bring out more people like Steve Jobs? Instead, the Steve Jobs argument is surely one for a lateral wealth transfer from those with wealth — innovators or not — to be more concentrated amongst those who innovate. It is inequality in talent and skill and its mismatch to wealth that drives the argument not inequality in wealth.

It takes a village to make an iPad.