The Business Paradigm

‘Business’ is a term which has many people confused. There are many different ideas about what a business actually IS, what it does and how it operates.

The problem arises because there are so many different forms and functions of ‘business’. They range from ‘micro’ one person operations to multi-billion global corporations employing many thousands of people. The media and ‘popular culture’ tend to lump these all together under the one heading – ‘business’.

But there are businesses who employ people and those who don’t, there are businesses which make vast profits for their owners and those which provide a subsistence income supporting individuals doing something they love to do.

I once ran a scuba diving school (business). It never made a ‘profit’ but it paid for my diving, not a cheap sport, for over ten years.

In fact, the vast majority of businesses worldwide are owned and operated by one or just a few people – often a ‘family business’. A concept which has developed from a centuries old culture of families and individuals ‘making a living’ from some resource or skill. There were no ‘businesses’ and no distinction made between business, or ‘work’, and lifestyle. It was just what people ‘did’ in their way of life. There was no concept of ‘work – life balance, their ‘business’ was their way of life and for many people all over the world it still is.

All these ‘small’ businesses, some of which may generate significant incomes, are effectively decentralised. Although they pay taxes to the ‘powers that be’ and attempts are made to control them, they don’t ‘report’ to any central organisation.

But for perhaps 600 years and well before the Industrial Revolution, things have been changing. Businesses have grown in size and become far less personal. An early example was the massive and seemingly all powerful ‘East India Company’ who effectively became the first global corporation and a self-governing entity even to the extent of sponsoring and carrying out military operations in the era of colonial expansion, a development of the earlier independent ‘privateers’ or state approved pirates. A  long way from your local butcher, baker, and candlestick maker, now replaced by supermarkets and energy companies.

The idea of separating business/work from ‘life’ began to grow. Big businesses or ‘corporates’ became more and more powerful and independent of state governments through operating in several different countries. Indeed, some corporate global businesses are larger than some nations, both in terms of the money they circulate, and the numbers of people involved.

It was though, the industrial revolution of the nineteenth century when the ‘plan of life’ really changed. Up until then the four domains of life, one of them being ‘what we do’ were more integrated. What happened was people were enticed to stop working for themselves but to work for someone else – to exchange their time, skills, knowledge and expertise for money and importantly, although most didn’t realise it (and still don’t), giving up control of a large portion of their lives.

What people ‘did’ in their lives was no longer for themselves, building their own lifestyle, but for others in the form of a ‘company’ building the owners’ lifestyles.

In this way ‘work’ – what we do – became centralised in these companies both large and small (or ‘medium sized’ whatever that means!). What they did was no longer decentralised, managed and controlled in their own homes or local environment but collected together in centralised corporate organisations both privately and state owned, the latter exemplified by the vast ‘collective farms’ of the Soviet Union.

This centralisation of ‘business’ has led to even more control and is a source of confusion and the belief businesses are ‘rich’. Some are, but most, however large they might be must keep a close eye on their centralised economics to stay in operation The problem is though vast resources are being accrued in some large global corporates whilst bot the people and the state struggle to find the means to survive. Money itself is being centralised.

At present there is little we can do in this overarching control system. We have to return to a more decentralised society and next time I’ll explain how this might happen.