Supporting Small Business & The Trades

It Cannot Be Overstated – How Important They Are

Trigger Warning: This blog post is going to take some turns that some may find obtuse or insulting to their sensibilities. It’s a journey that will travel down some side streets and backroads but I promise to deliver you to your logical destination.

My entire life, I have wrestled with this bizarre and seemingly contradictory spirit. On one hand, I have a longing for adventure. Historical figures like Shackleton, Hemmingway, Steinbeck and London and Fictional Characters like Frank Bama, Han Solo and Malcolm Reynolds have all influenced me to pursue larger than life adventures. On the other hand, I have a longing for permanence, legacy, and community. I’ve been fascinated by this other type of rugged individual, many of whom plant roots in one place and build these little empires that many people would describe as “ordinary” or “small”. Through the years I’ve come to understand that these two lives are both foundational to the American Dream. People often do one, to protect the other. They do one, to earn the right to return to the other. What appear on the surface as ordinary and small, are often powered by the same fuel, gaining traction with the same grit.

Great Adventurers

Small is Bigger Than You Think

The importance of “the big” is easily overstated because of relative scale, which is an illusion. In fact, it’s theorized that The Universe of the Small, is in fact “much bigger” than The Universe of the Large. And, when you examine the American Economy and Culture, you can’t help but realize that two things…Small Business and The Trades (in all its forms, from skilled vocations to shopkeepers and entertainers) have an outsized impact on everything. Large institutions, corporations and governments also occupy places of prominence. However, they are creations that are built largely as servants to the people. At least, in a healthy society they are. Even corporations, as powerful as we make them out to be, owe their entire existence to:

1. Consumers
2. Investors
3. Labor
4. Producers & Creators

It’s also well established that growth and scale in organizations often yields inefficiencies instead of efficiencies. Organizations take on a life of their own as the system and collective influence grows beyond the individual influence and span of control. Businesses, which respond quicker than other organizations due to economic pressures, at least in a healthy system they do, have been the first to capitalize on smaller scales. Buzz words like “agile”, “decentralized”, “open sourced”, “crowd sourced”, “network organization”, “cellular” and “modular” all hint at the existence of some structures that, although still part of a system, retain a degree of control and autonomy. And, technology is growing in a direction that supports further development of networks and nodes. The American system with all its markets, mixed economy elements, democratic elements, republican elements, institutional elements and pluralistic elements likely owes its success to being more of a force of nature than a creation of man. Man being a creator is just a part of the system. I would challenge anyone to look to nature, math and science to find anything analogous to what leftist ideologies espouse at scale. It doesn’t exist…for a reason.

Leftist ideologies, although not completely devoid of merit as they serve a purpose in a pluralistic system, spread myths and falsehoods to further their agenda. These myths are damaging. Let’s look at 2 of them.

Damaging Myth #1

“Americans Don’t Value the Arts Enough”

When people say this, they don’t mean what they’re saying. Their argument contains an enthymeme. An unstated premise or conclusion. It’s a syllogism that’s missing stuff.

Their actual argument: “People don’t value my daughter’s shitty clarinet playing over other things. It’s art and she’s an artist. Therefore, people don’t value the arts enough.”

Or the syllogism has an unspoken conclusion.

“People don’t value the arts enough. Many people in the arts are members of a particular marginalized group. Therefore people don’t value this marginalized group enough.”

So in the last example, they are really arguing that not valuing the arts is actually an attack against a marginalized group.

These types of arguments are extremely versatile. You can move the premises and conclusions around to suit your purpose pretty easily.

So, let’s take a look at the argument that “Americans don’t value the arts enough”. You don’t have to dig very deep to see the problem.

So, we don’t value music? Tell that to the music industry. We don’t value stories? Tell that to authors, actors, television, cinema and marketing. Even politics (and this argument) is a form of storytelling. We don’t value architecture? We don’t value automotive or fashion design? We don’t value cooking? We don’t value science, math, engineering or esoteric philosophical academic pursuits? The list just goes on and on.

When you remove your blinders you’ll see that “the arts” is just a narrow definition of creative pursuits and it’s discriminatory AF. Two things that Americans excel at, technology and business, are both nothing more than creative pursuits. They are as much “the arts” as “the arts” are.

So this argument is not only false, it’s false on the face of it. And in such an obvious way. What’s truly amazing is that people make this argument while also bragging about how much more intelligent and educated they are. To bolster their position, they spew anti-business rhetoric and attempt to push tradesmen (who dominate small business) into a “class of the uneducated”.

