How much truth is there in a specific national "trait," according to which the Romanian is enterprising and always ready to do business? If the Romanian is enterprising, what does he understand by this?
Another question: how much does the Romanian want to risk before crossing the line beyond enviously watching from the sidelines, and starting "work" for his own business?
Ten years after the "official entry" into the market economy, some answers are extremely bitter and perhaps they erase what we think we are, which reality disproves.
A CURS poll published on Tuesday stated that less than 85% of those polled have no firm of their own and do not intend to start one any time soon. Ten percent said they wanted to start a business, and five percent don't know or don't have an answer.
Where has that touted national trait suddenly gone?
The market economy should have brought this trait to the surface, capitalised on it and multiplied it. But it hasn't.
Yes, the Romanian was born with an enterprising spirit, but with the state, with the state's money, on someone else's expense. Much less on his own work and his own money.
The situation is so desperate that we wonder what we will ever put back into place or who is going to do it, on the ruins of state-owned companies.
The state, again? Perhaps the foreign investors or the present-day Romanian investors. Or will it remain an empty place to gaze at and recall the good old socialist period? It is very important to know what we are going to put back into place, because this will dictate how Romania is going to look like.
Perhaps the ten years of eternal transition have drained the entrepreneurial spirit, and people no longer find a motivation and a future to start their own business. Something went wrong.
If we look around and see how those with a business of their own are struggling, including with windmills, we will certainly feel compassionate for those who want to do something.
Bureaucracy has defeated, at least so far, the enterprising spirit, and people don't want to do anything anymore. They only want to exist in someone else's structure, preferably the state's. Perhaps this is nothing to blame.
Immediately after the revolution, in the first three or four years, some Romanians discovered they were small entrepreneurs, in more or less official dealings with Turkey, Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland and Russia. For a few years, all went well. Still, what is notable is that a good share of these entrepreneurs were doing this while keeping a state job. They never took the full risks of going completely into business.
We are now in the year 2000 and we find that we lack the engine to pull the economy out of the pit. We are sitting on the edge and waiting for someone to come and lift us.
And the most preferred, again, is the state.
It is dire to see how, ten years later, people are expecting the coveted well-being to come from the state. The CURS poll shows that 63% of the interviewed think their well-being should come from the state. What happened to the enterprising spirit?
After a decade, we are back to square one, and some of the things people fought for in 1989 are gone. Very few people in the current generation effectively find a place in the market economy. For most, the market economy begins with the state and ends with the state.
The entrepreneurial spirit is gone. If we were to sum up, we would say at this moment that the national trait of being private entrepreneur has changed into being a state entrepreneur. This is where we stand today.
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