A life without big business

Financial results coming out from a range of companies since the start of the pandemic, show that big corporations have overwhelmingly been the winners and smaller companies have predominantly been the losers.

“big business stifles competition and innovation and diminishes providers of local services, creating monopolies and dependency”

Despite some local companies in residential areas reaping the rewards from people staying at home, by-and-large the government’s strategy for controlling the pandemic has played into the hands of larger companies that have sophisticated online offerings and will ultimately see the death of a large swathe of smaller operators.

But why should you or anyone else care?

Big business stifles competition and innovation and diminishes providers of local services, creating monopolies and dependency. They concentrate wealth in the hands of a few individuals and gradually turn all individuals into consumers rather than providers. They are predominantly interested only in profits for their owners and shareholders and their size allows them to lobby governments to manoeuvre policies to their own benefit, at the further cost of smaller operators.

In fact, governments have become so dependent on big business to prop up their GDP and its advisors are so disproportionally connected to big business, that it is now often multi-national companies that decide on policies and not the people’s democratically elected representatives.

Big corporations are also the ones with sophisticated IT systems that keep data on people and use that data and behavioural science to manipulate users into buying things they don’t need. They concentrate their own purchasing into a narrower range of specific suppliers and have little interest in social good and little interest in the wellbeing of their customers.

Anyone who has owned a smaller business and tried to expand it knows that the first thing that is lost is personal care and empathy with customers. Big businesses invariably set up large impersonal customer care facilities (often in other countries) and gradually make it more difficult for disaffected customers to talk to human beings, especially ones that have any ability to satisfactorily deal with their frustrations or complaints.

Their staff turnover quickly and usually have less connection to the goals of the business or the customers who use it. In fact, they cease to exist as parts of a community and instead become parasites on it.

A globalised world run by globalised businesses leads to the same homogonous offerings in every town and city. It steamrollers over local culture and individual interests and becomes nothing but a utility with no personal characteristics.

Of course, big business offerings are often very predictable, safe and in many cases cheaper, but is that the kind of world people want to live in?

With governments all over the world implementing policies that support big business and with smaller businesses having no effective voice to counter them, there is no obvious sign of how the current march towards a fully globalised, corporate world can now be prevented.

But individuals who want to maintain a richer and more diversified society do at least have one weapon left in their armoury. In democracies, they are able to elect a government with different priorities. Unfortunately, all the existing parties that have been in government have successively shown little if any willingness to put their people first, so it is only by electing a completely new type of government with a completely different agenda that anything is likely to change (see our manifesto for a better world).

But whilst we wait for better leadership and a different direction there is also another way that individuals can go. They can join an autonomous, self-sufficient community where big business and centralised government have no part (see our project for autonomous communities).

An autonomous community might consist of around 200 properties with around 500-600 people in it, small enough to still be personal but big enough to adequately support a group of local suppliers.

It could have its own community builder and maintenance people; it could support a community farm and artisan producers of familiar, but better-quality food products. It could have its own independent school and learning centre. It could have its own health providers and IT people.

Such a community could have its own local economy with less need for large banks or insurance companies. It could have its communication network and produce its own sustainable power and water treatment.

In short, an autonomous, self-sufficient community would have little need for big business with all the trappings that this increasingly brings.

This is not a fanciful idea, with modern knowledge and techniques it is now perfectly possible and by dividing the set-up costs with all its residents, it would not necessarily be any more expensive than living anywhere else.

Avoiding big business on your own is now virtually impossible, but by joining an autonomous community it might be easier than you think.

If you would like to explore this idea further then see the other articles on our ‘autonomous community project’.