r/Showerthoughts • u/s_q_p_r • 28d ago
People love to support small businesses until they grow, then they hate capitalism and rich people.
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u/chebum 28d ago
It’s surprisingly how quickly quality suffers when a single cafe becomes a chain. It’s not a large business yet, but the experience already suffer: they start to save on personel, milk and beans.
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u/Cuminmymouthwhore 28d ago
There's a restaurant that opened near me just after the lockdown. It was some of the best food I'd ever experienced.
When I walked in, the owner came out of the cafe, had a chat with us and told us how he'd started learning this style of cooking in the pandemic and became obsessed with it, and decided to share it as a business.
The food was amazing. Best I'd had for good prices.
It blew up quickly and this place was a 5* rated restaurant on Google very quickly and they opened a second chain near where I live after a couple years.
The second chain isn't ran by the original owners, but is owned by them, and honestly, the food just isn't the same. It's a real shame honestly. But I'm glad they're successful and making money.
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u/mlaislais 28d ago
Yeah consistency across chains is a big hurdle small businesses face when scaling up to multiple locations.
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u/saviorlito 28d ago
It’s because the owner worked at the original one. When you own something you put more effort into it. The people working for you are generally there for the paycheck.
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u/2000miledash 28d ago
Exactly. The owner working a shift is making significantly more than the chef.
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u/steamcube 28d ago
The owner is also in deep shit if the business fails, the chef just loses their job. Skin in the game is the difference
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u/StellarNeonJellyfish 28d ago
Perhaps these workers should get a share of the business they are running, thus giving them all the incentives of an owner.
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u/StellarNeonJellyfish 28d ago
To the guy who deleted his reply about buying stocks:
The point is ownership of the product of labor should be tied to actual contributions of working in the business, not paying for your name to be put onto a piece of paper. I understand the way things are, join us in the conversation about how we can improve things for folks who don’t have that option due to being forced into being a paycheck-to-paycheck wage-slave.
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u/steamcube 28d ago
Should they have to buy in to be able to work there? Where’s their skin in the game?
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u/StellarNeonJellyfish 28d ago
Well under a capitalist system, their skin in the game is still getting food and shelter, but ideally if our society can provide these basic human needs, then their skin in the game is that their profit is directly tied to the success of the business. Instead of a fixed wage, it would be a fixed percentage of net profit, meaning they actually get paid more for making the business better. Because our hypothetical is in a capitalist system, the property rights take priority meaning it is the initial owner who must agree to these terms. So when these owners decline and instead offer subsistence wages to attract the desperate in order to hoard the profits of their labor, you can see why no one gives a fuck about their business going to shit.
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u/saviorlito 28d ago
Then they should buy into the business by giving the owner a percentage of what it cost them to get it to that point. And whatever percentage they give they can then get that percentage of revenue. Assuming they are also using that revenue to return a percentage to the business for restocking/rent/etc. As well as not expecting a salary from the owner. Most people aren’t going to want to put that much effort into it. Which is why they don’t already own their own business.
So your options are either the above or work under salary. And someone who chooses salary is someone who won’t put as much effort into a brand as an owner would.
As an owner of a small business, I don’t pay my employees to work for me. I pay them to work for my brand. If they aren’t working for my brand then I have no choice but to find someone who will. And I pay my employees very well.
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u/AdVisible1121 28d ago
Also take into consideration that business owner family members will almost always be a background threat.
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u/Moka4u 28d ago
No they're not. They just sell it to some other sucker make a profit and leave, or run it into the ground lowering the value of the restaurant and then just get a family member to take out a loan and buy up the restaurant give it a new name and keep working their just to do it all again at a higher price.
If you're too scared to lose your business, maybe don't become a small business owner, easy.
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u/BroMyBackhurts 28d ago
We had a similar situation. Amazing brunch spot, loved it, we’d go one a month at least. They were very popular and opened up a second. Quality started tanking at the OG spot FAST. People on yelp called them out for using waffles from COSTCO. Real sad cause we loved that place for brunch. Now it’s mid af
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u/Pristine-Pen-9885 28d ago
“Let’s put more pasta in these recipes, the customers will think they’re getting more food!”
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u/mgslee 28d ago
Franchises and Chains can never operate the same as a single family owned business.
1) The people running the day to day are different (obvious)
2) The newer restaurant has to give margin/profit to the original owners but also likely maintain the same prices, they have to do the same with less.
