In a society that encourages us to view businesses as evil, the greedy adversaries of the people, it’s important to realize that small businesses are themselves barely more than the people who comprise them and they are frequently worthy of our admiration and support, not our hostility and opposition. Small businesses are often the good guys, not the bad guys.
It has become all too easy to divide society into two teams: the people (who are surely good and righteous) and the businesses (who are certainly evil and avaricious); black and white. And in that black and white worldview, a middle ground can’t exist, so non-profit organizations of all sorts (i.e., academic institutions, foundations, and NGOs) demand to be part of Team People. It’s us versus them, everything is high-stakes, and the participants often define who is on which team or the other, even if they have conflicts of interest.
In reality, the stakes are not so high and the distinctions are not so clear or important. It’s a grey world after all. Everyone is human and looking for a path forward that satisfies their own needs, expectations, and desires. We’re not all good guys and bad guys; we’re all imperfect mixtures of good and bad. And one of the most undeservingly vilified categories is that of small businesses.
Small businesses are barely more than the individuals who comprise them. Those businesses share the needs, aspirations, and desires of their individuals, but they have an important measure of official organization demanded by the government. That organization brings with it both positive and negative aspects – a measure of legal separation that enables exploration and risk, and a burden of regulation, expenses, and oversight that encumber such development. It’s a mixed bag and no one should underestimate the complexity of trying to launch or maintain a small business.
To dehumanize small businesses into entities that we should treat as adversaries is just plain wrong. While it is convenient and even desirable for modern society to treat all businesses as sterile, never-touched-by-human-hands entities that sell products or services in hermetically sealed and perfectly uniform packages, that is a silly and counterproductive conceit. Nearly everything is touched and affected by humans and that is a good thing, not a failing. Small businesses involve real people and many or even most of them care that you are happy, satisfied, and supported by what they provide. Don’t expect inhuman/antihuman treatment; instead, expect human treatment and respond positively to it when it is good and makes the world a better place.
So where does “no consequences” fit into this essay? It is in the misassignment of what is human and what is less so. Treating small businesses as though they are large businesses, with nameless hordes of people who can be treated as objects rather than human beings, is a serious mistake. Even some large businesses are more human than we typically admit. People are people, and the closer those people are to whatever products, services, or other activities they provide, the more they deserve and value being treated as people. As the co-owner of a tiny business (Adaptive Rubber LLC and its products at EarJellies.com), I can say from experience that working with people as individuals and sharing the human experience with them is more valuable than anything else on either end of any transaction.
Furthermore, expecting grey-area organizations to be “good guys” because of their titles, names, or categories (e.g., academic institutions, non-profits, NGOs) is uncertain at best. Organizations tend to drift away from their original missions once they become large and their workforces begin to think of themselves as employees. Businesses, companies, and organizations become problematic when their employees begin to lose sight of their missions and begin working primarily for incomes rather than purpose. It’s okay for people to earn a living; they need it and it wouldn’t make sense if they did otherwise. But it’s less okay for people to work only for incomes and say to hell with the people at the other end of any transaction or interaction. For the most part, small businesses keep track of the former behavior and deserve our praise and support.