Entrepreneurial talent is abundant but misallocated by institutional design.

Evidence

Giersch’s last point number nine reads: “Entrepreneurial talent is in almost unlimited supply, but it often finds productive outlets only abroad, or less productive (or even counterproductive) use in politics and government, in public and private bureaucracies or in the military.” Giersch evidently took his page from Mises. Entrepreneurs are everywhere, both in the public and the private sector: in human action hampered or enabled by the institutional make-up of society. Once decision-makers embrace this understanding, society can be moved towards productive entrepreneurship. Otherwise society will have to live with an exodus of talent to better locations and with sub-optimal application of the remaining talent. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 301