It’s not that I don’t recognize that actual human beings with good and bad qualities make up the class of small business owners who have particular material interests to satisfy. Naturally, I recognize that. The critique is not about specific individuals, but perverse incentives.

Twitter isn’t an ideal forum for nuance, but nevertheless this distinction deserves fleshing out, lest it easily and rightly gets parodied into oblivion. To say that small business owners are complicit or one doesn’t have sympathy for them is shorthand for a systematic critique.

The critique of small business owners is motivated by a consistent application and understanding of the nature of capitalist exploitation.

It’s mostly necessary because of the persistence of the narrative that small business owners are somehow exempt or innocent from the same mechanisms and pressures that drive the abuse of workers on a corporate scale. In reality, the petty small business tyrant is often worse...

...than the corporate entity whose superior capital can withstand liability lawsuits, unexpected losses, etc. The small business owner, by necessity, must be parsimonious (often in irrational ways) in order to survive competition and this adversely impacts workers first.