Schmenterprise

The entrepreneur has a place in a capitalist society.  That place is to make things or supply services that would otherwise be time-consuming, expensive and, in this day and age, ridiculous for others to produce or perform themselves.  It's perfectly legitimate and in my experience a generally fine function.

It has downsides.  As one who has no intention of learning how to hunt, cultivate, sew, cobble, or set bone breaks, I acknowledge that I am at the mercy of the tastes and standards of strangers for my wants and needs, and it's a weird fact that I have higher standards than that.  It's just not a priority of mine to live up to them.

Being able to afford a stranger's idea of what I should eat and wear has also forced me into a lifetime of prostitution.

Nevertheless, I recognize that while the profit motive cannot be overlooked as a major weakener of standards in the marketplace of goods and services, it is also a primary reason that entrepreneurs exist; that I can therefore afford to take advantage of their offerings; and that I can spend the abundant leisure time I have crafting moan sessions about entrepreneurs to a great extent because I don't have to spend it harvesting beets or mending wagon spokes.

I like entrepreneurs.  I like what they do for a living.  I like that I don't have to do it.  They deserve a nice firm handshake and a pat on the back for it.  The problem is, my patronage and general gratitude just isn't enough for some of them.  A lot of them actually.

No, they want to cram down my throat that they are the dreamers and doers, the engine, fuel and drivers of civilization, the best of the best, doing god's work.  To this I say, just give me your 3-pack of Malaysian-made underpants and shut the hell up.

We all need a little boost of the ego from time to time.  But consider the size of the average corporation's public relations budget. Now compare it to your own.  Is it just me or is this self-aggrandizement more than a little needy?

And what exactly is the need?  They own everything. But because they own everything, maybe you will give them exactly what they want for what you need.  The more you need it, the more they want to exact from you in exchange for it.  If you don't want it, they have spent tidy sums on the science of making you dream of it.  If rather than want a thing, you truly need it, someone among their class has bought it all up and made damn sure you will bleed for it.

On deep consideration, I think the need is nothing less than self-preservation.  Getting its preferred associations about itself into your head before you've had a chance to think anything about it is the corporation's way of increasing the odds that you and your fellow ovines will not formulate your own opinions, because those opinions, will inevitably lead to a desire to restore balance-- possibly through persuasion and open discussion; but possibly through any means necessary.  Because contrary to the corporate propaganda about corporations, the more you think of them, the less you think of them.

I see a 2 step process to restoring a modicum of justice for our subjection at the hands of the entrepreneurs.  First, we have to make being among the consumers and their comrades the under-consumers a very very uncomfortable place for the Entrepreneurs to be.  Let them be the masters of their own world but trembling doofuses in ours.  We have to learn to respond reflexively precisely in a manner befitting those whose status has been imposed upon them by treachery and trickery and force toward subjugators who for far too long have enjoyed ease and status on our backs.

Second, we have got to find a way to bring them into our midst.