i live down south and keep seeing local business owners posting in local groups pleading people to come buy shit at their stores prior to this winter storm because if they have to close for a few days it’s apparently detrimental for them. like they’re entitled to exist. in any other context this behavior would be considered desperate and begging. but we’re conditioned to think small business tyrants are some class above us all who are entitled to not have to work a job like the rest of us. worst case scenario they lose their business and that’s what happens, and working people are conditioned to feel sorry for them. “please don’t let me become underpaid by some asshole exactly like myself!!!”
I have worked for small businesses before and I cannot tell you how many tried to not pay me.
Like one of them I had to call the boss almost every pay day and he was always like “Teehee oopsie I forgot to pay you, promise I’ll add it to next weeks pay.”
The only places I’ve ever known my friends and family to have their pay stolen outright are the petit demagogues of “small business”.
The big corps will lie, cheat, and steal your labour too, but they’re at least smart enough to to dilute the moral and ethical decisions through bureaucracy; petit bouge will scalp you for the thrill of it and say it’s because they’re performing some charitable service to humanity.
I work for a large corp that lost a class action lawsuit for wage theft. They were found to be getting people to work during their breaks. I got mailed a check for over a grand as did thousands of others.
lmao as if you can just miss a week’s pay and be able to exist still. or tell whatever bills are due “my boss forgot to pay me. i work for a small business. you guys have exceptions for people like that right??”
Not only do I hate small businesses as much as big ones, I actually hate them more than big ones.
Big businesses don’t try in super petty ways to break the law to steal my money. By and large big businesses are operated by huge numbers of people each of which has very little stake in the outcome, and so they aren’t trying super hard to screw you personally. They make their profits on economies of scale.
Small businesses have a couple of people who will benefit immensely, like 1 to 1, if they screw you over. Every dollar they can avoid paying you is a dollar in their pocket instead. They make their profits on the margin of “How much can I exploit my workforce”
This goes double for landlords. Corporate landlords suck but they hire staff who just have jobs to do. The maintenance guy at the corporate apartment complex doesn’t have to pay out of pocket to replace your washing machine, he just orders a new one from their existing supplier, and replaces it in a few days. The mom and pop slumlord dodges your texts for days, then tries to fix it themself, then calls a guy out to look at it, and then eventually replaces it while whining to you the whole time about how expensive it is.
In the US at least, large corporations are also at least theoretically beholden to the small number of (admittedly anemic) labor and safety regulations we have. Small businesses are often just straight up exempt, and so can get away with being dangerous hellholes for employees to work in without really any meaningful recourse. If you work on a large corporate farm, for instance, there are a huge number of safety regulations surrounding how you interact with grain silos. Output chutes are required to have lockouts for when people enter the silo, it’s mandatory to have safety equipment on-site, the silos have to be designed with escape mechanisms, and so on. If you’re just a
kulaksmol bean family farmer, though, you can send your 12 year old kid in to “walk down the grain” without even closing the output chute, and it’s totally legal. Guess where the vast majority of grain entrapment injuries and deaths happen.One of the things that really made me sour on small businesses was a local coffee i shop i worked at 10 years ago or whatever. It had a great local reputation, wasnt huge, in fact it was REALLY damn small, but people loved it. Been in the same spot for 40 years, maybe 50 now.
The kid (grandkid?) worked there with me when I was working. We both made hardly anything, and the place didnt accept credit card tips, only cash, so we were lucky to get $5 a person at the end of the shift.
One day I asked the owners relative when the last time people had gotten a raise was, and he legit had no idea.
Really rubbed me the wrong way.
Big businesses don’t try in super petty ways to break the law to steal my money
They usually bend the law in very specifically planned ways to try and steal small amounts of lots and lots of people’s money. Less so the petty shit.
Walmart isn’t just going in and changing people’s submitted hours, Dino Ravioli who owns a shithole restaurant in small town central Florida is.
