The almost universal worshipping of small business reveals how far we’re infected by the terrible American…

The almost universal worshipping of small business reveals how far we’re infected by the terrible American disease of iconoclastic hatred of anything institutional. All sides of politics worship small business. It’s a terrible mistake. /1 https://t.co/fBMublMdP8 https://t.co/1KOa8PWA6f

There’s a political origin to this worship. Again mostly driven by US culture, which sees small business as the purest form of entrepreneurial American Dream. The nonsense about heroic success through personal hard work. Almost 70% of small businesses fail inside 5 years. /2

Not only because they’re badly run (though there’s that too), but because the whole stupid idea ignores the most basic fact of social life. Economies of scale. The thing US culture was set up in direct opposition to. That ‘many hands make light work’. /3

The origins of modern America, as exiles from Europe determined to avoid the ‘tyranny’ of ‘elites’ ever supposedly persecuting the exiled again, led to most of the train wreck we see in the US today. The entire nation was set up in hostility towards collective organisation. /4

There’s not one problem America faces that it doesn’t see the smashing of some collective institution as the solution to. That’s the DNA of the entire culture. That’s the theme of every Western movie, a cultural bedrock. ‘Power to the people!’ echoes down the ages. /5

The people and their guns. Both Democrats and Republicans converge upon this idiot idea of ‘the people’ running the country. The GOP slash and burn public institutions to ‘free’ the people. The Democrats try to mobilise ‘the people’ against the slashing and burning. /6

Seeing the common theme here? The shared framework? This idea of ‘the people’ is the pathogen the US has unleashed on the world. Now driven deep into almost every nation by the saturation coverage of social media. A technology developed to do just that. /7

‘We need to mobilise people here (social media) against enemy X’ etc. Hashtag them! Public policy entirely replaced by what’s ‘trending’. Fads and fashions, shaped by influencers. The people is not and never will be an actual thing. It’s a fiction. /8

I oppose it to the idea of a public, which is real, but entirely different. The public is an administrative construct, it’s a continuous calculation of collective need, by dreaded bureaucrats. No group of people, of any size, acts in the way we say ‘the people’ do. /9

Humans never act as a group. It’s not even physically or logistically possible. Every time you see a group of people acting in seeming unison, that unison was led into existence. By about 5% of the group. Humans form imitative status hierarchies. /10

Nothing enrages bedrock US culture more than the ‘government’. The ultimate tyranny, apparently. But really, as most other nations calmly know and get on with, just the ultimate economies of scale of social life. /11

Humans invented government to have easier, safer, more prosperous and healthier lives. Institutions emerge always for the same reason, to respond to crisis. Humans were sick of living in permanent crisis. Gang/tribal warfare. /12

So they invented government, as an overarching economies of scale for all human transactions. To make their lives much easier and better. Many hands make light work. Regulation is and always will be the only path to true freedom, for societies. /13

Ironically, America is also home to some of the largest institutions in the world. Corporate behemoths. Because they see those as just small businesses that succeeded, against the elites. That’s fine, no tyranny there. /14

Except of course it’s an even worse tyranny, as anybody whose lives now depend on these corporate behemoths will tell you. Like the American health care system, or Silicon Valley, now dominating US politics and the world. Privatised government, really. Hopeless. /15

Privatised feudal rule, without any of the checks and balances of actual feudal rule. No noblesse oblige. Just naked pillaging of a society. The world needs to rid itself of this cancerous idea that ‘me’ and ‘we’ are in opposition. /16

Humans organise collectively to have better *individual* lives. There’s no binary here. Economies of scale aren’t socialism or any form of -ism. They’re just logistics. The material well-being of societies doesn’t exist without them. /end