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by innguest 4224 days ago
> We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it's fking awesome.

Or, people are naturally entrepreneurs stifled by regulation and AirBnB, Uber, Udemy and TeeSpring are simply allowing the people's natural entrepreneur spirit to shine through by shifting the compliance burden away from them.
1 comments
unclebucknasty 4223 days ago
>>We are making entrepreneurs out of ordinary people, it's fking awesome.

>people are naturally entrepreneurs stifled by regulation and AirBnB, Uber, Udemy and TeeSpring...

Not really. Renting out your house to someone is not entrepreneurial. Neither is driving people around in your car or teaching people. Further, I know of no regulation that prevents people from teaching for money. As far as Teespring "designers", those people are not entrepreneurs either. They are simply affiliates who market for Teespring and who also happen to give over whatever creative ability they have to Teespring with the hope of being paid for it.

In all of these cases, the people being touted as "entrepreneurs" are no different from employees working as independent contractors, and in some cases it's worse. The only entrepreneurs here are the companies that built the platforms and convinced people to give over their time and resources to generate revenue for their business.

One can make value judgments about whether it's good or bad for the people who participate, but to say that they are creating entrepreneurs is literally saddening.

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innguest 4223 days ago
I agree with your points. I was stretching my usage of 'entrepreneurs' to make a point as you noticed.

> Further, I know of no regulation that prevents people from teaching for money.

I do, because unfortunately the government has been using them against bootcamp schools:

> To achieve compliance, institutions must pay a $5,000 application fee; provide a course catalog, enrollment agreement, and performance fact sheet publicly on their websites; and submit a few other minor documents included on the application.

http://readwrite.com/2014/02/18/why-coding-bootcamps-should-...

> Over the past month, California regulators sent cease and desist letters to many of these hacker boot camps, saying they run afoul of the state’s educational laws, as first reported by Venturebeat. “They’re not properly licensed, and the law requires them to be licensed to offer an educational service like they are,” says Russ Heimerich, a spokesperson for the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education, or BPPE.

http://www.wired.com/2014/01/california-hacker-bootcamps/

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unclebucknasty 4223 days ago
Apples and oranges. There's a big difference between starting an "educational institution" and sharing knowledge or otherwise teaching for pay as an individual.

And, in the case of the boot camps you mentioned, it kind of argues against your original point. That is, they apparently ran afoul of the regulations because of their attempts to make it a business that could be classified as an institution versus there being individuals who could have generated income from their labor, if not for some onerous regulation.

More relevantly, no one would have stopped any "teacher" from creating Udemy style online courses on their own domain.

That situation in CA is intresting though. I wasn't aware of that. Thanks for sharing.

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