Too many entrepreneurs not enough factory workers?

While the article is provocatively titled "Please do not teach this woman to fish", Daniel Altman at ForeignPolicy asks if the microfinance industry is overfunded:

Along with them came the microfinance programs -- as well as many other aid schemes designed to promote entrepreneurship -- which were often based in rural villages where repayment would be enforced primarily by peer pressure among the members. These programs tended to target women, who were viewed as more reliable stewards of the groups' money. Some women did manage to start their own businesses with the loans they received, but the verdict of research into microfinance's ability to reduce poverty was decidedly mixed.

There was a simple reason for this. By trying to make microfinance less risky and more sustainable, the program managers also made it less effective. To understand why, consider a common-sense question: How big can a business be in a rural village? There aren't many customers there, and incomes aren't very high either. A business would have to serve several villages to start creating jobs in any significant numbers. Now, consider rural women with families. They may be reliable repayers of loans, but they're much less mobile than single men. Single men can move to cities, or at least cover a lot of ground in the countryside, in an effort to win new customers. By contrast, even women without children face constraints on their movements in plenty of countries.

Microfinance may have given a lot of people a little, but it was never designed to give anyone a lot. Unlike the microenterprises founded in rural villages, businesses that serve lots of customers take advantage of economies of scale in production and distribution. These economies of scale are essential for economic growth. After all, which economy is more productive -- one in which every single person is an entrepreneur, or one in which a minority of entrepreneurs employ the majority of people?

In fact, poor countries already have many more entrepreneurs per capita than rich countries. More entrepreneurship is not what they need; economies of scale are. Indeed, the most productive economies are the ones that balance economies of scale with the benefits of competition. Too many businesses, and workers will fall short of their maximum productivity. Too few businesses, and monopolists will gouge consumers, quash innovation, and fail to serve the entire market.

I don't think the problem is with entrepreneurship though - or even subsidies that are reducing the risk of 'subsistence entrepreneurship', but red tape/quagmire that bogs down successful entrepreneurs and an inability to access capital at the same costs as some of their smaller competitors thereby preventing them from scaling.