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Why do we coddle small businesses?

Travis

Misanthrope of the Mountains
Travis
Joined
Mar 31, 2007
Messages
24,133
Politicians are always falling all over themselves to try and appeal to small business. They constantly try to posture themselves as their savior.

Why?

I hate small businesses!

First off, they are never frigging open!

We have a tile store. It seems like every time I go there it's closed because the owners are attending a wedding, birthday, they've gone fishing or the weather's just isn't good so they didn't bother showing up.

Then the ones that do open are only open screwy hours. The plumbing supply store is open from 5:00AM to 2:30PM. Which are hours that I can never get down there. Everyone else I know is also continuously frustrated by their hours and I ran into the guy that runs the place one day and asked him why he does this. His reply, "I was a Marine and we got up early. That's what proper people do. I don't want the business of improper people!"

:rolleyes:

Secondly, their service/selection sucks!

Sometimes I want a piece of lumber. Just one piece. Like a 2x4 that's twelve feet long. Can I get that? No. The only lumber suppliers only sell in bulk and only to contractors. Consequently I end up driving 40 miles to Modesto to get the one piece of lumber I need from Lowe's.

Or, I go to the computer store because I want a new power supply pack. Will they do that? No. They tell me to buy a whole new computer because it's not worth their time to bother with individual parts.

Then I want a TV. Do they have the brand I want? No, they only sale Brand X because Brand X is American.

Or I want a book, but will the only bookstore sell me The God Delusion? Of course not. But they have a huge section devoted to Christian books and whole bookshelf with nothing but the Left Behind series. I can get them all; in hardcover, paperback, leatherbound or audio!

Third, they they always jerks/annoying!

I'm there to get a haircut. I don't want to hear about how the homosexuals are destroying society.

I'm there to buy a Blue Nile Lilly, I'm not there to hear about how Obama is a Communist.

I don't care that you think providing healthcare for the poor is evil because you think it will prevent you from buying another vintage Corvette. I just want an oil change!

You're not going to sell me a dozen donuts because I'm wearing a Berkley T-shirt? Serious?

No I do not want to hear about some new supposed tax on white people and I absolutely don't want to be invited to a KKK rally. Just make me my pastrami sandwich!

Lastly, they are hypocrites about capitalism!

So you're probably thinking, "Travis, if these businesses are so terrible surely some competition will close them down."

Yeah, just try it.

Just try and get a loan to open a hardware store when the bank operators are best friends with the previously mentioned Plumbing Supply guy who thinks you're not worth serving if you aren't up before the sun.

So really the only way it could happen would be for some outsider with their own money to try it. And so back in 2002 Home Depot decides it wants to move in. I'm cheering for it because now I can get my tile/plumbing supplies someplace that's actually open. I can buy that one odd piece of lumber when I need it and I can get some plants without having to hear rants from some radical right winger.

But the local small businesses cry foul, say it will drive them into the ground and the politicians pass an "anti big-box store" law that prevents Home Depot from building a new store. The small business owners kick back to enjoy their little monopolies.

Then the same thing is done when Best Buy tries to open a store.

Ditto Barnes & Noble.

Safeway tries to expand and open a deli...that actually does happen eventually but only because zoning laws allowed it to happen without the need for approval. Boy was that law changed fast after that loop hole was discovered.

Eventually Lowe's finds it's own loophole and is now building a store but only after the local businessmen mount a huge lawsuit claiming the store will "destroy the rural character of the community" that delayed it by three years before being thrown out by a Federal District Judge. Charges that the Judge was an "obvious Communist" are quickly thrown around. :rolleyes: Because we all know that allowing free enterprise is the hallmark of communism.

So when I hear politicians spewing their soundbites about protecting the Mom & Pop stores I can only wonder, "why?" How is America better by using government to protect these idiot bigots in their own little business fiefdoms?

I say let the mega-corporations crush them into the earth!
 
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Go try and buy a guitar part from guitar center who is far more interested in selling you a fire and forget guitar, and don't have a well stocked allparts rack, while the small store does.

A lot of specialty stores are great. Their business hours can be far more flexible than a large chain, and their selection is infinite compared to a chain, though stock on hand may be limited
 
There are great small businesses and there are bad ones, just like big businesses. The one big business that drives me insane in NC is my local CVS. It's never open. Ever. Every single time I am downtown the CVS is closed. I have never stepped foot inside of it, ever. Not once.

