Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

lol I come from a long line of small business owners and I’m dying at the thought of stanning for them as a class?! Like I’ve worked for other small businesses and they absolutely do play the “sorry we can’t pay you more” tune while squeezing you for everything you’re worth...there’s no noble way to do wage theft.

xxp - uh, if you found my post disgraceful, then that's on you. silby is so far from a master, it is sad ... it really is ... otoh, most of the true masters of those things you mention appear to be sociopaths and have been banned and/or quit ilx. silby is a smug child that will grow up to be a self-loathing middle aged person still waiting on the revolution ... or develop more nuanced beliefs based on actual lived experiences of other people whom they will likely encounter over time.

Why do we have to do anything with small business people as a class?

nah it wasn’t just him.

Like have we just accepted they're a monolith or

you’d probably want to read my post again before projecting the argument you want to be responding to.

😗🎶

Fraudulent emoji I can’t really whistle

silby's great, would prefer their perspective to many cis shitheads who will post here forever

I can only whistle by blowing out, not breathing in. And the only tune I can do is Alpha Beta Gaga.

I think the average job (at least in the states) is a garbage place to work, why add "small" in front

Neanderthal -- which roles did you play in Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat?

I ain't rereading shit guac

yeah I could tell mate, don’t waste your words!

so, okay ... WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT WHEN WE TALK ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS? ... I feel like this term is being used to refer to different things by different posters?

this whirlwind of confusing beef will surely only benefit sales of my delicious meat pies
please, they are on COVID special and will surely allow me to buy more hard drives

i don't think anything silby said above was really revelatory. But I am not searching through old posts to find the source of drama.

Uncool though not necessarily conservative belief I more or less sincerely hold: Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat is the best contemporary musical

I was Naphthali

I don't care how tall you are owning a business is hard work

whoa! I was Gad! we were bros!

like, I include members of worker-owned co-ops in my definition of small business owners, as well as self-employed people who don't have employees, and Executive Directors (senior staff) of small non-profits. ...

If righteous posters silby and gyac want to besmirch the category of members of worker-owned co-ops, please, go ahead ... they aren't perfect and there are systemic problems in re equity and other things but ... I am open to discussing those fairly and respectfully

Seems like in the US small businesses can be as big as 1500 employees and $30M in revenues. So there is a spectrum.

what in the ever-loving fuck did this thread turn into

and “worker-owned co-ops” is the credible outlier small business model that only a KNOWN TROLL would bring up when small business is being criticized ffs

I’m gonna do it

#notallsmallbusinessowners

lol

like for every fuckin’ co-op run with an average amount of drama there are a half dozen home/landscaping/construction contractors underpaying immigrants under the table who spend the other half their day screaming about how their suburban monstrosity of a house is overtaxed

so ... you only want to eat at chain restaurants?

I only wanna eat at small business restaurants that only hire young people and routinely sexually harass them, tyvm 😉

like what is the argument here: that small businesses owners are horrible people and thus small businesses shouldn't exist? ... or that small business owners are not inherently saintly? ... or ... large corporations are better than small businesses because there are more checks/balances on the people that run them, because all people that run businesses are horrible people?

I stopped eating at the local chain that counts as a small business because the owner is a total shithead who testified to the city council that we absolutely should not raise the minimum wage and is a bad employer. If there’s a group meeting I don’t control, I’d go there but tip very well.

That guy is generally the exception and not the rule, with the caveat that most small businesses are going to have wage pressures as they take on employees and it’s really hard to make any restaurant successful

pretending “small businesses are bad” is some blanket condemnation of small businesses in particular and not the societal conditions that keep them bad is some bullshit, along with thinking it comes with the implication that corporate chains are better. absolutely no one has said “corporate chains are better than small business restaurants”

if you absolutely have to hear it said as “the current small business model is bad” then I’ll insert the words

LL gets it

I hold fast to the uncool conservative belief that power corrupts -- so I am certainly not arguing against the posters here that are citing actual examples of small business owners being horrible people, because power tends to make people do bad things, and people with a tendency to garbage behavior are often attracted to power and obtain it more easily.

“the current small business model is bad” then I’ll insert the words

what model are we talking about? ...

I mean, I regularly say all software development is horrible — and that is WHAT I DO and what silby does — and we all nod appreciatively in the given thread

like this is worse, sarahell, than when you’re like “oh the tax code actually makes perfect sense if you read the documentation” which is mental because defending one of the things that’s notably a fiasco top to bottom is weird and contrarian

Dr. Pangloss business over here

the small business model is one where we offer no incentive to pay over minimum wage when our cities encourage new businesses, we link healthcare to employment putting an oversized burden on small businesses, we have at-will employment laws that both empower small businesses yet keep them from allowing workers to have any power

i think i have only ever worked for terrible small business owners. it's my specialty.