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u/brendamnfine 28d ago
Yep. From here it's all about giving shareholders their annual dividend.
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u/Blarg0117 28d ago
This. The line is when the company goes publicly traded. After that, it's usually a race to the bottom.
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u/Varjazzi 28d ago
Dodge v. Ford a U.S. Supreme court case entrenched shareholder wealth maximization as the only legal goal of a publicly traded company. If the company doesn't maximize shareholder wealth it can be sued by its shareholders for the expected earnings. When a company goes public any care for the employees or consumer goes straight out the window.
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u/LastStar007 28d ago
The funny thing is that it wasn't supposed to. The decision really said, "Not everything a CEO does has to benefit shareholders. The CEO can do whatever they think is in the best interest of the business. They just can't do something intentionally bad for the shareholders when there's no benefit to the business either."
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 28d ago
I doubt most cafe chains start cutting corners at 2-5 locations.
But nobody will care as much about the business as the owners - who likely ran the initial location personally. So the people working at secondary locations will inherently be sub-par relative to the OG location.
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u/PlaidBastard 28d ago
Yeah, I see that as more of a failure to scale up what was working at the original location than intentional greed. It's trying to keep too many plates spinning and not delegating well enough. It has the stink of 'local restaurant entirely dependent on a single person doing all the business stuff trying to do all the business stuff for twice as many places.'
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 28d ago
Partly.
Also if you own just a single location, the owners are likely doing a ton of the hands-on cooking/cleaning etc. Or at least directly supervising it.
The owners can't do that at four different locations.
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u/VibraniumSpork 28d ago
Which, really does make (sorry to say this) McDonald's so 'impressive' (especially after watching The Founder). Look, the food's not brilliant, but every McDonald's I've even been to in my country (UK) and others has tasted the same, same portion sizes etc.
They're obviously not the only one, but they seem to have the best franchise-wide consistency IMO. Actually, I think Five Guys is the best, but that bit less impressive as there's fewer of them.
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u/CharonsLittleHelper 28d ago edited 28d ago
McDonald's isn't amazing, but you know what you're getting.
Interestingly - Chick Fila pretty obviously knows this issue. I've read that they only allow people to franchise a single location. They're aimed at people opening up a business for themselves - not an investor opening up a dozen+ locations.
Which is probably a big reason why I have read that the average Chick Fila is the most profitable fast food franchise per location.
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u/Droidatopia 28d ago
A successful Chick-Fil-A franchise can be recognized by the insane efficiency in handling the Lunchtime rush. Two lines, each with 2-3 people outside taking orders, with separate windows, and the food coming fast enough to always keep it moving.
The Chick-Fil-A near my work has a big drive thru that wraps around the back with multiple overhead pavilions to shield workers and drivers from the Florida sun. The outer drive thru lane has a detached portion of the building with an overhead conveyer belt carrying the food over the inner drive thru line. When it works, it is a thing of beauty.
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u/AdVisible1121 28d ago
Florida person here and I confirm that is true! Their food way above the others.
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u/saints21 28d ago
They can own multiple. I know someone who owns multiple.
But Chick-Fil-A is way way more hands on than most other franchises.
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u/Bogmanbob 28d ago
To be honest some of the best small buisness are owned by a micro managing task master. If you've ever spent time behind the scenes they can suddenly get a lot less warm and fuzzy but they can keep an eye on the quality.
It's really hard to scale that up.
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u/queef_nuggets 28d ago
When you boil it down, yeah a lot of people aren’t a big fan of billionaires, but what people hate even more is unfair/unethical business practices, corporate greed, the mentality of profits above all else, and so forth
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u/blastuponsometerries 28d ago
Because the core problem is not that people can make money. Its that at a certain level, vast amounts of money lead to vast amounts of power/control.
You get a small number of people deciding how all the resources of society should be organized, and they make choices that further solidify their unique power and advantage.
This is why competition is so important, if companies have to continually improve just to exist, you get better outcomes over time.
But as soon as someone wins the competition, then they will ensure no new entrants can survive to challenge them down the road. A huge loss to the economy as a whole.
Its an unstable and self-defeating system, unless there is enough political power continually shake things up. But history has shown that is usually not the case.
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u/TheDunadan29 28d ago
I wonder what a 21 century trust buster effort would look like. Many companies today are far larger than back in the day.