The lights are ALWAYS ON which makes it deceptive. But you go out of your way, find a place to park, walk up and pull the door. *thunk*

Eff CVS.
 
pipelineaudio said:
Go try and buy a guitar part from guitar center who is far more interested in selling you a fire and forget guitar, and don't have a well stocked allparts rack, while the small store does.
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ive done that, its a lot easier actually, once the salesperson knows they arent going to sell you a guitar they want to get you in and out as quickly as possible so they can work on selling something they get a commissions for (but they still give you good service because they want you to ask for them when you do come in to buy a guitar)

the small store (at least the one by my house) always takes 10 minutes to get someone to help me because they are too busy chatting with their regulars all the time, takes another 10 minutes to get them to order the part i want i have to listen to why the only part they have in stock is better (and conveniently has a higher profit margin) and then end up paying 50% more because supposedly the service is better at the locally owned store

thats why i buy most of my music equipment online, its cheaper and i get it just as fast



honestly though, the music store is about the only small business in my area i dont like (well i didnt like the computer store either, they would never special order anything at all, but they closed a few years ago lol) most of them do have better service and i prefer them, even if they do cost more

i dont think they should be coddled or bailed out or whatever though, the argument is always they they have better service, if thats true then they should be able to compete based on that (and in my town, most of them do just that)
 
willhaven said:
There are great small businesses and there are bad ones, just like big businesses.
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Well put. There is a small coffee chain here (half dozen or so locations, locally owned) that I would go to any day over Starbucks. There are also a couple of absolutely awful coffee shops I've seen that I wouldn't give any treatment for just because they are "small businesses."

It is interesting, though, if you browse through all of the Federal contracts that are out there, how many are reserved for "small businesses" or "small minority owned disabled veteran businesses" or things like that.
 
bynmdsue said:
I don't know,why do they coddle single mothers?
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:confused:

pipelineaudio said:
Go try and buy a guitar part from guitar center who is far more interested in selling you a fire and forget guitar, and don't have a well stocked allparts rack, while the small store does.

A lot of specialty stores are great. Their business hours can be far more flexible than a large chain, and their selection is infinite compared to a chain, though stock on hand may be limited
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Oh, the music store. Don't get me started on that! We have one music store with absolutely no reasonable or set hours. It's just open whenever the owner decides to stop smoking pot go to work. Then if you do find it open and go inside he will insist that he cannot order anything for you if he doesn't have it in stock. I mean, he could, but why should he? That would take time away from his pot smoking.

I stopped going there and do go to Guitar Center even though it's 40 miles further away.

defaultdotxbe said:
i dont think they should be coddled or bailed out or whatever though, the argument is always they they have better service, if thats true then they should be able to compete based on that (and in my town, most of them do just that)
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So then why are we throwing up all these laws to prevent competition? If they are so superior, even though my experience says they are not, then they shouldn't need laws preventing chain stores from opening.

And why are the owners of these businesses always ideologues? Why do I have to get preached to about their pet issues whenever I go there? Or get mistreated in other ways. I had an auto-mechanic place refuse to work on my car back in 2008 because I had an Obama bumper sticker. I bet a Pep-Boys wouldn't have done that.
 
Small businesses are like the nursery of new ideas. They are very fragile in their infancy and many die anyway, but sometimes a new or better business model will arise from humble beginnings. Encouraging and nursing the spirit of innovation is very important to the USA, in my opinion.
 
Buying music gear online is certainly the way to go! But I still contend that GC doesn't carry the majority of guitar parts I'll need in the course of an album. The small stores do, or they go out of business rather quick. They're also manned by guitar techs, which for liability reasons, you can't even get advice from at GC. At least that's the way the last few are here.

Then again they certainly aren't coddled. If they price match, that means they're making a way lower profit than online or chain.
 
Travis said:
Oh, the music store. Don't get me started on that! We have one music store with absolutely no reasonable or set hours. It's just open whenever the owner decides to stop smoking pot go to work. Then if you do find it open and go inside he will insist that he cannot order anything for you if he doesn't have it in stock. I mean, he could, but why should he? That would take time away from his pot smoking.
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What in the world keeps his competition from shutting his doors down in a week? Good luck running a shop like that in AZ. I think there must be something to your coddling claim...someone/government keeping this idiot from being knocked out of the marketplace
 
pipelineaudio said:
What in the world keeps his competition from shutting his doors down in a week? Good luck running a shop like that in AZ. I think there must be something to your coddling claim...someone/government keeping this idiot from being knocked out of the marketplace
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Nobody can get a loan to open a new business and the existing ones get huge tax breaks (called Mom & Pop stimulus). Add in the anti-big box law and effectively things are rigged so existing businesses can operate with no competition. That's what happens when politicians bend over backwards to try and "save" small business. They just make it so that nothing new can get started.
 
You wouldn't need a loan to beat that guy. I dont know how things are set up over there, but in AZ anything near a highway is dual zone.

One small town I lived in had an anti-big box mentality and all it did was make another small town 20 miles away richer and us poorer. Our shops that couldn't (or in most cases wouldn't) compete went out of business just the same as if we had let walmart in. 20 miles isn't jack squat to drive in AZ. That said, our shops that would compete are doing just fine
 
One agency in the government is convinced that small businesses drive the U.S. economy.

