independence: long shot

Search "employment" on Google, and you will find 309 million links.
"Unemployment" produces 35.4 million links.
"Self-employment" turns up a measly 4.8 million links.

Dare I say it seems to be more than 7 times as popular to be unemployed than to be self-employed? I can't do that, can I? Well, I just did, and you cannot deny that people prefer to be employed rather than working for themselves. According to an entire minute of my scientific research, I found 1.55% of our population is seriously interested in independence--workwise that is.

We don't care to be productive. The largest employer, the government, pays her people out of tax money. You tell me how many "products," manufactured by the government, are being sold successfully in a competitive market environment? How do you measure performance of a government employee, compared with someone who works at a conveyor belt and pops out a tangible product every twelve minutes or so? Hey, relax! I like having the police checking on bad guys. Parts of the government are indeed important. Government employees are quite alright, but the question got to be legitimate: what percentage of government employment is truly productive?

How about subsidized industries? From ethanol production to the ailing airline industry, or to call centers we hesitate to outsource: if tax dollars have to prop up jobs, they certainly lack productivity. Even good old Ted Turner gets paid handsomely--out of your and my pocket--to stop him from farming his land. I hope he at least is aware of how useless and unproductive he is.

As long as an employee gets a paycheck, she is not necessarily concerned whether she is part of something that generates real income or if she produces marketable services and products. If you are self-employed or an entrepreneur, you don't have such luxury. You have to come up with ideas someone somewhere is willing to give you money for. The government may bail out Bear Stearns' shiny behind, but they won't save your dry cleaning franchise from going belly up.

Independence is not attractive! School teachers won't prepare you for it. Unless your parents are entrepreneurs themselves, they will be scared when you tell them you're going into business for yourself. When John Drummond told his father-in-law he was planning to sell unicycles, he got the (understandable) response: "How many clowns do you know?" I believe John didn't know any clowns back then, and he still managed to take www.unicycle.com past a million dollars in annual sales, meanwhile.

Independence is scary and yet, America has been built on just that by notorious bunglers, inventors, and those who tried to do something without the slightest guarantee to succeed. Independence cannot be bought. You will never have enough assets to be independent, all of a sudden. Independence will always be fragile, uncertain, unprotected, threatened, lonely, unreasonable, and a fiercely individual commodity. You don't get independence as a group ticket. No one can bestow it upon you. And trust me on this one: if and when you take on the challenge to be independent, not one other person will be eager to get your kind of independence.

People will laugh about your silly form of independence, first. If that does not dishearten you, they will attack you. If they can't destroy your stupid independence with aggression, they will develop jealousy. Later on, they'll steal your ideas. They may want to copy your products at some point but they never want a part of the hardship you had to endure in the process. A new business needs care and protection like a newborn child, complete with frequent diaper changes and all.

Yet, that's the future: you being in business for yourself. Don't quit your job! Begin something parallel to your existing job (if you have one). People don't quit when they have a baby, either. Well, if they're smart, they don't. You still need to eat and having a roof over your head helps also. But sooner or later, within the next couple of decades, employment will shrink significantly and self-employment will grow. People hate their jobs for good reasons, and wage slavery will be abolished, step by step.

"With more than one million new businesses each year, America’s economy depends on small businesses for its vitality and growth. According to the 1997 report of the U.S. Census Bureau, the nation’s 17 million small, non-farm businesses constituted 99.7 per cent of all employers, employed 52 percent of private workforce and accounted for 51 percent of the nation’s sales. Small business-dominated industries provided 11.1 million new jobs between 1994 and 1998, virtually all of the new jobs created during that time period. Small businesses are most likely to generate jobs for young workers, older workers and women, provide 67 percent of first jobs and produce 55 percent of innovations.

"Thousands of people with disabilities have been successful as small business owners. The 1990 national census revealed that people with disabilities have a higher rate of self-employment and small business experience (12.2 percent) than people without disabilities (7.8 percent). The Disabled Businessman’s Association estimates that 40 percent of home-based businesses are operated by people with disabilities." (source: U.S. Dept. of Labor, http://www.dol.gov/odep/)

If self-employment required especially strong, well-to-do, and able people, there would be a lower rate of individuals with disabilities in business for themselves than of people who aren't suffering any disabilities. The average person still believes in her strengths as an income source. A growing number of those who had to learn to live with disabilities have discovered that you can exploit your weaknesses just as well as strengths, and possibly with greater success.

You don't need to learn the hard way through disabilities or pain: wherever you are currently in your career or financially, there are ways for you to gain independence, enjoyment, and additional income. Strength or obvious weakness, it is possible to exploit both for fun and profit.

That's what freedom is for.

Egbert

P.S.: Final version of my book 'How to Better Hate Your Job' is not in print yet, but you may pick up an "Advanced Reader's Copy" through my website (http://www.moneybymistake.com/). Paperback copy for $11 or it'll cost you $1 if you want to download the eBook edition. Yep, a single buck for the entire book!