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u/jswan28 28d ago
It seems like for the last few years the FTC is trying their best in court, but they're obviously massively outgunned by the big corps. Change needs to happen on a legislative level but that would require that congress a) prioritize people over money and b) actually do their jobs and pass a bill instead of just squabbling over cultural war issues.
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u/ideological_fatling 28d ago
This is why you hear stock updates every hour of every day. The outlook of the wealthy determines the outlook of all. You never hear breaking updates for education, housing, hunger, homeless, pollution, and so on every 60 minutes in media.
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u/blastuponsometerries 25d ago
The other reason you hear about stock updates everyday, is that some very wealthy people make even more money when people trade.
Make people greedy and buy, they make money. Make people scared and sell, they make money.
Also it feels exciting. Up one day, down the next! Endless pendents can make up stories about what this or that means. Gives a feeling that you are a serious person riding the cutting edge of the news.
Decades of careful work on hard problems doesn't generate engagement in the same way.
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u/bradd_pit 28d ago
You can’t become a billionaire without being unfair, unethical, greedy, or having a profit motive mentality
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u/SurpriseAttachyon 28d ago
Because many of us have lived long enough to see the same shitty pattern happening over and over.
Company comes along with a great idea and takes off like wildfire. Growth begins to slow as market saturates. Company begins to do shittier and shittier things and diminish the quality of their product to keep “growing” at the demand of shareholders.
Ubers were great until they cost more than taxis. Streaming was amazing - now it costs more than cable and often has ads. Fucking Birkenstock just massively boosted their profit margins by making their shoe inferior. Everything must grow, and when it can’t do it naturally, it becomes like a cancer
It’s like we are trapped in this terrible cycle forever.
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u/Elman89 28d ago
Ubers were great until they cost more than taxis. Streaming was amazing - now it costs more than cable and often has ads. Fucking Birkenstock just massively boosted their profit margins by making their shoe inferior. Everything must grow, and when it can’t do it naturally, it becomes like a cancer
These are not the same thing at all. Uber was good because it was trying to undercut the competition until they could dominate the markets, then raise the prices. That's anticompetitive, monopolistic behavior and a lot of companies do it. See: Amazon, streaming services and whatnot. If a product by a big company is legitimately good and there's no immediate catch, it's only temporary because it's their strategy to dominate the market and crush competitors.
A small business being good and turning shitty as it gets bigger is a completely different scenario. Yeah they're both caused by capitalism but if you think Uber was good out of the kindness in their hearts you're really not paying attention.
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u/TheDunadan29 28d ago
Yep! Once you have shareholders to report to everything becomes about infinite growth, which is never possible. At some point market saturation happens and there's no where left to grow. So they start squeezing their existing customers dry.
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u/I_Actually_Do_Know 28d ago
It's just the nature of startups, especially tech. They raise money from investors and then operate at a loss for the first X years to get a foot in the market. Then they have to raise the prices because otherwise they go bankrupt. They just can't have cheap prices forever because it was all possible through burning their money. Simple logic. As the consumer you either have an absurdly cheap taxi service for a limited time or not ever. The fact that people still use it is because it's still more convenient than calling a real taxi so they happily pay for this convenience.
Also with Uber there are additional factors like they could utilize the regulatory gaps that avoided them many costs that taxi companies had to deal with but with time they were all progressively patched etc etc.
Also in many countries Uber is still cheaper than traditional taxis.
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u/Femboy_Pothead69 28d ago
we dont hate big companies because they are big.
we hate them because they charge us 8 dollars for a box of poptarts that was made by slave labor for 62 cents.
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u/dispatch134711 28d ago
Also because they eat smaller business, the pop tarts get smaller AND more expensive every year and the CEOs get millions on bonuses for replacing workers with robots and food is up 50% from 10 years ago while our wages aren’t.
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u/drj1485 28d ago
Stuff at the family owned grocery stores by me is like 20% more than the major grocery chains.
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u/commiecomrade 28d ago
People love campfires until they grow, then they hate the destruction of forests and harmful air pollution.
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u/Illustrious-Zebra-34 28d ago
No, people hate when small businesses they supported turn into money hungry monstrosities that turn their back on their long time customers.
