The “entrepreneurial society” is lauded as the new normal, butmeans that an individual’s worth is now measured by theirearning capacity

Entrepreneurism and innovation are seen by many as key components for achieving the American dream, with the start-up culture of Silicon Valley often held up as an exemplar of this. But the move towards an entrepreneurial society has a darker side, argues Daniel Cockayne. He writes that entrepreneurs regularly work very long hours for low rates of pay, and make sacrifices that are often not enough to save their companies. This narrative, he writes, is now becoming a dominant one which holds up work as the root of an individual’s worth at the expense of sociability, culture and politics.