IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp18293.html

Good-for-Nothing Entrepreneurs: Capitalism and Democratic Decline in the West

Author

Listed:
  • Naudé, Wim

    (RWTH Aachen University)

Abstract

This paper focuses on the relationship between capitalism and the decline in democracy in the West over the past quarter-century. Using data from the V-Dem Institute, Freedom House, and the World Inequality Database, a strong correlation is found between inequality, the rise of tech billionaires, and democratic erosion. This correlation is explained by describing how tech oligarchs grow their political influence through their digital platforms, and their societal control via surveillance and influence of sense-making. The pivot of tech oligarchs toward the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) will accelerate the erosion of democracy. The implication is that efforts to regulate the digital economy to protect democracy will not be effective unless accompanied by decisive measures to break up the oligarchy and dismantle the Permanent War Economy.

Suggested Citation

  • Naudé, Wim, 2025. "Good-for-Nothing Entrepreneurs: Capitalism and Democratic Decline in the West," IZA Discussion Papers 18293, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18293
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp18293.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Henrekson, Magnus & Sanandaji, Tino, 2013. "Small Business Activity Does not Measure Entrepreneurship," Working Paper Series 959, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 26 Jan 2014.
    2. Mazzoni, Leonardo & Naudé, Wim & Innocenti, Niccolò, 2025. "The myth of entrepreneurship as a tool: Reorienting business venturing as a goal in itself in a post-growth society," Journal of Business Venturing Insights, Elsevier, vol. 23(C).
    3. Wim Naudé, 2022. "From the entrepreneurial to the ossified economy," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 46(1), pages 105-131.
    4. Sergei Guriev & Daniel Treisman, 2019. "Informational Autocrats," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 33(4), pages 100-127, Fall.
    5. Steven A. Brieger & Diana M. Hechavarría & Arielle Newman, 2024. "Entrepreneurship and Democracy: A Complex Relationship," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 48(5), pages 1285-1307, September.
    6. Naudé, Wim, 2024. "What They Don't Teach You about Artificial Intelligence at Business School: Stagnation, Oil, and War," IZA Discussion Papers 17306, IZA Network @ LISER.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wim Naudé, 2024. "Destructive digital entrepreneurship," Chapters, in: Wim Naudé & Bernadette Power (ed.), Handbook of Research on Entrepreneurship and Conflict, chapter 17, pages 292-328, Edward Elgar Publishing.
    2. Minniti, Maria & Naudé, Wim & Stam, Erik, 2023. "Is Productive Entrepreneurship Getting Scarcer? A Reflection on the Contemporary Relevance of Baumol's Typology," IZA Discussion Papers 16408, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Gonzalez, Felipe & Prem, Mounu & von Dessauer, Cristine, 2023. "Empowerment or Indoctrination? Women Centers Under Dictatorship," SocArXiv 64mf9, Center for Open Science.
    4. Cumming, Douglas & Deloof, Marc & Manigart, Sophie & Wright, Mike, 2019. "New directions in entrepreneurial finance," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 252-260.
    5. Feizi, Farhad, 2025. "From Zero to Soldier: What if Entrepreneurial Success Comes at the Cost of Democracy?," SocArXiv syrn7_v1, Center for Open Science.
    6. Adrian Nicholas Gachet, 2022. "Help Me Help You? Populism and Distributive Politics in Ecuador," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2205, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    7. Li, Fei & Song, Yangbo & Zhao, Mofei, 2023. "Global manipulation by local obfuscation," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 207(C).
    8. Guriev, Sergei & Treisman, Daniel, 2020. "A theory of informational autocracy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    9. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus, 2017. "Entrepreneurship and Institutions: A Bidirectional Relationship," Working Paper Series 1153, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 05 May 2017.
    10. Luis Medrano-Adán & Vicente Salas-Fumás & J. Sanchez-Asin, 2015. "Heterogeneous entrepreneurs from occupational choices in economies with minimum wages," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 44(3), pages 597-619, March.
    11. Niklas Elert, 2014. "What determines entry? Evidence from Sweden," The Annals of Regional Science, Springer;Western Regional Science Association, vol. 53(1), pages 55-92, August.
    12. Inessa Love & Boris Nikolaev & Chandra Dhakal, 2024. "The well-being of women entrepreneurs: the role of gender inequality and gender roles," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 62(1), pages 325-352, January.
    13. Luis Guirola & Gonzalo Rivero, 2022. "Polarization contaminates the link with partisan and independent institutions: evidence from 138 cabinet shifts," Working Papers 2237, Banco de España.
    14. Işıl İdrisoğlu & William Spaniel, 2024. "Information problems and Russia's invasion of Ukraine," Conflict Management and Peace Science, Peace Science Society (International), vol. 41(5), pages 514-533, September.
    15. Elert, Niklas & Henrekson, Magnus & Stenkula, Mikael, 2017. "Institutional Reform for Innovation and Entrepreneurship: An Agenda for Europe," Working Paper Series 1150, Research Institute of Industrial Economics, revised 16 Feb 2017.
    16. Becker, Sascha O. & Mukand, Sharun & Yotzov, Ivan, 2022. "Persecution, pogroms and genocide: A conceptual framework and new evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    17. Alex Coad & Masatoshi Kato & Stjepan Srhoj, 2025. "Gestation, endowments, and knowledge flows around the time of venture creation," Journal of Evolutionary Economics, Springer, vol. 35(3), pages 387-414, July.
    18. Magnus Henrekson & Mikael Stenkula, 2017. "The entrepreneurial rent: the value of and compensation for entrepreneurship," Journal of Entrepreneurship and Public Policy, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 6(1), pages 11-25, April.
    19. Youwei Wang & Yuxin Chen & Yi Qian, 2018. "The Causal Link between Relative Age Effect and Entrepreneurship: Evidence from 17 Million Users across 49 Years on Taobao," NBER Working Papers 25318, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Nuno Garoupa & Rok Spruk, 2024. "Measuring Political Institutions in the Long Run: A Latent Variable Analysis of Political Regimes, 1810–2018," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 173(3), pages 867-914, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • P16 - Political Economy and Comparative Economic Systems - - Capitalist Economies - - - Capitalist Institutions; Welfare State
    • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
    • O33 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights - - - Technological Change: Choices and Consequences; Diffusion Processes
    • O40 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Growth and Aggregate Productivity - - - General

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp18293. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.