The Challenges to Business Success in America

Cliff Ennico
Mon, 19 Jun 2023 21:00:00 -0700
Lifestyle

I have been writing this column for over 21 years and have seen a lot of changes. But nothing as dramatic as what I'm seeing now.

America's entrepreneurs and small businesses have overall done a beautiful job of adapting to many upheavals in technology, society and consumer behavior. But there are some storm clouds on the horizon — five in particular — that will determine whether or not the entrepreneurial spirit has a future in this country.

THE RESUMPTION OF HISTORY
Updated: Tue Jun 20, 2023

I have been writing this column for over 21 years and have seen a lot of changes. But nothing as dramatic as what I'm seeing now.

America's entrepreneurs and small businesses have overall done a beautiful job of adapting to many upheavals in technology, society and consumer behavior. But there are some storm clouds on the horizon — five in particular — that will determine whether or not the entrepreneurial spirit has a future in this country.

THE RESUMPTION OF HISTORY

At the turn of the millennium, we all were seduced by the idea that America won the Cold War and that liberal democracy put an end to the "four horses of the apocalypse" (look it up). Since then, we have seen the steady triumph of autocratic regimes in Russia, China, the Middle East and Latin America, war in Ukraine and a global pandemic that wiped out millions of people worldwide. Countries once that looked at America for inspiration now laugh at us openly or write us off as yesterday's news. Democracy is the exception, not the norm. Same as it ever was.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

So much has been written about artificial intelligence that I'm almost afraid to add my voice to the general hubbub. But from what little I've seen so far (a number of my clients use ChatGPT, but I haven't yet), I think a few observations are fairly safe:

No. 1: Like all new technologies, artificial intelligence software is being way overhyped. To read some of the literature, it almost seems as if everyone will be losing their jobs tomorrow. Won't happen, at least not for a long while. Yeah, it's cool, and there's always a flood of startups trying to capitalize on the "thrill of the new." But most of them crash and burn after the inevitable correction occurs. (Remember 2001 and 2002? You couldn't give away a web-based business then.) The same will happen with AI.

No. 2: ChatGPT and similar programs seem to be terrific research tools. After all, they can scour the entire internet and digest it all in a matter of seconds. But does superior research lead to a better output? Will it contain errors or distorted results because much of what the AI looked at on the internet was false or misleading content? As we've been saying since the first computer: "Garbage in, garbage out."

No. 3: The truly scary thing about AI is that it might end up believing most of the crap it sees on the internet and base its output on false, misleading or corrupt foundations. At that point, AI will become human.

THE RISE OF THE AT-HOME WORKER

Yes, I know companies are trying to corral people back into the office again, but I do believe the COVID-19 pandemic irrevocably changed the way employees look at their jobs. Large offices in downtown hubs reachable only by long-distance commutes are a thing of the past. Take it from someone who once had a two-hour commute to work each day but who has been working from his spare bedroom for 27 years — once you experience working from home, you can't go back.

THE EMBRACE OF EUROPEAN-STYLE SOCIALISM AND BIG GOVERNMENT

A growing number of Americans, and especially younger Americans, have developed a distrust of capitalism and are increasingly willing to embrace socialist and centrist models of government. Why this is so is a mystery. The American economy has run rings around the socialist/statist model in Europe and Latin America, and anyone who has ever studied history knows that embracing socialist economics almost always leads to economic stagnation and, eventually, authoritarian government.

Yes, capitalism, if allowed to run rampant, does lead to an intolerable level of inequality. But a mildly regulated capitalist economy will outperform government direction and industrial policy 10 ways till Tuesday, and any system that stops growing starts dying. As Milton Friedman said, "A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." Or as my own reading and experience of history has taught me: Socialism does not bring up the bottom third of society; it brings down the top third.

THE WAR AGAINST ANIMAL SPIRITS

Which segues perfectly into my last observation, that American society these days prioritizes safety and risk aversion over the personal values that lead to successful entrepreneurial ventures. To put it bluntly, entrepreneurs are wild and crazy people. They are often socially unacceptable if not borderline insane. They are not "average" or "normal." They do not give a rat's patootie about what other people think of them. Which is why they succeed where most normal people fail (or, more commonly, fall into the fat, middle, bell-curve tier of humanity that, as Teddy Roosevelt once observed, "knows neither victory nor defeat").

Don't get me wrong: I have zero tolerance, as you should, for any behavior that abuses other people. But sometimes the most successful people in life are those with the sharpest elbows, the ones who reach their goals and apologize later (or better, do some good for the ones they bypassed). There is a big difference between aggressive and "toxic" behavior, and I worry that today's young people are not learning that. Faint hearts never built a billion-dollar business, or successfully ran for public office.