As the owner of a small, independent real estate company, I have seen the consolidation of numerous "mom and pop" real estate outfits into the behemoths that dominate the market today. While our society and government celebrate the small entrepreneur in principal, in actuality they do everything to eliminate us by their preferences and policies. In each and every way, the elites of big government, business and labor have striven to crush our individualism by enacting laws and regulations to make it harder and harder for the small business to exist.
This trend has accelerated under the past two administrations and has culminated in the recent health care and financial reform legislation. Instead of truly helping the individual citizen, these governmental fiats are nothing more that crony capitalism at its worst. The JP Morgans and Citibanks are no more reined in than they were before the crisis. Our health care system continues to be a money maker for the Aetnas and United Healthcares, and the public be damned.
Ron Paul, in his recent blog post, was absolutely right in calling the Obama administration Corporatist. They do not want socialism, which is the government owning the "means of production," but instead want those "means" owned by a few favored private corporations. These corporations, while nominally independent of the government, are highly dependent on the government to continue to maintain their favored position. This is crony capitalism to rival those of any corporatist state from Ancient Rome to Nazi Germany. Just like the Roman elite spoke eloquently about the virtues of the republic, our elite speak lovingly and wistfully about the family farmer while giving billions in subsidies to a few huge corporations growing unneeded crops like cane sugar.
Many of my friends are small business people. They are not inventors who created new industries such as Bill Gates did with Microsoft. These are men and women who twenty or thirty or forty years ago decided they did not want to work for large companies. Most of these people began in "mom and pop" shops to gain experience and then went on to open their own small businesses. From real estate offices to contracting firms to restaurants, the one common thread was being their own bosses and calling their own shots. But each of these people tell me that if they were starting out today, they just couldn't accomplish what they had previously. It is too hard to compete with the unions, the government and the big guys and be successful.
I am far from someone who doesn't believe in government regulation. What I do not believe in is the government sacrificing the economic well being of 98% of the population so that the big boys can continue to thrive. For example, instead of breaking up the big banks, it is allowing them to continue with the reckless behavior that brought about the recent crisis. A simple regulation that prohibited them from trading for themselves would go far to prevent the next crisis. What is wrong with having banks that are in the banking business and investment houses that are in the investment business?
The morally corrupt Congress continues to vote on legislation that they have not read and was mostly written by lobbyists. The administration continues to move us closer toward the collectivization of our economy. The rest of us become nothing more than cogs in their plans. Our politicians, from Obama to the local legislator, will praise that entrepreneurial spirit of America while doing everything to make that spirit as much an anachronism as the independent small farmer.
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