Cyril de Sousa Cardoso is an entrepreneur, managing director of the start-up Les petits bots, member of the GenerationLibre think-tank and author on the themes of innovation.
To meet the ecological challenges of our time, should we abolish entrepreneurial freedom?
Answering this question in the affirmative, some suggest that we should set up courts of existence.
This new institution would judge entrepreneurial projects to define what is useful and realistic and thus offer them, or not, the right to exist within limits of time and space.
The pitfall of systematic criticism of modernity is that it makes us forget everything that liberalism and the market economy have given us.
Cyril de Sousa Cardoso
In addition to the paternalistic dimension of this proposal, which infantilizes the entrepreneur, the user or the consumer, it is dizzying to imagine the consequences it could have had on our history.
Would the Age of Enlightenment have happened if a court of existence had rejected Gutenberg's absurd idea of associating removable letters with a wine press to print books, when we could just copy them at the hand?
Could a jury have let the Wright brothers take off from Kill Devil beach for the first powered flight in history?
Could a judge have prevented the creation of the Web by Tim Berners-Lee, rejecting at the same time its benefits and its potential abuses?
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This proposal to establish courts of existence for entrepreneurial projects, thus abolishing the freedom to undertake, illustrates the authoritarian temptations that cross our public debate. Those of them disguised as environmental considerations and linked to the preservation of biodiversity, are in reality often by deviating from the ecological fight. Indeed, the thoughts which oppose liberalism have found a way to revive themselves. Their objectives are therefore above all ideological. In fact, there would be worse for them than not succeeding in meeting the ecological challenges of our time, it would be to meet them through the freedom of enterprise and innovation.
The pitfall of systematic criticism of modernity is that it makes us forget everything that liberalism and the market economy have given us.
Documented, in particular by Steven Pinker, the reality is that human well-being measured by health, prosperity, security or even peace are on the rise all over the world.
200 years ago, 90% of the world's population lived in extreme poverty.
Today, it is less than 10%.
We cannot afford to derail the mechanisms of innovation.
These are entrepreneurs, facing the industries in place, who have called into question the paradigms of the thermal car to open the era of electricity.
Cyril de Sousa Cardoso
On the other hand, we need to set up the engine of progress in the era of ecological issues. Encourage economic players to fully take into account the ecological impacts of their activities. Through the mechanisms of carbon prices, Pigouvian taxes, animal rights, information and even education, an ecology of progress is possible, associating a market economy, entrepreneurial freedom and taking into account externalities.
Joseph Schumpeter used to say of entrepreneurs that they were revolutionaries in the economy.
These are entrepreneurs, facing the industries in place, who have called into question the paradigms of the thermal car to open the era of electricity.
Let us let in everywhere these dreamers who are already addressing the ecological issues of our time by questioning the established orders, the status quo, the rents and opposing a society of stasis.