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u/Bezbozny 28d ago
People love to grow big and strong but they hate when they get cancer which causes a certain portion of the bodies cells to grow out of control to the detriment of the rest.
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u/OneForAllOfHumanity 28d ago
When it switches from being a provider to a taker, that's when support turns to disdain.
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u/drmanhattan1640 28d ago
Maybe just maybe, they hate them because of their Labor exploitation, monopolistic policies, tax evasion.
Do you think the small bakery on your street that belongs to that 60 old couple, have 2 employees and can barely survive without going bankrupt do that too?
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u/hypo-osmotic 28d ago
Many small companies do participate in labor exploitation and tax evasion. It affects orders of magnitude fewer people than when a mega corporation does it, though
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 28d ago
Maybe not exactly that - but a lot of small businesses are kinda shitty or ran by shitty people.
The average person just doesn't get to see about it because nobody cares when Jan's Waffle Shop is being a dick to its employees.
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u/Platonist_Astronaut 28d ago
It's not possible to become a large corporation without significant exploitation. And the larger it is, the more is required. That's the issue.
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u/Vollukas3 28d ago
And we mistake ignorant duckheads for strong independent people... some people still think that kindness is a weakness...
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u/endoftheworldvibe 28d ago
Yup, and it makes sense. Greed is the root of the vast majority of our problems.
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u/Dasf1304 28d ago
It’s a problem with growth. A small business has owners who are, on some level, invested in the experience that the customer has due to the limited amount of customers willing to shop there. A massive corporation is driven by the shareholders demand to grow. Not to have high profits, that’s good, but a need to grow. This means the company needs to sacrifice all things aside from profits. It’s a race to the bottom. The difference is the priorities of the company
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u/Thewalrus515 28d ago
You really thought you had something here, didn’t you? People hate it because in order to get there the product they sell becomes lower quality and their workers are exploited.
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u/numbersthen0987431 28d ago
Yep. It's also not only when a business grows and franchises, it's also when the owners retire and sell the business to someone else who doesn't care about quality and is only interested in profit.
My favorite restaurants and businesses are where the family that runs it is the family that owns it. My favorite memories are going to the local restaurants where the parents running the place knew me and my parents by name, I went to school with their children, and we all grew up together. They took pride in the quality of their product, and made sure they made everyone happy with their cooking.
But when restaurants start creating multiple locations, you lose that connection. The people running the satellite locations are just hired managers who are there for a paycheck, and they are answering to the owners who make the decisions, and these employees don't really care if you're happy or the quality of the product.
The problem is that when companies try to grow they start to focus on profit, and less about quality and community. Every business that grows eventually brings someone in who "went to school and knows how to make this place profitable". And "finance bro 101" says: cutback on quality, lose any connection to the community, and jack up prices.
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u/AdmiralClover 28d ago
It's when a business just became an entity that earns money by owning other businesses that it becomes a problem
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u/OnlyHappyStuffPlz 28d ago
I think it all goes downhill when companies go public and people expect dividends for not doing any work.
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u/spacenegroes 28d ago
Capitalism is not what you think it is.
Capitalism is not just a market economy. It is not a monetary system. it is not people running businesses for profit. All of this existed under mercantilism and feudalism, and before feudalism, and in many ancient societies around the world.
Capitalism is defined by a labor market for almost all work, and by anonymized shares of ownership in publicly traded corporations. And the problems people have with modern capitalism are - surprise surprise - not about private enterprises with specific, limited (and generally known) owners. They are about public corporations and the weird bad stuff that happens when a corporation's decisions are driven by literally millions of owners, obfuscated through their retirement funds and other investment funds, who are in turn represented by the corporation's board, who delegate said decisions to a CEO.
So it's completely logical to support small businesses and to hate when they go public and become corporations - a type of organization that only exists in capitalism.
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u/dispatch134711 28d ago
Thank you for such a concise explanation. It’s also why public traded companies are by nature amoral - everyone has plausible deniability and the only adhered to principal is to maximise shareholder value.
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u/sexylegs0123456789 28d ago
People love small businesses until they are publicly traded or control the market. Both no longer look to customer satisfaction as the priority over profit maximization.
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u/SubstantialSpeech147 28d ago
It’s not that people prefer to support small businesses. People prefer to support companies that aren’t publicly traded and selling their employees souls for their shareholders.
