Reflections of a stormy petrel

The effect of big business is also poisonous in another way. It gives an entirely wrong notion of what business is and what wealth creation really is. I sometimes feel like taking one of townhall.com's supposedly conservative commentators, shaking them till their teeth rattle, and shouting in their faces: "can't you understand, you damned twit, that big business is entirely different from real business?" You have communities whose top bosses are insured against the very possibility of failure - if things go wrong, they merge with their most successful rival and get a post on their Board, for which they in essence don't have to do anything. Or else you downsize and sack other people. Or both. A real wealth creator is a small businessman with four or five employees, all directly committed to the success of their company, all aware of the stakes and concerned to give it what they can to make it work. Big business, at best, is the final result of one such operation; but to treat them as the primary wealth creators, or to criticize those who would tax and regulate them, is simply to be outside reality.