Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Big business is differentiated from small business by its offloading of risk to public investors. The stock market is open to everyone, and as democratic as the proposition seems, where everyone has an equal chance to participate in the capitalist dream, in reality it results in a giant lottery where total novices are regularly fleeced by knowledgeable insiders. Big business has their investors and their employees at the complete mercy of management, and their shareholders are powerless, ripe for exploitation & abuse, exactly the kind of protections which governments are supposed to provide.

Owning a small business is the American dream. Fortunately, Americans are optimistic people because odds are their small business is in for tough times. Every politician talks about encouraging small business but almost no politicians know what they are talking about. Let me break the news to them: small businesses fail. Even the “successful” ones are failures if you divide the profit by the time, money & commitment the owners put into them. Most long-term profit that small business owners take when they retire is simply the accumulated cash value of the tens of thousands of unpaid hours sunk into the business over decades of unrewarded labor. My favorite small business saying is, "I only make a buck an hour but I make up for it in hours.”

Ultimately, government has little place in small business, but it is definitely needed to provide protection of stockholders and workers in big business.