Because in America, that statement is so heretical and antithetical to what the average American thinks America is, that most people probably wouldn't even be mad at you for saying it: They'd think you were legitimately unwell/insane.
It's on the same level as saying "I hate liberals and am not conservative".
You don't necessarily have to be antagonistic to small business, you can take a slightly different approach and explain how capitalism doesn't work for small business either. Everytime a Wal-Mart opens up in a new area, a dozen local businesses close their doors within a few months.
The "Free market" has revealed that large scale enterprises with large numbers of people cooperating on a shared goal is the most efficient kind of organization. Small businesses can't compete with that, and we wouldn't want to lose out on the benefits of large scale enterprise anyway. We simply want our labor to be organized democratically, and not have our labor be organized by the tyrants of industry who act as gatekeepers between labor and the tools that labor uses.
I actually wrote a whole ass essay on how to talk about this topic, so feel free to dig through that if you want some perspective on the issue and give yourself some talking points to pull out when the topic comes up.
I started collecting my posts on Pastebin because I have written the same essay hundreds of times lmao.
Great work. I read all of it. My only criticism is the mention of Einstein and Salk, who were living under capitalism even if they didn’t believe in it. Earlier thinkers and inventors (like Da Vinci or Archimedes) might be better examples.
Just talk about specific things: small business owners act like you’re family but test you just as poorly as any other employer, they use their position in society to enforce weird morality that’s none of their business, they all have a messiah complex, etc. etc.
'The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions." - Manifesto
Yeah and Fidel managed to get a revolution going by actually concealing his aims
Didn't he have nationalist motives at first then got into Communism when America flipped out at him
You can create a list of traits and see that they overlap to encompass 99.99% of small businesses.
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I don't support small businesses that won't pay their workers fairly.
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I don't support small businesses that fail to follow or enforce regulations/exploit loopholes.
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Most small businesses start with someone who's already coming from privilege.
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Some small businesses just crowd a market with a fad, leading to unsustainable employment.
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Most small businesses fail.
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Co-ops are just better and give workers a stake in what they do.
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Finally, fuck small business owners.
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I guess the path would be to just point at the mini mussolinis - like every small business owner I've dealt with has blatantly stolen wages, fucked with workers' hours, and berated employees. But hey that isn't unique to small business, if only we had some sort of workplace democracy
:curious-marx:
The easiest way is to make whatever criticism you're going to make (they probably steal wages more than big companies, they're nepotism factories, a lot of them just aren't run competently, etc.) with language that's less abrasive than "fuck small businesses." Give specific examples and do it in the way you'd criticize some band you aren't really into. Sometimes you can get away with a surprising amount if you state it matter-of-factly.
Another tactic is to use a story or an anecdote to reframe what people think of when they think of a small business owner. This is basically what CTH does with the "runs a ski-doo dealership and thinks they're a captain of industry" bit. Don't let people imagine some earnest, hardworking restauranteur who works 100 hours a week and is just trying to scrape by -- talk about some 45-year-old Trump diehard who pays undocumented workers under the table at his landscaping company, cheats on his taxes, and hits on the high school girl he hired to answer phones at the office. You still want to acknowledge the existence of both (at least in a longer conversation), but focus the conversation on the ones who are least sympathetic and who most embody easy criticisms.
I've also had some success with "'think of the small businesses' is used as a stalking horse for the interests of big businesses the same way 'think of the children' isn't actually used by people who deeply care about kids."
If you don't want to antagonise people too much maybe you could go a less negative route? Instead of saying what you are against you could say what you're for. Instead of saying "fuck small businesses" say that you prefer democratically run worker's coops as they provide a better outcome for workers and the local community both economically but also on more immaterial levels by increasing freedom, self-determination and happiness for the majority.
Here's what I say: "I've worked for small and big businesses, and the only difference is that with a small business, you know the person who's fucking you over."
It's punching down. What's the figure, 90% of small businesses fail in the first few years? And you want to heap more indignity on them?
the reality is that most "small business people" are not small and pretend to be for the free good press, all those "i took a loan and started out of my garage" people somehow don't mention that the garage is attached to a mansion and the loan is grandpappy kicking the bucket
One thing to point out is that politicians only care about small businesses when they want to pass a law benefitting small and big businesses. When it's big business and not labor putting the squeeze on small business that's just the market
I would talk about how what's most important is workers rights and wages. All sorts of businesses are capable of taking advantage of their employees and that's what matters to you. Then explain the unique situations that make small businesses vulnerable, like them being less likely to held accountable for labor violations. Don't frame it as small businesses suck, just say that workers matter more.
Go work for a small business, have a fucking horrible experience, quit, and now you have the experience to back up the sentiment
Nah but for real I think you need to preface every discussion on small businesses with, “well of course I prefer small businesses to large multinationals, I’m just saying...”
And also you have to really be out as an anti-capitalist, you can’t say fuck small businesses but beat around the bush when it comes to capitalism. Because framing the whole thing as anti-small business while still operating in a capitalist framework won’t convince anyone, you need to state outright that the problem is capitalism which small businesses partake in.
Also you really need to come off as pro-worker more than you do anti-small business. Because as you say, the small business owner is sacred in US culture, criticizing them won’t get you very far. But framing your argument as pro-worker might chip away at the small business owner’s pedestal in the other person’s mind
