I hate to burst your bubble, but sympathizing with a "commoner" does not qualify you as a good person. Those of us doing the real work of making the world a better place (in the public and nonprofit sectors) are making the real sacrifices it takes to ensure broadly shared prosperity. What exactly are you sacrificing? Social media doesn't make the world a better place. If you need to justify your decision to enrich yourself (“entrepreneurship”) then it probably isn’t morally worth it.

A couple of points:

I'm not a social entrepreneur and I seriously doubt anyone actually working in the nonprofit sector thinks of what they do as "entrepreneurial" - though a few aspiring executive directors might (the key word here is "aspiring"). Larger nonprofits in particular are highly bureaucratic structures, usually top-down and focus less on taking risks due to funding pressures (not very entrepreneurial).

I'm a professional fundraiser for an organization that provides comprehensive services to individuals experiencing homelessness. I can't see how we could operate as a for-profit. Most of our money comes from public sources, despite a rather robust fund raising program and the newspaper's designation as the city's best nonprofit organization.

Social entrepreneurship and the nonprofit philanthropy are two different things. A social entrepreneur would be someone like my fiancee's uncle, who invented an affordable mosquito net that will help quell malaria in Africa. He's doing it for profit, but also happens to be making the world a better place by innovating. I don't give him much credit for the "Social" part, because as an economic libertarian he could care less about poverty in Africa.

In the early 20th century, big corporations learned that they had a major PR problem. They were viewed as greedy and callous by their workers. They were largely complicit in devastating communities and the environment. To quell the uproar around corporate callousness, philanthropy was born. And to this day, it is an expectation that as a company you give back to the community. Does this legitimize corporate power or market-driven approaches to social amelioration? No. Most of it doesn't work, despite popular opinion.

Corporate philanthropy today is mostly centered around event sponsorships, where they get something in return. The rest of corporate philanthropy is driven by community reinvestment laws (in the case of Banks) and PR value (in the case of Wal-mart and Exxon).

Just so you know, I'm not entirely skeptical of the idea of "social rehabilitation through work". I think pulling more single parents into the workforce and off "Welfare" has positive effects, as long as their children are being cared for and they are being paid a living wage. Typically, entrepreneurs like yourself lack comprehensive benefits including health insurance, so I wouldn't be encouraging a poor single parent to abandon steady work with benefits for the glory of self-employment.

I am skeptical that the concept of social entrepreneurship somehow legitimizes a market-based approach to combating social ills. Keep in mind that the proliferation of nonprofits and public-sector programs is largely the result of market failures. There are zero examples of countries that developed on a model where private business delivers the larger share of public goods. Those advocating for such models are really ignoring history (where it was the public sector that kept economic growth sustainable).

Despite what nonprofits (and not-for-profits) are doing, we need a highly progressive tax structure and substantial public investment to end poverty, reduce the impact of climate change, improve our education systems, and clean up the environment. Entrepreneurs can create jobs, but so can the government - and more effectively and thoughtfully.

Yes, innovation comes directly from the government. The private sector actively stifles innovation through the enforcement of property rights and monopolization. The internet is the most obvious example of innovation that occurred almost entirely within the public purview. I can list numerous others. I question any major example of true innovation that followed a route of entirely private investment.

I never said anything about thinking highly about what I do. In fact, I was saying quite the opposite. What I do is not entrepreneurial and I find the concept that one can "do good" through profit quite pathological. Even being within the private nonprofit sector, I'm skeptical that we're really making an impact whatsoever. It's more efficient for the government to provide social services directly. As far as social movement theories go, Resource Mobilization is the least effective mode of social activism.

Public goods are anything that we need to survive and thrive, whether it be water, electricity, health care, transportation, ect. Most of these things have a high degree of public funding and regulation. If they didn't, we'd resemble a third world state (and some places in the United States in fact do, Mississippi comes to mind). The "social entrepreneur" movement really takes it for granted that the delivery most public goods is not profitable, therefore they can't exist within a capitalist economy without substantial state support.

Taking broadband internet access as one example, as it being a largely private good in this country (though again, developed with substantial public support), we rank among the bottom of OECD countries in access to fast and cheap wireless broadband networks. In fact, it is actually the private telecom sector that is stifling innovation, because the technology already exists to have universal wireless broadband. The reason it hasn't been universally implemented is because it threatens their profits - telecom companies dash at the thought of the Internet being a free public good. Cell phone access has a similar and even more tragic story.

I can go on and on with more examples. Airplanes? We talk about AIG, but the airline industry is actually one of the largest recipients of welfare in the United States. However, being that the airline industry is a private corporation, we as consumers still have to pay for their profits... In fact, if you want to know the "problem" with airlines, it's the fact that they've been deregulated.

Capitalism produces little of public value. Twitter? Whatever...