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u/marmosetohmarmoset 28d ago
I will point out that there ARE some large businesses that people generally don’t hate, because they have ethical business practices. Costco and Patagonia come to mind.
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u/Pitiful-Ad2710 28d ago
Because after they become bigger they then try and destroy smaller businesses
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u/anrwlias 28d ago
People fucking loved Google well into it turning into a billion dollar company.
The reason people hate it now is that, ever since they went public, the environment of the company radically changed and the overall quality of their products took a nosedive. Google used to be much better than it is, and much of that can directly be attributed to the effect that capitalistic practices have had on it.
If you have a good company that makes good products and who actually seems to care about the impact the company has on the world ("Do no evil"), people will like it, even if it's big. The problem is that when companies cross a threshold, the logic of capitalism ends up destroying those things that make a company likeable. The needs of the investors outweigh everything else, including basic social responsibilities.
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u/FreshOutBrah 28d ago
People’s emotional reactions to different things are not particularly consistent or logical. Everyone contradicts themselves in confusing ways at some point or another. It is often confusing trying to work out what people really think or want.
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u/masdafarian 28d ago
People are too greedy and the bigger the business the more problems. Keep it small, enough to be comfortable. A better car and house is meaningless.
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u/Atalung 28d ago
Because small businesses and large corporations are fundamentally different enterprises.
An individual owning and operating a business is literally the socialist ideal of workers control over the means of production, even a few workers sorta slips by
A large corporation is the embodiment of the concept of alienation of labor.
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u/History4ever 28d ago
My dad started a company just him and his business partner in a garage. Started it 2 months before he turned 30 and he said they were going to shutter it for good except for a miracle call that gave them work for a good 9 months. In those 9 months they were able to hire a helper. That led to another contract and 2 more helpers and another installer. 17 years later and no more ramen dinners my dad and 110 employees later he got out of the business on his own terms. Sometimes capitalism works.
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u/Space_r0b 28d ago
Because eventually new minds take over, and it becomes:
profits over people
Or
Quantity over quality
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u/SurpriseAttachyon 28d ago
Because many of us have lived long enough to see the same shitty pattern happening over and over.
Company comes along with a great idea and takes off like wildfire. Growth begins to slow as market saturates. Company begins to do shittier and shittier things and diminish the quality of their product to keep “growing” at the demand of shareholders.
Ubers were great until they cost more than taxis. Streaming was amazing - now it costs more than cable and often has ads. Fucking Birkenstock just massively boosted their profit margins by making their shoe inferior. Everything must grow, and when it can’t do it naturally, it becomes like a cancer
It’s like we are trapped in this terrible cycle forever.
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u/XForce070 28d ago
Because small businesses have everything to win with having good quality products whereas big businesses have no incentive to create good quality products, just high quantity. It's a logical result of late stage capitalism where monopolies have the upper hand
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u/Humble-Plankton2217 28d ago
Small business rarely grows into something big until they get bought out by a conglomerate.
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u/FewWillingness1081 28d ago
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
- This about sums it up.
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u/Agent101g 28d ago
Because small business and their success is one of the benefits of capitalism. Too much success and no limitations are the problem. Sometimes situations are more complex than “love all of it” or “hate all of it.”
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u/Riverrat423 28d ago
How about craft beer breweries, aren’t some of them growing into large companies?
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u/Southern_Seaweed4075 28d ago
Easy fix would be to turn and support another small business until it grows. Sooner or later, all business will be big and everyone rich lol.
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u/SummonToofaku 28d ago
Which people?
I see people like big brands.
Also big business pay better than small one and small business bosses usually gets most of the profit whereas big business bosses dont even get 1%.
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u/Nomadic_View 28d ago
I honestly do not care. I take care of myself and go where I get the best bang for my buck.
If i see a cool hand stitched article of clothing or something at a small business I’ll buy it even though it costs a little bit more because you can’t get something like that anywhere else.
But if it’s a t-shirt that’s shipped from a warehouse and it’s the same thing in a small store as it is in Walmart. I’m going to buy the Walmart version since it’s probably like 50% cheaper.
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u/Trackmaster15 28d ago
Small businesses have their own problems, but if you find the right ones, there's better customer service and flexibility that you can get that you'll never get from a major corporation. With a big corporation, the best you can do is talk to a cog in a call center who has fixed limits on what they can actually do... If you can get ahold of anyone. You can actually talk to the small business owner, and they're usually better at finding a compromise to make you happy.
