The Small Business Excuse

Small businesses can be great sources of innovation, community engagement, and workplace experience, and by no means are their founders or leaders ever oppressive because of the nature of small businesses themselves rather than their own nature as individuals.  They could still impose workplace exploitation on workers as those with the highest position(s) assume that the small scope of the business calls for rationalistic, moral, and financial lenience in reacting to them.  This small business excuse is logically invalid because it does not follow from a business being small that it can do whatever its owner/managers wish while still having philosophical legitimacy, and because as easy as it is for much larger companies to get away with workplace oppression, small businesses can be intentionally or unintentionally guilty of the same hypocrisies, arrogance, incompetence, and sheer stupidity as the more sizeable corporations that more often get negative attention.

As likely as it is that current leaders of major corporations like Amazon would be unwilling to pay workers better or universally give them better working conditions or benefits without immense outside pressure--and it is avoidable philosophical assumptions or errors, egoistic personality, or cultural conditioning that leads to selfish corporate leaders exploiting others, not simply the fact that someone holds executive positions--larger companies, including megacorporations, are the only ones that by default have the resources necessary to actually do these things easily.  Some small businesses might be able to pay their workers much better than is the norm and still make significant profits for the owners or managers, yet there could be small businesses that legitimately struggle to pay a genuinely livable wage that allows for meeting all basic needs, saving money, and some spending on "non-necessities" like entertainment and events with friends that ironically make life actually enjoyable.  If a small business cannot afford to pay people a salary or wage that is livable, though, then that business should not stay open.

Even a small business cannot deserve to remain in operation if its survival can only be ensured by underpaying or otherwise exploiting workers.  Greed, incompetence, and philosophical stupidity can characterize small businesses just like companies with more resources to spare, though of course neither is fated to lapse into these things.  Malicious or egoistic small businesses leaders might just directly pretend like their companies being small somehow legitimizes their workplace exploitation.  Benevolent but naive or outright idiotic small business leaders who are unable to pay well, in contrast, might not realize what they are doing if they hire multiple employees with low wages instead of perhaps hiring one or a handful of workers to do the tasks, but with superior pay.  There is a difference in worldview and personality here, yes, but some of the consequences are the same for workers.

Either kind of small business owner, if exploitation is indeed immoral, does not deserve to have their company last.  The "small business excuse," as I call it, is invalid by necessity in either case because the company still engages in some of the same unjust or otherwise irrational practices, still has idiotic philosophical motivations behind it, and tries to escape condemnation just by pointing out its size.  A struggling small business is not itself something to loathe.  A well-meaning small business owner/leader would not merit the same kind of hostility of a more explicitly egoistic small business owner even if both of them have some of the same idiotic ideologies, goals, or habits.  Because of this, at the same time, any small business that is not able or prepared to give its workers livable compensation is indulging in the same lunacy as the massive corporations with leaders who think their whims dictate the truth about morality, business, and people.

The bigger the company, the easier it would be to offer truly "competitive" wages, yet the easier it is for someone with power to trample on others and have their deeds and worldview concealed or avoid opposition quite stern enough to deter them.  The smaller the company, the less likely it is that a job can support multiple employees with livable pay and strong benefits, yet the easier it is to invest in a small, focused pool of workers.  Whether a small business actually sacrifices quantity of workers for quality of workers and compensation alike is decided by each individual owner/leader.  Some of them will erroneously believe in the small business excuse, using it as an illusionary shield to protect their feelings or reputation from criticism.  Others can choose, if they are rational and committed enough to do so, to take advantage of the smaller structure and size of their businesses to better invest monetarily and otherwise in a potentially lower number of workers.