Damaging Myth #2

“Labor is the Source of All Value”

The Labor Theory of Value is the Marxist take on Value Theory. Marx, Ricardo and Smith all made arguments. These arguments have been summarized by academics and they’ve applied terms like LTV to refer to them. Many of these arguments delve into what could best be described as a cause and effect analysis or broadly as a kind of Origin Theory. It may be of some academic interest to study value theory and concepts like Smith proposed such as Value in Utility and Value in Exchange. They are interesting but mostly serve to distract the academic from the obviousness of the truth. Many Marxist’s will try to present the argument that we’ve got Marx wrong, that he never used the term LTV and they’ll send you down a hole of esoteric academic nonsense to make you feel stupid.

Here’s the crux…they are in fact saying that all the value of anything produced is derived from the labor that’s put into it…and therefore labor is entitled to the resources derived from it…and therefore capitalism is evil and communism & socialism are virtuous and just. Again, don’t get distracted with arguments and denials. That is in fact exactly what they are saying. And, of course it’s bullshit.

You should recognize it as an either/or argument. Either all value is derived from labor…or it’s not. The only way LTV arguments work is if it’s true that all value is derived from labor.

Let’s run a simple thought experiment. Assuming you’re not an idiot, does it appear to you that all value is derived from labor? All non-idiots would, if they are being honest, simply say no…that’s a ridiculous claim. No more thought required. Yet here we are, 170+ years after Marx and Engels, with some still trying to make that claim.

If you reject the either/or premise, it becomes clear that labor is the source of some value…and there are other things that are the source of value too. Those other things include of course technology, ideas, innovation, synergies, inherent utility, social shit like prestige and luxury, economic shit like scarcity, supply, demand. All manner of things contribute to value.

And, if you reject the either/or premise you’re not arguing that labor is insignificant.

If you look at the question of value closely, you should see that all types of labor are a significant source of value. Everything from hard work, grit, education, intelligence, natural ability, risk taking, delayed gratification, partnering, the investing of prior labor stored as money…and so on. You might even begin to think that Marx was only wrong in that he made it an either/or argument and that he was blinded by the ulterior motive to promote his social theories. In fact, the more you look at it, you might see that a “capitalist” values their “labor” and the labor of others so much that they glorify it through acts of business.

A wage earner who behaves as if they “own their labor”, as many tradesmen do, is actually a capitalist and not a socialist. Where the leftist wage earner goes wrong of course is when they again present an either/or argument that either they own their labor – without any other claim or influence – or they don’t. Of course they don’t. The business owner knows this. A business plan is actually formulated from a combination of knowing what you can control and knowing what you can’t. I’m not aware of a single business model or framework that begins with the assumption that you as a business owner are entitled by some natural law to do whatever you want for whatever price you set.

As with other modern leftist beliefs, nothing in nature, math or science supports the idea that all value is derived from labor. In nature, fish don’t work. In nature, big fish eat little fish. If only the little fish knew of TLV, they’d rise up like a proletariat and take their rightful place…right?

The Goat Propulsion Laboratory’s Argument

Goat-Pen.com & The Goat Propulsion Laboratory Exist to Support and Promote Small Business, The Trades, and the People Walk Those Paths in Life. These people are the Dreamers and the Doers. They embody the spirits of both the Sailor and the Shopkeeper.

Here is our syllogism, no bullshit enthymemes.

Small Business and The Trades have an outsized impact on The American Economy and Culture.
Despite their influence, both of these keystone economic and cultural sectors are underperforming and threatened by social forces that oppose them.
Therefore, America and Americans would benefit from deliberate support of these sectors.

That’s it for the simple argument. Of course, just as we argue against most either/or arguments, we’ll also argue that you can’t distill it down to a simple syllogistic argument without losing something.

GPL’s Current Initiatives

The Goat Pen Platform and Content
Social Communities for Small Business and The Trades with our “Goat Pens” The Goat Pen Discussion Groups and Forums
Innovation in Promoting Free Speech with Goat Pen Dark
Producing, Encouraging and Curating Small Business and Industry Podcasts
Producing, Encouraging and Curating Entertaining Content for the Community
Innovation in Safety Training with The Bro-Bowl and Bluecollarbros.org Free Training Resources
Leadership in Opposing Administrative Overreach, Waste, Fraud, Abuse and the OSHA Oligopoly

GPL’s Future Initiatives

Expanding Profiles to Improve Professional Networking
Job Boards
Classified Ads
Expanding Goat Pens for Small Businesses to use as an Ultra-Low Cost Extranet, Communication Platform, Knowledge Management Platform and Training Management Platform
More Learning Content
More Entertaining Content