This is exactly right. This kind of optimism is (usually) individually irrational, but extremely beneficial for the collective. Every time the world moves forward it's because some over-confident idiot bets everything on a hare brained idea. It's almost always ruinous, but on a societal level, the successes more than make up for all the failures.
A lot of our biggest and most transformative "successes" have come at a price, and so do some of the biggest failure. I think the jury is out on net gain.
Are you certain those dots are connected? We've had profit seeking entrepreneurship for a long time and famines haven't been gone very long, and arguably profit-driven climate change is the biggest potential source of looming famines (should they start to reoccur).
Famine was first eliminated in 1800 by the US with its free market agriculture. Collective farms have never succeeded in providing sufficient food.
Starving people are not good for the environment. They stop caring about anything but getting food.
Profit-driven farms are why you're able to type into your computer complaints about capitalism, sipping your morning Starbucks, rather than holding a cup on a streetcorner begging for an apple.
Are you saying it was eliminated in 1800 or in the 1800s? Do you have sources you can cite that makes the case that US "free market" agriculture eliminated famine? Farming in the 1800s was not free of exploitative practices such as slavery/sharecropping, nor was life easy for farmers, many faced hardships or lost their farms entirely. Sure call it a "free market" if you will, but note the evils and failures that comes with that "freedom".
US farming/agriculture actually has a long history of relying on government relief, subsidies, tariffs and low-cost/free federal land use to remain profitable.
Haber process was developed while Fritz Haber was at University of Karlsruhe, a public research university. BASF was hesitant to invest in it, but luckily employee/engineer(not exactly an entrepreneur) Carl Bosch was there to convince them otherwise, and was able to industrialize the process.
Haber process also has its negatives, such as an ammonia resource for war, and the growing use of factory/unsustainable farming actually threatens environments and clean water. It is also one of the biggest consumers of energy on the planet.
Maybe a better example is the transistor(and tons of other stuff) from Bell Labs, but AT&T wasn't exactly a plucky startup, and has a monopolistic/anti-competitive past that tarnishes its history.
Maybe both of these examples show the importance of research, and the ability to tinker/explore solutions without profit motive pressures getting in the way.
We've seen how non-profit-driven research works in Soviet countries: their spies were busy stealing tech from the west, while the country was falling further and further behind.
Maybe there are many reasons to do research and people will often learn just for the sake of learning. But to turn that research into an actual useful, available product on the shelf - you need a profit motivation. Otherwise nobody will do the unsexy work and then there will not be money and nice condition for pure research either.
The US heavily invests in public research. The NIH budget is larger than all US billionaire's philanthropic donations combined. Public funding has great ability to affect change and discover.
You're kind of citing the successes only here, not the massive number of failures along the way. Nor did I state that an entrepreneur couldn't be a success, more that needing to be profitable could impeded desires to experiment or tinker with things not deemed to have immediate profit potential.
I would like to see environments where entrepreneurs are encouraged, and where failure doesn't mean financial ruin. The current landscape sees a lot of people betting their futures, or being completely unable to participate(health insurance/family concerns).
