After debates over enemy images, attacks on entrepreneurs, and blame-shifting during crises, the German federal government is now attempting to exclude the self-employed and freelancers from the new “active pension.” Another example of the seemingly autistic hostility toward entrepreneurs in Berlin politics.

    What characterizes a thriving society  Undoubtedly, material wealth tops the list of factors that enable a favorable social climate. Refined or aesthetic aspects follow once existential problems have been successfully overcome. They are, in a sense, derivative responses that a successful culture gives itself reflexively, celebrating its own success.

    At the center of this social machinery, which has ultimately transformed modern society into a state of abundance, stands -- from an economic perspective -- the entrepreneur. Economist Josef Schumpeter called them a “creative destructor”: a figure who breaks up entrenched structures in search of economic success, replacing the old with innovations and devaluing what came before. It is a complex interplay of psychological, social, and economic factors which, under favorable conditions, acts like a dynamo and a revitalizing source for society.

Unpalatable Debate Culture

    Germany counts roughly 3.6 million of these entrepreneurs, self-employed, and freelancers. In recent months, they have increasingly come under the scrutiny of government representatives. Recall the distasteful scandal triggered by Labor Minister Bärbel Bas at the Entrepreneurs’ Day in November: in front of an incited audience of young socialists, she indirectly declared war on entrepreneurs, turning them into an enemy image.

    For Chancellor Friedrich Merz and his economic minister Katherina Reiche of the CDU, it is beyond question that entrepreneurs must take the offensive in light of the ongoing recession. Not a word about how catastrophic political framework conditions, the energy crisis, and climate-socialist regulatory mania might have systematically suffocated economic activity in Germany.

    Publicly and brazenly, they point fingers elsewhere to distract from their own incompetence and ideological rigidity. The debate over a “jealousy tax,” sparked by CDU parliamentary leader Jens Spahn and backed by state economic research institutes, only adds fuel to the fire: the goal is to attack entrepreneurs, remove inherited corporate wealth from production, and funnel it into overextended state coffers. As cash cows, entrepreneurs are considered good enough -- no more.

    A first taste of what this fundamentally anti-entrepreneurial political stance could mean in practice comes with the active pension, set to take effect next year. Retirees will then be able to earn up to €2,000 per month tax-free. Naturally, self-employed and freelance workers are excluded from this well-intentioned pension regulation.

    All of this is deliberately divisive and ostentatiously anti-entrepreneurial. Whether it is also legally sound might be clarified by the Federal Taxpayers Association, which will take the matter to court starting in March.

Musk as Inspiration

    It is understandable that, in a social climate that nearly uncritically tolerates attacks on entrepreneurs and vulgar political resentment toward the self-employed, the archetypal entrepreneur, Elon Musk, faces harsh opposition. In Brussels, this opposition escalated to grotesque legal attacks by the Commission.

    Musk, who has founded some of today’s most successful companies -- Tesla, SpaceX, and Neuralink -- also dared to intervene in Europe’s politician-dominated communication architecture by acquiring the platform X.

    Here lies the collision: the party cartel and European central planners versus an influential entrepreneur -- a CEO who refuses to be intimidated by censorship laws, threats, or vulgar political attacks emanating from the Brussels-Berlin nexus.

    Civil courage means acting, even on a small scale, in one’s business, family, and social circle -- drawing attention to the failings of our politics, the growing censorship apparatus, the looming debt catastrophe, and anti-civilizational climate policies. Our silence alone gives the powerful eco-socialist cartel room to build an increasingly defined hyperstate.

Enemy Images and Problem Solvers

    Politicians who deliberately distance themselves from economic decision-makers and the self-employed pursue a dual strategy. First, in the current social and economic crisis climate, they can readily fall back on an image cultivated over years in the public media: the greedy, ruthless entrepreneur. This figure serves as a trump card in public discourse, activating resentment and quickly identifying a scapegoat -- especially since it is a relatively small, seemingly homogenous group.

    Entrepreneurs appear as villains in this narrative. Ironically, their civilizational function -- the tireless pursuit of business opportunities in free markets to solve scarcity problems -- becomes the target of cynical criticism.

    In statism-driven, state-believing Germany, individual striving for economic excellence is still considered suspicious and, according to the implicit logic, rightly punished with the tax hammer. Politicians like Klingbeil, Bas, Merz, and other central planners seem to find confirmation in this: no one should rise above the average citizen through talent, competence, or even luck.

Resentment as a Political Tool

    That Social Democrats, Greens, and other leftists regularly exploit this shabby resentment to distract from their own failures and ideological rigidity is a familiar media play. But now the CDU has dangerously drifted into this unpalatable vulgar rhetoric, seamlessly joining the leftist phalanx.

    The self-proclaimed heirs of Ludwig Erhard have not only forgotten his legacy but, figuratively speaking, drowned it in the ideological gutter of political arbitrariness.

    The second motive behind attacks on entrepreneurs is political power -- and perhaps the more decisive one. The entrepreneurial image in a free market represents decentralized decision-making. Entrepreneurs embody competition, dynamism, and problem-solving competence. They are stressors for the system, innovative actors whose competition produces results that a state apparatus could never achieve -- market-driven, consumer-oriented.

    Entrepreneurs demand no ideological submission to party doctrine to solve concrete societal problems in producing goods; they only require the valid market price. The free market thus represents the most democratic vehicle civilization has discovered so far.

    In contrast, centrally planned processes are doomed to fail against the cliffs of complex reality and dynamic change. Entrepreneurs are mirrors held up to an expanding state socialism, making visible why large, politically-guided projects repeatedly fail, burning capital like blazing torches -- for example, in attempts to transform a complex economy into a climate-socialist command economy. Precisely for this reason, they systematically stand in the way of such projects, and precisely for this reason, they increasingly find themselves targeted by politicians who have sold their souls to the feasibility fetish of central planning.