I remember my barber showing me the permits on the wall for each shampoo station. It’s just the tip of the iceberg. The government is the mafia in a very real way.
When looking at the entire iceberg, it is why I will never go into “legitimate” business for myself. No way. Not worth the headaches.
The only exception would be if it was the only way to survive.
Business owners decide where and how capital is deployed, this determines where the jobs are and who is hired; they determine company policies as well, which their employees are required to abide by. Employees, earning their living from their employer, find that their own personal interests tend to be aligned with their employer’s. If my employer wants something to happen in my state, I’ll tend to support my employer’s position rather than oppose it, as it will be better for my career to not act contrary to my employer. Employees who “go against the grain” tend to be let go.
The wealthier a person is, the more influence they can have on society and politics; the wealthy are the leaders of society.
As people abandon the idea of owning and operating businesses, they lose much of their influence on politics and society.
Instead, being employees, they must simply follow the orders of their employers; go along to get along.
It’s not impossible to deal with tax and compliance issues; as the government throws things in your path, they need to be dealt with in an efficient way as possible (for example, the modern payroll service is a business opportunity to make a profit while offering small business cheap compliance). Outsourcing of complex compliance, a situation where a person with good compliance experience starts their own business and sells their services to many small customers, allows for small business to get similar economies of scale in that regard as large businesses.
The small business owner simply needs determination, a can-do attitude and some ingenuity, along with a huge dose of skeptical realism. Every time a problem arises, one has to first roll up one’s sleeves and research what current solutions there are in the marketplace. It’s amazing what’s available today.
All the garbage thrown at small business is done to scare decent people out of business, so they remain working and paying without ever accumulating any serious amount of wealth, even working in jobs where they fundamentally disagree with their employer’s ethics.