Is entrepreneurship in secular decline?

Abstract This paper argues that both on the supply and the demand side, entrepreneurship is in secular decline. On the supply side, the balance of rewards to the exercise of the entrepreneurship function is diminishing as potential entrepreneurs value other pursuits and leisure rather than entrepreneurial activities. On the demand side, civil society has begun to shun entrepreneurial activities as exploitative, damaging to the individual, fostering inequality, and at odds with the environmental, societal and governance (ESG) agenda. Entrepreneurship and the twenty-first century zeitgeist are incompatible.