I suspect that small business owners donate a rather large share of all the money local political candidates receive. Furthermore, many small business owners enter local politics on a part time or full time basis.
 
My parents ran a small business (my father still works for it, but it's gotten a lot smaller) and they used to be the most cost effective in their field that a specific very very large company who shall remain nameless used. I'm not joking either, they had one employee and a team of willing helpers who did work for them because they were friends, a tiny little office unit and a handful of machines and they were efficient, reasonably cheap and they never "lost" any of the things they had to handle. We kept any excess, but that was perfectly acceptable. In the end, the very upper levels of management in said large company, who had no idea what the work produced by the various companies they contracted to was like on a case by case basis, decided to float the idea that they should stop working with companies with less than a certain amount of workers.

The lower level management who actually dealt with the companies they contracted to were appalled, and loudly and steadfastly decided to warn the upper management types that this was an absolutely terrible idea and that the small companies (including but not limited to my parents) were for the most part considerably better than the inefficient, bloated, slow, expensive and dishonest larger companies, who were only ever used in extreme cases when an order came in that was too large to be filled by the smaller companies (which wasn't very often).

Upper management of course ignored them, meaning that my parents along with a number of other small, efficient, well run and cheap businesses were cast off by this large company in favour of the dishonest giants, against the protests of the people who actually knew what they were talking about. Since then, another company who they worked for decided to internalise their databasing which my parents ran for them, again against the warnings and advice of the people who actually knew what they were talking about, and it's looking like another comapny might be about to internalise their computer programming, which would not only practically force my father to close the business, but according to people who actually work with him and know about the new system that's being introduced, will likely result in the British based interests of this company being forced to close down despite the fact that they are the most efficient for this company because they don't use the internalised system.
 
MarkCorrigan said:
My parents ran a small business (my father still works for it, but it's gotten a lot smaller) and they used to be the most cost effective in their field that a specific very very large company who shall remain nameless used. I'm not joking either, they had one employee and a team of willing helpers who did work for them because they were friends, a tiny little office unit and a handful of machines and they were efficient, reasonably cheap and they never "lost" any of the things they had to handle. We kept any excess, but that was perfectly acceptable. In the end, the very upper levels of management in said large company, who had no idea what the work produced by the various companies they contracted to was like on a case by case basis, decided to float the idea that they should stop working with companies with less than a certain amount of workers.

The lower level management who actually dealt with the companies they contracted to were appalled, and loudly and steadfastly decided to warn the upper management types that this was an absolutely terrible idea and that the small companies (including but not limited to my parents) were for the most part considerably better than the inefficient, bloated, slow, expensive and dishonest larger companies, who were only ever used in extreme cases when an order came in that was too large to be filled by the smaller companies (which wasn't very often).

Upper management of course ignored them, meaning that my parents along with a number of other small, efficient, well run and cheap businesses were cast off by this large company in favour of the dishonest giants, against the protests of the people who actually knew what they were talking about. Since then, another company who they worked for decided to internalise their databasing which my parents ran for them, again against the warnings and advice of the people who actually knew what they were talking about, and it's looking like another comapny might be about to internalise their computer programming, which would not only practically force my father to close the business, but according to people who actually work with him and know about the new system that's being introduced, will likely result in the British based interests of this company being forced to close down despite the fact that they are the most efficient for this company because they don't use the internalised system.
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As the years go by and I observe more and more of how people run businesses, I'm agreeing more and more with "Dilbert". People really are promoted to their level of incompetence. Upper management seems to have low-to-zero grasp of how their own business operates, and they never listen to underlings because that would be admitting ignorance or losing face or something. The larger the company, the more out-of-touch the highest-ups are.

The corporate giant that runs (partially) my business has a history of insane decisions similar to what you describe above, only worse--they find a software product they think they can use, then they buy the company that made it, and then declare it's a huge savings because now it's an internal product! Except for the fact that the people who decided all this a) don't know how their own business works and whether this software will actually be useful, b) aren't technically savvy enough to understand the new software itself, and c) will not listen to anybody who has to implement or use the new software when they tell them that it's a huge step backwards and everything's much more inefficient than before. So what do they do? Upper management orders everyone to use the new software, and change all the processes to conform to the new software, retrain the workers or hire new ones. Never think before taking a step, never evaluate whether the step was a wise one, and never reverse course even if you're moving in the wrong direction. Ever. And naturally they complain, punish, and fire all around when they see the numbers and proof things are getting worse, which they chalk up to worker incompetence and disloyalty.

This is a "Fortune 500" company that wins awards for excellence and is heralded as a forerunner in technological sophistication.
 
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