Thread by @Doc_0

Ten years after a presidential election dominated by talk about small businesses, you don't hear a word about them any more. It's like the political class gave them up for dead in the pandemic, and talks only about mega-corporations now.

Ten years ago, both parties seemed to agree small businesses were the "engine of job creation in America," or at least politicians from both parties shouted that slogan at every opportunity. Now they dump rising costs on pandemic-devastated entrepreneurs without a second thought.

Small businesses are a vital element of the middle class experience in America. For the Democrats' War on the Middle Class to succeed, small business must be crushed. They pretend to care about small-B just enough to avert electoral wipeouts in suburban areas.

With the pandemic having wiped all but the biggest corporations from public discourse, there is little need for the Left to pretend it has any great affection for entrepreneurs, or any understanding of the challenges they face.

Local businesses are so vital because they can detect and exploit opportunity so much faster than giant corporations or bloated government agencies. They're responsive and nimble. They step forward to fill local demands that can't be quickly or easily measured from far away.

Small business allows hard-working people with modest investments to accumulate capital, achieve independence, pursue individual visions, and maybe - with effort, risk, and good fortune - build some real wealth for their families. It really is the heart of the American Dream.

Those entrepreneurs bring plenty of other people along for the ride, creating a whole class of jobs that Big Businesses don't produce - and a constellation of business opportunities for individuals and other small businesses. Some employees become entrepreneurs themselves.

Small-B is especially important for young people entering the job market, and for the working poor climbing to the middle class. There is a role they play for both groups that simply cannot be filled by giant corporations.

But there's something about small business that frustrates the Left: they're hard to control. They don't snap to attention in response to political commands and enforce ideological agendas on their customers. Their owners aren't looking for Party cards and corporatist sinecures.

The essence of fascism is political command of private capital, and the use of private business to enforce government power beyond its legal limits. That's easy when a Party boss or activist group can command, or convince, a handful of moguls to enforce their will on the public.

But good luck wielding that kind of power when you'd have to get thousands of small businessmen to gang up against their customers, punishing them for voting the "wrong" way on important issues, silencing them for "incorrect" speech, or push through huge expansions of the State.

You could say that a defining attribute of small businesses is that they have very little power over their customers. There are too many alternatives eager to snatch up their business. The small businessman hustles, persuades, competes - but does not command.

Think back to the age of the blog, before social media titans came to dominate online speech. If one web host tried to silence you or tamper with your blog for political reasons, you just shrugged and migrated to another. Speech policing was a laughable notion.

I remember when the big socialist brainstorm for shutting down dissident blogs was holding them legally accountable for posts made by their commenters. But now we've got a few big companies teeming with censors and algorithms to control speech. Small vs. Big Biz in a nutshell.

Small business lets people willing to accept risk and make sacrifices pursue their vision without seeking permission or indulgence from big political powers or corporate bosses. It teaches people to sacrifice today so they can achieve tomorrow. So of COURSE it has to go. /end