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We are told that small businesses are at the heart of our society. Last week was Small Business Saturday. Politicians of all persuasions posted videos, tweets, and statements claiming that local, independent, family-run businesses are the bedrock of our economy. That they’re enabled to meet the needs of our society.
But the truth is that our economy isn’t working like that. Perhaps, it never did.
Successive governments’ have failed to address systemic problems such as migration, welfare, taxation, and most of all finance. They have hollowed out the very economy that local businesses believed they existed in.
Our obsessive focus on accounting, finance, ‘so-called money’, and banking have built a system in which small business people are in fact serving the interests of banks and the financial sector; rather than the other way around. They are enslaved by the banks, debt, and the very concept of ‘money’.
I saw this first hand when I visited Tom’s Oyster Barbershop in Epsom for the latest segment of my ‘Flow & Let Go’ series. Tom and I had a candid conversation about the reality of owning a small business in the UK, the negative impact of state failures such as immigration, the cost of living crisis, and the real social cost of money. The discussion only reaffirmed my belief that the current system we have is broken and actively works against good people like Tom.
Independent businesses, like Tom’s, have historically formed the core of a local community by providing services and goods according to people’s daily needs. They have fostered and nurtured relationships which have strengthened community cohesion. We now see large national and international competitors abandon community and passion for craft, as they destroy these local institutions. This is the real social degradation that stems from our imperialist economic system.
It shows little to no regard for social impact in pursuit of ever-greater financial ‘reward’. It is
these big corporate giants that are benefited by our economic model at the plight of the idealised local business.
My time in industry has taught me that businesses are about people not finances. We have
allowed our broken economic model to further wrongly embed the notion that success is
measured by financial returns over social impact. Small independent businesses such as the
cafes, restaurants, pubs, and hairdressers that make up our high streets, town squares, and villagecentres are not just a place where we receive a service transactionally, they are hubs where relationships are formed.
But so many forces are working against them.
We have seen migration undercut local businesses through cheaper migrant labour creating
increased competition not just between businesses but also the labour force. The system has
exploited the migrant and native worker with neither being loved.
Meanwhile, the Bank of England has consistently harmed small, local businesses by the
economic system that they hold over, the monetary policy they preside over, and their inability to address inflation. All the while, big banks magic money into existence through ever more
complicated schemes — making ever greater profits.
It’s not sustainable. I believe a systemic crash is not just inevitable but imminent. When it
comes, we’ll face a choice. Prop up the same failing system or build a new system.
Subscribe to the Manna Journey to see how an economy that is based on people’s daily needs is not only possible, but essential for real growth.
