Addiction Vs Entrepreneurship

I found this quote on FB:

To feel superior to a self-destructive drug addict is the same as feeling superior to an entrepreneur whose enterprise has failed and burdened him with debt. They were both people who wished to experiment with new things. And some experiments fail. That's all there is to it. It doesn't give you the right to look down on them. They are no less human than you are.

Totally agree with the core message: We must treat everyone as humans. But, I think it was patronizing a little too much with the addict. Basically it reminded me about how people keep justifying addictions by saying things like "try something new once in a while" or "you should be open to experimentation!" and similar stuff. And that makes this a dangerous analogy, as it has one very critical flaw yet on the surface looks true and may even encourage people to enter into addiction in the spirit of freedom, experimentation and entrepreneurship. Indeed, it has. So, I commented to explain why the two are not similar...

There might be one slight devil in the details. The entrepreneur tried to do something that had NEVER been done before by anyone - for that is what entrepreneurship is. If there were already so many cases floating around of that exact same thing having been tried by others only to result in disastrous consequences, then that means our entrepreneur never learned from the world around him.

In which case he deserves to have failed and get indebted - you can't repeat a business idea as-is that's already been proven bad, it's stupid.

The drug-addict is REPEATING the exact same thing which 1000s of others before him have tried. It's not like he's pinching the needle in from a different angle so that's a novel concept. He's repeating someone else's experiment and he knows what the results are going to be. So if the bad entrepreneur deserved what he got, then what about the drug addict? Stupid is as stupid does :P

I guess it all hinges on what we define as "new" - new to just the person in question, or new to everyone?

--So, my message: Kids, don't fall for the lure of trying out these things in the spirit of doing something new. It is NOT something new. You're only copying 1000s of other people. By taking a whiff of a cigarette, a peg of alcohol or a snort or needle of a drug, you ain't doin' anything new, man. You're just being as stupid as the other idiots. You're copying an idiot's experiment! Are you really that boring?! If you want to do something NEW, something FRESH, do what a real Entrepreneur does - try something that has never been tried before by anyone around you.

Addiction = boring and old; not new. Be cool. Try something really new. Peace!