Except Walmart and similar big corpos are very frequently fucking over workers and not paying their worked hours. To take Walmart as an example, they only recently settled a 2.5 million dollar lawsuit for doing exactly that.
Claiming that big companies aren’t regularly and openly doing wage theft is quite a wild claim to see here.
Amazon makes warehouse workers do up to 30 minutes of unpaid checkout procedure to make sure they aren’t shoplifting. Wells Fargo gave unachiviable account opening goals on its bankers pressuring them into making fake accounts. Various banks applied over draft charges largest to smallest to optimize the amount of overdraft fees. Johnson and Johnson lied about OxyContin being a safe non addictive pain killer and basically started the opioid crisis in America. This is just a small sampling of big business crimes. The evil might not have the personal touch but it is greater.
Small businesses are still bourgeoisie it’s just that libs give them a pass for whatever reason
they’re like the bourgeoisie but, little…
cute little burgers.
They can’t imagine themselves as a billionaire, but can imagine themselves as a millionaire who treats their “local business” like their own personal fiefdom.
Because liberalism is the ideology of capitalism?
Small business owners can exploit a little labour, as a treat
Was talking to my white coworker and said id never visit Hawaii because of how detrimental tourism is to the indigenous Hawaiians and they literally tell people not to visit Hawaii in solidarity and my coworker says “you can still go, just support local businesses” like that undoes colonization or changes that there isnt enough water there to sustain the population.
Same coworker also had a temper tantrum and then used white tears on me when I said buying stolen land in the US is still part of colonization like it is in Gaza
yeah and something tells me a lot of those local businesses aren’t owned by native hawaiians
And even if they were the comprador/petite bourgeoisie are less affected by the occupation of Hawaii than the poor indigenous Hawaiians, of which there are way more
I see people selling things like diapers and laundry soap on the sidewalk sometimes, the stuff seems like it might be shoplifted and it’s super cheap, that’s a type of small business I could potentially support.
The price of baby necessities is outrageous, I support all those bootlegging baby items. Its also an indictment on Amerikkka that in most stores you go into, those items are completely locked up.
hell yeah, either lifted from a store or they work at a distributor and lifted it there. i support that too.
“pwease hewp me keep my widdle business afwoat” says the scum that jack up prices during a crisis
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after the revolution nothing would give me greater joy than being the official people’s executioner of the petty bourgeoisie. literally some of the worst people who’ve ever lived
“wait please!!! i was the backbone of this country’s economy!!! i underemployed 3 peop—”
Theoretically I understand the desire to have places that have texture and aesthetic that separate themselves from the Walmart’s of the world. It would prevent the place from looking like parking lots and big box stores.
But I think the reality of urban design lends itself to the same urban sprawl with a bunch of price gouged bullshit in little post-mall outlets in a shopping center. Each one is looking to get you to pay a 40% mark up+tip over the grocery store price to justify their exorbitant rent, franchise royalties, and personal salaries in exchange for aesthetic. That and the “competitive” wages their employees earn (if they remember to pay them) make it loud and clear that the small business owner is doing nothing but trying to profit off the community and it rings as hollow as can be when they ask for special consideration over the regional manager of a McDonald’s (who themselves is a franchise owner of some such infamy).
If the small business were somehow transcendental to rent and franchising fees, offering cheaper prices for staple goods, they’d be the kind of place you want to keep around. Like when I traveled abroad and eating at a restaurant was cheaper than what I pay in grocery store prices, I would have wanted those people to be successful and happy. It makes me angry to think that the person trying to get 10% over their investment wants to occupy the same space in my heart as the woman whose face lit up when I tipped her (not a tipping culture) the equivalent to ~$20
When I think through it I land on small business could be good if it prevented the power big business gets from economy of scale but after that is there it is just preventing you from benefiting from scale. At best a symbolic act of resistance
I think, in an ideal world, the small business would synthesize the benefit of an economy of scale into a good or service. If they would buy food wholesale, cook it, (and refrigerate it) and give it to me in a recyclable box for a few bucks so I don’t have to do dishes or cook then I’d be really happy. But it has to be some big production with atmosphere and shit instead. Meanwhile the at scale things are filled with corn syrup and sawdust to the point it’s bullshit.
