What would the rich and big corporations do if

[lefthandedlefty]

Everyone finally learned how to hustle and put theirselves to work and became self sufficient and self employed independant.Most everyone has some sort of talent or hobby that they could turn into a business you might not get rich and times will be hard at least when you go to work you know it will be for you and your family and not making some rich useless CEO or investor even richer.

[Ruby the Liberal]

1. I would have no idea on what I could do, or I would have tried it.

Not everyone is an entrepreneur. Some of us have a temperament better suited to tactical implementation of someones vision as opposed to being visionaries ourselves.

Being self-employed can have many rewards, but it also comes with many risks.

If you have an idea, I encourage you to go for it! Talk with a CPA or financial planner about the financial side of things so that you get off on the right foot.

[Oregone]

2. A world where everyone could magically afford health insurance from the private market

They got you right where they want you, and the government is only helping. Taking a leap isn't so easy when you are burdened by debt and threatened by possible health bills.

[laughingliberal]

3. I'm convinced our health care system is the #1 killer of innovation & entrepreneurship.

It keeps us enslaved to whatever jobs will provide it for us and kills our spirits.

[sendero]

7. I agree..

... with you 100%.

[Lorien]

8. It's the #1 killer of jobs, that's for sure. One of the big film studios that I sometimes

work for has offices in Canada, Japan, France and Australia. They've stopped hiring here and send most of the work their other non-US studios. They pay the employees the same amount abroad, but not having to pay for health insurance saves them at least 20% in labor costs on every film.

[Phoebe Loosinhouse]

16. me too.

which brings up a question I always raise -

Why doesn't big business lobby to get the health monkey off their backs?

For exactly the reason you mention.

This is also one area where the concerns of big business and small business have no overlap and the small businesses suffer for the benefit of the larger ones.

[Lorien]

4. I'm self employed, and sadly the only clients I can depend on to actually pay me

are giant mega corporations. :-(

[sendero]

5. You are going to see, and are already seeing.

... a variation on that them happening right now. When times get tough people take a hard look at where they are spending their money and many don't like what they see.

The old "spend til you drop" model, for most Americans, is dead.

[w4rma]

6. Corporate lobbyists have set up the system against honest entrepreneurship.

Big business doesn't want competition.

[WHEN CRABS ROAR]

9. Remember this. Every time you buy something you vote with

your dollars.

[Cleita]

10. Well, we emphasize too much the individual when we

should be banding together as groups, like the Amish do to become self-sufficient. In this matter we can help each other, ply a trade that is our strength, trade with our neighbors for food, goods and services and have very little money involved. With little money, there is little to tax and little to invest in Wall Street. If two-thirds of Americans pooled their resources and bought up farmland to establish village communes to do this, we could break the corporations. I mean religions have done this since the middle ages. Monasteries were self sufficient, communistic and produced a product, like wine to sell to the outside world for additional income, but they didn't really need it. Their strength was in owning the land and producing product from it. The Amish do it and other religious communities like Amana that make refrigerators. We don't need religion but a common goal and principles that we want to live by and raise our children by. But we have to band together in communes to do this.

[janet118]

17. This is probably the rational way to go, but . . .

It is hard, in our individualistic culture, to pull off this sort of thing without some kind of religious glue - e.g. Amish, Mennonites, Twelve Tribes, etc. Is the "common goal" survival? financial gain? ecological? How would you find like-minded strangers? Who decides who's in and who's out?

Is the property owned by the entire group? How are resources distributed? What is the balance between sharing and privacy? Any group housing would have to be compatible with that balance.

A bunch of us did something similar to this in the early seventies. After ten years, my husband and I were the only ones left on the land. On our own, we could not figure out a way to make the land sustainable without more people contributing labor, resources and know-how.

Speaking for myself, I would be interested in trying something communal again. But I am realistic about how difficult it is for many Americans to sublimate their self-interest for the good of a whole community. Religion makes it a much easier process. And that's a non-starter for me.

