Daniel Horowitz - Entertaining Entrepreneurs

REALITY TVS Shark Tank AND THE AMERICAN DREAM IN UNCERTAIN TIMES

DANIEL HOROWITZ

THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA PRESS

Chapel Hill

When I first watched the reality TV show Shark Tank, supposedly to take my mind off work, I was struck by its dramatic stories and captivating characters. However, when I set out to write this book, I came to feel that the muted skepticism I had often deployed in the past when encountering popular culture was not up to the task of assessing contemporary American entrepreneurship. To be sure, as a historian I believe that it is my obligation to comprehend the worldviews of those I write about on their own terms. Yet, as fascinated as I am with this television show, I find it highly problematic. Shark Tank presents a distorted picture of the world and relies on a skewed vision of American entrepreneurship. It hides the roles of workers, who help make so many enterprises possible. It minimizes and even obliterates the crucial role that the federal government plays in undergirding the success of so many corporations. It celebrates the American dream even as it leaves vague its nature. It treats matters of race, class, gender, and sexuality as little more than theatrical fodder. It hoists individualism and even ruthlessness to honored positions neither deserves.

As I delved into other representations of American entrepreneurshipin school competitions, university programs, other television shows, how-to books, memoirsI found many of them similarly problematic. Preparing students as early as the third grade to become entrepreneurs strikes me as inappropriate indoctrination. High school and college competitions too often take place in a vacuum that blocks out the many troubling elements that shape our society. The proliferation of entrepreneurial programs within universitiessupported by interlocking corporate, nonprofit, and government organizationsrepresents the more practical dimensions of STEMs increasing power in the curriculum. Though some scholarly writing on entrepreneurship is critical, that criticism usually appears within a naively celebratory framework that accepts the basic premises of contemporary American capitalism.

In researching and writing this book, I had to think about a series of fundamental changes I have witnessed in my lifetime: from the organization man to the entrepreneur; from the language of free enterprise to that of entrepreneurship; from the New Deal Keynesian order that dominated American life from the mid-1930s until the late 1960s to a newer neoliberal one. The former, whatever its imperfections, at its best entailed commitments by the federal government, corporations, and labor unions to provide many Americans a measure of economic security via wage growth and a robust social safety net that might even narrow the gap between rich and poor. On the other hand, neoliberalism rests on individual self-governance instead of communitarian obligations. In the world Shark Tank presents, creative disruption brings economic growth and social entrepreneurship takes the place of social welfare programs. In the pages that follow, I juxtapose this entrepreneurial vision with what I consider to be the accurate picture of American life that many social scientists and journalists have recently offeredone where insecurity, inequality, incarceration, racism, and the breakdown of communities play prominent roles.

Some might think that I am trying to provide information that will enable readers to become successful entrepreneurs. Although that is hardly my intent, I suspect that this book will teach not only the basics of entrepreneurship but also what pitfalls to avoid, practically but also, more importantly, ethically. Moreover, I hope that what one astute observer has called my performed neutrality does not hide my belief that Shark Tank and, more generally, contemporary American entrepreneurship cannot be allowed to obscure the very real problems tens of millions Americans face daily. There is much that is admirable in specific and transformative entrepreneurial enterprises. However, embracing entrepreneurship as the centerpiece of a social vision of what America is at present and can be in the future means forgetting alternative choices, ones that focus less on creative destruction and more on social justice.