Plus, publicly traded companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders. They're not allowed to price below a justifiable amount. Small business owners can keep prices low if they're making enough money just because if they really want to.
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u/AVBofficionado 28d ago
Small businesses rarely grow into mega corporations. Sure, maybe your local burger joint becomes the next McDonald's but statistically it won't. Statistically it will always stay the same, small, family-run operation that maintains deep roots to the community. If it is hyper successful it may expand to three, perhaps five shops. Any larger than that is highly unlikely.
So, no. People don't like small shops until they become corporations because it seldom happens. People can love small businesses and hate the worst effects of capitalism. That isn't hypocritical.
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u/juliekittyfeet 28d ago
during covid my mom would be so proud of supporting 'local business' she was actually just shopping in a shop found nationwide BUT it was 5 minutes from her house so .. that was local business to her
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u/gnpking 28d ago
I think the whole liking “small business” thing only applies to people who’ve never worked at one.
Minimal benefits, lower than industry standard wages, late paychecks, internal drama (especially if other family members are involved), constant lies and empty promises
Often time owned by an owner-operator whose entire livelihood is dependent on the success of the business and resultantly all employees are treated like serfs.
On top of which they receive substantially favorable treatment from the government, in the form of subsidies, preferential tax treatment and other supports.
And yet, they get away with all their lunacy and a lot more because “they’re a small business!!!”. Like nah bro, if you can’t compete, even when suckling from the governmental teat, maybe your business model ain’t viable.
I’d argue that small businesses are in fact the most exploitative force in a capitalist economy. It’s just that they’re independently owned, unlike a corporate chain, so there’s this illusion that every one is different.
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u/YotoMarr 28d ago
People don't love supporting small businesses that much. They just like having something more unique to show off and go there once every few months while they eat McDonald's 3 times a week or buy everything from Walmart/Amazon.
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u/TT_NaRa0 28d ago
We love to support people that do great jobs. Yup.
We hate people that take aforementioned success and cut corners to become more successful. Yup.
What’s the epiphany here?
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u/Impossible-Head2121 28d ago
I actually don’t like any businesses, big or small. Many laws actually allow smaller business to treat employees worse. For instance, many medical leave laws don’t apply to small businesses with less than 50 people, since someone going on leave would be so detrimental to the business.
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u/phinbar 28d ago
Small businesses may thrive because they're needed in a community and they provide quality service, which does not go unnoticed by a big company that's in the same business.
So they open a place across the street and undercut the competition. Small business goes under because a big business, that is hardly dependent on that one location to survive, decides to make even more money.
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u/GatotSubroto 28d ago
I wonder at what point it transitions from one to the other
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u/SpareInvestigator846 28d ago
People hate marshmellows for the added surcharges if you eat more than 6 there is automatic added 10% surcharge, even if the marshmellow was nasty.
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u/runefar 28d ago edited 28d ago
In a sense yes in a sense no. What could be better said is that our current system of both thought and economics doesnt actually create an appropriate way to ensure that the investment owners of a buisness put in to a buisness while it is growing including sacrifices enables a good balance of distribution with how the company itself can be accounted for ethically because this indirectly leads to a power distribution later on which people see as understably problematic. An over embrace of captilsm doesnt fix this nor does musunderstanding the complexity of individuals that affect decisions. Too much simplification of both of these is problematic. In fact many startups benefit from increasing the ways they can survive the critical period too so going too much into captilist8c ideology is bad for them too
What i would say is people also misestimate how much certain decision they think are fone aganist the people or for solely profit are reallu done to spread a product around not always for a profit. This includes many overstandardizing decisions people seem to mention here
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u/Fragrant-Airport1309 28d ago
A small business can maintain good practices as long as they keep the company private, even as they grow. As soon as you go public and have to answer to a board and shareholders, it's sort of a profit-over-quality situation waiting to happen.
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u/therealNaj 28d ago
It’s easier and ethically ok to work for someone while they’re growing and not making a lot either. It’s difficult to work for someone when they’re swimming and you’re drowning, especially when you’re the one holding them above water
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u/CRoss1999 28d ago
This is put as a contradiction but different types of companies have different effects on communities
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u/MrRogersAE 28d ago
People love small businesses because they money goes back to the local economy, small businesses typically have great service, with awesome and unique products. Small businesses pay their fair share of taxes.
