Comment by charlieyu1
9 hours ago
Is it actually a bad thing? From Asia I definitely see so much shady business practices from small businesses. Customer protection is non-existent. Keeping small businesses in drive prices down, but also drive wages down. I don’t think this is a compromise that many people would be happy with.
You're right, and this is also why we should only allow accomplished piano players to play the piano.
Small businesses result in innovation. There is little innovation from big business whose entire mission becomes profit maximization once sufficiently large enough. The little guys are that ones that come with new ideas and move fast to grow it. This is the entire story of startups in the US, silicon valley and more.
Big business also drives down wages way more than small businesses. When you are one of the few major employers in an industry, there is zero need to pay more while sucking in profit. Sure, maybe you could get an union involved but you are still subservient to the same employer who no longer has to respond to any labor market pressure other than quelling the union once in awhile.
I am from Europe and I think this complaint is misplaced. Europe is currently speeding towards neo-liberalism at lightspeed and shows no sign of slowing down. The beneficiaries are primarily the CEOs and big corporations. The workers are certainly not the ones benefiting from the status quo, especially if you look at the stripping down of consumer protection which is starting to look like completely absent in the continent. And on top of everything you have mass austerity, stripping away any social safety net.
However I do not see favoring smaller entrepreneurs over the status quo as something which will improve matters at all. It feels saying our problem is that we have the wrong capitalists. We just need to swap out our old capitalists, get new ones in, and hand them the exploited wealth, and then everything will be good.
What Europe needs is a focus on workers. Enough with capitalism already.
Is europe liberalizing its labor laws at light speed?
I wouldn’t say so. Labor laws are still strong in the continent (at least in the more unionized parts of the continent), though salaries are very stagnant and not keeping up with the mountain rise in the cost of living.
Unions are still strong, but they have been focusing less and less on consumer protection, there are still some victories, like increased holiday/sick pay, parental leave, and gender equality. But compared to the rapid loss of consumer protection, these victories are coming to few and to far apart.
Workers need businesses or their is no work. Favouring smaller enterprenuers get more workers.
Businesses need workers a lot more then workers need businesses. And Europes whole deal is to shift this power imbalance in favor of the the businesses. This has to stop.