[Cleita]

19. We can, but it will be hard.

Otherwise we will keep going on the way we are until there is a collapse of our economy and society. How about an extended family group to be the foundation of such a communal style for a start? Not all families hate each other and they can come together as a multi-generational group incorporating outsiders as marriage partners and just other people that are like minded with skills they might need on a commune as time goes on.

[TheKentuckian]

11. They would as always as principle "stakeholders" work to get shifty layers of regulation, taxes, etc

To choke those small business down and make the costs too high to operate independently. They'll have needed capital to deal with the oppressive government and slowly buy many if not most out even if it takes one of those bizarre land lease building own deals and just jack the rent above plausible income and then let it rot.

Or they will provide needed business and offer you a deal that compromises either your vision or the way you operate and serve other customers and eat at things that way.

They'll throw crime at you. They will find tiny things to keep you in court all the time. They will raise questions, just innocent questions using their influence if you threaten their cash flow.

They will put health care out of reach and if they must allow it withing a stretched out arms length they will do it in the most invasive and uncomfortably as they can for ever piece of copper they can extract.

They will make certain crucial kinds insurance tough to get and harder to maintain.


In short they will do everything they can to pull the ladder to prosperity out of reach of as many as possible without stopping the flow dead because the moment that plausible deniability is gone is the one when the "small people" get serious about pulling stuff down rather than dreaming of climbing up.

That's probably why lotteries got so popular to spread the free market gospel to more people as ready opportunity to those willing to work was dismantled.
Now lil Ricky down at the trailer park can get as pissed about his future wealth stolen away for welfare queens and furreners as Travis the small time electrical contractor. If the power brokers are lucky and can keep the message out in all forms of media then you might even hook some destitute minorities!

Everybody is just a winning number away from having to give up half their long over due money like they was Tiger or Johnny Carson getting a divorce and to give it to some not shit bums.

Just a winning number away.

[txlibdem]

15. You got the Best Post award - they keep the dream alive

Most Americans dream one day that they will become one of the wealthy class so they keep voting for Republicons so the rich get all the benefits from our society, take none of the risks of failure, face none of the adverse effects of their actions, and are never held accountable for their crimes.

It's like some guy dangling a string of yarn above a cat. The cat jumps and yowls and works his hardest to get the string. But the jerk raises the string up just when the cat gets close to catching it. The cat keeps trying, believing that one of these times it will get that string. The guy knows that it never will because HE controls the string at all times.

What if the cat stopped jumping for that string and bit his toe? He'd drop the string and the cat would have it. Now imagine that there are a million cats for each dangling string. What will happen to the smug bastard when a million cats start biting and clawing at him?

[Taitertots]

12. Economies of scale: They would laugh at what an utter failure it would be

Are you going to single handedly design, build, and market complex computer systems? What about global communications networks?

Why don't we just tax them at a rate which prevents undue influences caused by concentrated wealth?

[Curmudgeoness]

13. I believe I understand your post, I think you are suggesting that all

the hot air that is spewed at us about how lazy workers are, how we are always under-performing, how we don't have any cares, is just that: Hot air. If all workers magically became entrepreneurs and worked for themselves one day, what would all the corporations do? No workers? No production? I have always had a dream of this to get even with all the hate thrown at workers. They need us and they just will not admit it. Businesses with no one to work for them would be impossible.

[lefthandedlefty]

14. Exactly what I was trying too say

[readmoreoften]

18. They own the means of production. Most of us can't afford a store front let alone a factory.

Sure, sure, you can come up with some good idea in your garage--like Mac, for instance. But you're not going to be making the mass marketed version in your garage. You'll need a factory for that.

There is no "opting out" of global capital and creating islands of peace and equality within it. You can only fight it as a collective, as organized labor.

[WinkyDink]

20. I don't think my English-teacher skill-set would work in your world.