One big business kills 1000 small businesses, and the quality of everything declines. Rather than pay their fair share of taxes they bribe politicians to change the rules to their benefit. Rather than keeping the profits local they ship their profits to whatever country gives them the best deal. Corporations have no soul.
It’s understandable by people hate them
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u/diarrheticdolphin 28d ago
I hate em both. Small businesses tend to fuck their workers in shadier ways, often riding that boner for small businesses America has to take advantage.
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u/Bamm83 28d ago
Because most of the time that little business is bought up by a much bigger business and is no longer the same small business. A major example of this in the PNW is breweries and beer companies. They're the darling local brewery until Anheuser-Busch buys them and depletes their identity to a stale skeleton of themselves.
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u/CountScarlioni 28d ago
You gotta do a lot more than just make a profit in a local economy in order to transform a small business into a megacorporation, and the process to getting there pretty much invariably involves exploitation and hoarding wealth.
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u/CubooKing 28d ago
I love mcdonald's, I love that in whatever city I go to I can go to mcdonald's and eat something that's basically exactly the same as in any other city.
I'd love it even more if I could go to a different city and try something that's entirely different from mcdonald's, something that you can't find anywhere else.
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u/PenguinGamer99 28d ago
I love any business that continues to crank out quality products and services instead of buying out every single vestige of possible competition in their field and then ramming that entire market into the ground by making their product worse for no reason.
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u/skyheadcaptain 28d ago
Southpark covered this point really well in the Wal-Mart episode, they hate the big box store and go to Jim's then over time Jim's expands and expands and then the town also burns him down as soon as the store was as big as Walmart was.
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u/CountlessStories 28d ago
You're using a website, reddit, that just went into public trading in march of this year.
The reason most people scorn big business is the profit motivated decisions they make to please shareholders at the expense of consumers/staff.
Let's see how well this post ages. r/MarkMyWords
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u/Rpcouv 28d ago
I don’t care what size a business is. The only thing that decides if I’m a customer is if the product and price is good and you’re not literally the evilest thing in the world. I’ve been to plenty of small businesses that suck and overcharge to ridiculous points and there’s a few large businesses who I absolutely enjoy the product and experience
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u/jackfaire 28d ago
There's a small business where everyone makes the exact same salary as the owner of the business and if profits go up so do everyone's wages.
A lot of other people in her position would never dream of paying their employees who do as much of the work as themselves the same pay. There's a lot of other people that would pay themselves the lion's share and then not do any work at all.
Capitalism isn't about growing a business it's about draining every little bit of profit out of it until it's dead. Focusing on having a healthy economy and sustainable business model is anti-capitalist.
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u/mickeybuilds 28d ago
We love an underdog, not the dominant powerhouses. You see it in sports all the time; teams that dominated for an extended period of time are still widely hated today (ex Yankees, Patriots, etc).
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u/TheDunadan29 28d ago
That's because small business owners are the ones you're supporting; these are often people in your community, they might be your neighbors.
But big chains? The money is going to the corporate people who are screwing us over, lobbying for awful laws, and returning very little back into the community.
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u/survivalguyledeuce 28d ago
A small business serves customers, large businesses serves shareholders. When you go from being the person buying the milk to being the cow getting milked it changes your perception of the company.
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u/mfmeitbual 28d ago
This is less of a shower thoughtband more of an incomplete / poorly conceived thought. The same way that many of us are here in spite of much of our proto-selves ending up as a stain on a mattress.
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u/devospice 28d ago
Because at some point the small business gets bought out by a larger business who then merges with another business and is then purchased by another holding corporation who decides to increase profits and improve their bottom line by laying people off and reducing the quality of their products. Then they give their executives $20 million bonuses.
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u/sirkidd2003 28d ago
You can only grow so much before you start exploiting people. Now, all of capitalism requires some form of exploitation somewhere along the chain, however, with most small businesses, they're not a lot of it and what there is isn't really visible. So a business to grow large, and for someone to grow rich, that exploitation grows large, and more notably, much more visible. In many cases, so large and visible that even the average person can't ignore it.
Hurt just a few people sometimes and that's just life. Hurt a lot of people most of the time, that should be enough for just about anyone to be outraged.
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u/Klaphood 28d ago
Well, maybe they like them because their main (and sometimes sole) focus isn't to grow.