“oh the tax code actually makes perfect sense if you read the documentation” which is mental because defending one of the things that’s notably a fiasco top to bottom is weird and contrarian

not really -- all I was saying by that is that it has an internal logic. I am not saying it is inherently good. I am not saying that it should be set in stone and that it can't be changed for the better. ... though I will rep for certain provisions of the tax code that actually are designed to help promote economic equity and to combat fraud and greed of the wealthy.

I mean, the most wrong-headed ideas about starting small businesses come from the top down. See: Harris’s presidential campaign doing some “well if you have a Pell grant and start a business after college and pay back the loan within X months etc etc” contrived shit

we don’t do anything to encourage the small businesses to act right, and we have a bunch of bullshit coming in from chambers of commerce both local and national since they don’t care about employees and in some cases, actively shun businesses that treat employees well

it’s really hard to be a small business owner that does right by their employees and is able to succeed *by design*. it’s systematic

also, a bunch of small business owners are assholes

my uncool opinion is that if you own a business and want it to succeed then BE A GODDAMN ASSHOLE

because the system ain’t going to help you otherwise

the small business model is one where we offer no incentive to pay over minimum wage when our cities encourage new businesses, we link healthcare to employment putting an oversized burden on small businesses, we have at-will employment laws that both empower small businesses yet keep them from allowing workers to have any power

okay, those are specific things that I agree with you on completely. Also, those affect certain types of small businesses more than others. ... Like I find it totally baffling that you would assume that I knew that this is what you were referring to.

did you think we were talking about co-ops? I somehow know this shit from osmosis and reading!

Uh, idk dude -- small businesses include consulting firms, and architectural firms, and recording studios and industrial door installers ... as well as restaurants, retail, landscaping ... they don't all have the same labor requirements ... as in relatively unskilled labor that systemically, and due to the nature of the business, ends up having to be kept as low as possible. There are small business categories that also employ a significant number of people where all the workers are paid quite well (compared to the minimum wage people or the day laborers) because the business requires highly-skilled labor. ... Like, you say you work in software development. There are small businesses that consist mostly of software developers. Maybe they get paid less than if they worked for Microsoft or Apple or Amazon ... but they are probably better compensated than a barrista at Starbucks.

And I have dealt with this for years working in the non-profit sector, where the equivalent jobs in government and in big corporations pay wayyyyyy more than working for a small to mid-size non-profit ... but, not all work satisfaction and life satisfaction is tied to those material factors.

So we're back to small business owners being great everywhere but the USA. OK.

I've worked for dozens of small businesses and like maybe 5-10% of the owners were kinda shitty? Idk ... maybe I'm lucky? I self-define as a small business owner, but I don't have any workers, I do all the work myself ... which, would you say that is the same or is your definition of "small business owner" someone who has employees?

Definitely someone with employees.

like what is the argument here: that small businesses owners are horrible people and thus small businesses shouldn't exist? ... or that small business owners are not inherently saintly? ... or ... large corporations are better than small businesses because there are more checks/balances on the people that run them, because all people that run businesses are horrible people?

I think if you start from the proposition that capitalism as a framework is bad (not, btw, a conservative opinion), then for-profit business is pretty much the main locus of badness. Anyone who wants to succeed as an entrepreneur within that framework is pretty likely to be a bad person.

Silby, at least, hinted as much, in a welcome moment of honesty here:

Or do they prefer no businesses at all?

― Scampidocio (Le Bateau Ivre), Tuesday, July 7, 2020 9:09 AM (two hours ago)

well,

― all cats are beautiful (silby), Tuesday, July 7, 2020 2:44 PM (yesterday)

Small businesses that squeeze value from employees while not being able to pay them a living wage? Bad.

Large businesses that squeeze value from employees while being able (but not willing) to pay them a living wage? Also bad. But bad in a different way.

Apologies if I'm misrepresenting anyone's viewpoint. But p much if you think for-profit business is an inherently corrupt and corrupting activity, then you will be approximately as opposed to small businesses as large ones.

If, on the other hand, you only object to those businesses that mistreat and/or underpay workers, then you will be cool with the sort of non-shitty businessmammals that sarahell alludes to here:

small businesses include consulting firms, and architectural firms, and recording studios and industrial door installers ... as well as restaurants, retail, landscaping ... they don't all have the same labor requirements ... as in relatively unskilled labor that systemically, and due to the nature of the business, ends up having to be kept as low as possible. There are small business categories that also employ a significant number of people where all the workers are paid quite well (compared to the minimum wage people or the day laborers) because the business requires highly-skilled labor. ... Like, you say you work in software development. There are small businesses that consist mostly of software developers. Maybe they get paid less than if they worked for Microsoft or Apple or Amazon ... but they are probably better compensated than a barrista at Starbucks.