No capitalism in an ideal world
Well, of course. I guess I was thinking that, in general, an economy of scale exists for production. If you’re gonna feed people I kind of hope it works like taking raw ingredients and making less flashy things, even in a cafeteria right next to where production happens
That’s really down to city planning/zoning. Hypermarkets can be built without large parking lots too.
i get it and honestly if i have a choice im picking small business over big business just because one of them is locally evil where as the other is globally evil. but i still say fuck em
Theoretically I understand the desire to have places that have texture and aesthetic that separate themselves
Cool, let’s socialize that then. Neighborhood councils get to decide about what kind of businesses they want around and get money from the state to use as capital to either start for themselves or to be started by someone else, in either case the person working in the business earning a wage from the state for their job, and their position there being conditional to the democratic desire of the community. Not only in a “vote with your wallet” way, but also in a “we collectively decided we need two more cafes and we don’t need these two clothing stores” way.
Lol, it is -23 and all businesses are still open, which is itself a kind of cruelty.
If you’re going to run a tiny business and hire people why not just make it a co op or something? I know the answer is money but the idea of raking in cash and paying say a barista minimum wage because I’m a small business OwO sounds soul crushing. I’d rather be in it together with people in our shop as opposed to paying people to work my shop.
most of them have no souls. that’s why they’ll be able to make all this money off their staff, not even pay them enough to have healthcare and then give them this “we’re a family”, “we’re all friends here” shit. i can’t imagine doing that. it’s soul-less behavior for sure. i wouldn’t even steal a pokemon card from my friend or a family member. imagine hyper exploiting one and overworking them then telling them you care about them.
I’m not even sure what supporting small businesses is really supposed to mean. If I like a small business I will go there but than I wouldn’t think of my patronage as activism, it’s just me having a good time.
Is this an America thing? Or like a big city thing maybe? A good majority my local businesses are run by very caring people who really give a shit. Yeah they’re out to make money. And as always, there’s a range of types, but overall they are way better.
The cafe owner down the road literally opens once a month just to give free food and coffee to people who want to be warm and eat stuff but can’t afford it. (In fact, two local cafes do this). The convenience store round the corner is run by a workers’ cooperative, it donates a good percentage of their stuff to an open food larder so that anyone can come and get free food without even having to ask. The restaurant gives out their car park so the town can do a bonfire there and the local school can use their land for events. A tourist driving through town crashed their car, and the mechanics on the other side of town came over, fixed him up, and sent him on his way, all for free. Many local places know the local people, and give them discounts or free goods solely on the knowledge that said people are hard up for cash. These places pay decent wages, have flexible working, whatever the fuck basic concessions.
Yeah, materially, the petit bourgeois have conflicting interests, and I’m never going to support them over the workers themselves. But I will quite happily make effort to support my local businesses over the large ones, because they do indeed give a shit, extract less surplus value (though absolutely, still extract it), help local communities and provide for people in need, while the large companies do none of those things.
I’m guessing other people here have had a very different experience, but in my life, my locals will absolutely get my ‘critical support’.
I do try to help local businesses over big ones as a personal rule, but if the local one openly sucks or is openly MAGA, which a lot in my area are, then they’ve lost the priority of my business.
If they’re openly kind, I will go out of my way to go there more often, though.
Oh yeah, 100% agreed, not all of 'em are worthy of support.
i live in america where small businesses are venerated by the government and media while they pay their employees starvation wages, using “we’re just a small business” as an excuse while they take vacations and live this wealthy person’s lifestyle. because they’re apparently more entitled to that than their employees are to healthcare or a house. i can only speak from an american perspective, tho i did live over in europe for a few years i can’t say i know enough to comment on this subject. there are good small businesses but it’ll be like one out of every 5000 or some shit. almost none of them.