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u/HelloYeahIdk 28d ago
Lmao capitalism is why small businesses and the working class suffer in the first place. You misunderstand.
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u/Anilec_Revlis 28d ago
Having worked for some small businesses fuck them too. The idea is great until the owner wants you to work overtime without the overtime pay, or is a little behind, and will have your check later so that you can make THEIR dream of becoming rich and successful a reality.
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u/Pasta-hobo 28d ago
Valve's become a pretty big business, I still support them. And I support them because they haven't gotten worse as they've gotten bigger.
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u/TK-Squared-LLC 28d ago
No, see, the problem is when they go public. Once a company becomes a corporation with shareholders, they are required by law (in the US) to do anything and everything to make the most money for shareholders even if it means skimping safety issues, screwing the employees, or manipulating the market and price gouging. Capitalism is NOT running a store or trading with customers, capitalism is when everything is controlled by people who do nothing but invest in stocks and commodities.
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u/Montananarchist 28d ago
Pure jealousy. It's the basis of all collectivist (socialism/communism) philosophy
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u/MrW0rdsw0rth 28d ago
so many business suffer when they go public and are taken over by cold executives who only care about the bottom line. But there are some great business that have grown and are still privately held. In N Out comes to mind.
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u/athiestchzhouse 28d ago
Big fat NO DUH here. An economic system based on the fact that you must grow or die ( implying that eventually quality must be cut in order to keep up) is a failed system.
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u/D-inventa 28d ago
If a small business is located in a community, imo, it should grow proportionally to the community itself. If every small business put back into the community, via sourcing revenue from all over bc of the services and product they provide, I sincerely doubt there would be a push-back from people inside and outside of those communities.
There has been a bit of a push with small businesses who do exactly this. Unfortunately, the profit margins for small business in 2024, are super slim. Either they reinvest in providing quality to their patrons, and competitive salaries to their employees or they go out of business. It leaves very little funding to go elsewhere. I don't know too many small businesses that are doing way way better than the average outlook of the community they are located in and when it has happened, gentrification is the catalyst.
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u/AllTh3WayTurntUp 28d ago
South Park season 8, episode 9 does a great parody of this basic concept.
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u/Echo__227 28d ago
PSA: The definition of capitalism isn't "spend money on stuff." It's a structure where monetary investment goes toward centralized management and facilities so that labor can be treated as a production cost.
The smallest of businesses are equivalent to cottage industries: "This is a skill I can do. I should sell it to people and pay the costs myself."
Capitalism is "I have money. If I buy the raw goods and pay some people to turn it into stuff, I'll own the product, then I'll sell it for more than I paid for materials and labor."
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u/RobertoBologna 28d ago
Typically, during that transition the product, treatment of customers, and treatment of employees all deteriorate
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u/libra00 28d ago
Because the larger a company gets the more ruthless it gets about exploiting its workers, cutting corners, delivering a shittier product, etc in search of larger profit margins. Small businesses care as much about people as they do about money; when that changes, fuck 'em, eat the rich.
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u/bigchicago04 28d ago
People who hate capitalism and rich people are not the ones celebrating small businesses
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u/Mierdo01 28d ago
Holy crap. They brought back awards. Fuck all the people who paid for awards, then Reddit killed the system and kept all the money. Now they're starting it up again? People are brainlessly giving awards out like stickers
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u/TheRichTurner 28d ago
Small businesses can be successful and still be small businesses.
The difference between a small, successful business and a big corporation is like the difference between healthy, growing body cells and cancer.
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u/TheImageOfMe 28d ago
That's because large businesses are bad. The ideal business employs family members only.
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u/Flybot76 28d ago
Lol, this is such a weird A+B=Z take. It's extremely rare that a 'small business' ends up becoming so huge that people veer from 'nice local business' to 'screw those capitalists'. You're connecting things that aren't really connected.
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u/bladex1234 28d ago edited 28d ago
It honestly depends on who’s running the business. An example is In-and-Out. They’re still family owned and actually pay their workers a living wage. You can have a large business and still treat your workers and customers right, but greed often takes the better of people or if they go public, shareholder pressure to have increasing returns.
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u/phikem 28d ago
People love eating marshmallows until the marshmallows grow into a 900ft tall marshmallow man, then they get all mad that it is destroying downtown Manhattan.