A few months back there was a lot of talk about a bank or other company being “too big to fail.” Along with that talk is a lot of concern about “big government”.
Personally, I think the conversation is a bit shallow. People haven’t fully thought this through, in my humble opinion, which I admit isn’t so humble.
If big is bad….then the logic needs to go the full way.
I’m concerned about companies that are supposedly too big too fail and I have long been a trust buster, as Teddy Roosevelt might have said. I’m against big government, in part because I’m too cheap to pay for it and in part because it is often inefficient. But I’m also against big…well, almost all big organizations. I understand how these become big, and in some ways I understand and value the economies of scale that accompany them. I’m thankful that big has brought us the MacBook I’m writing on, the internet I’m posting this through, the car I’ll drive home in, and any number of other things. But ultimately, idealistically, I’m pretty much anti-big.
For instance, most of the really conservative people I know work for huge companies. How can they be anti-big government yet pro-big business? Not logical.
Most of the really liberal people I know are for big government. Yet they protest at the World Economic Forums and G-20 meetings. Um, don’t you see the illogic of that?
So, without being an anarchist, which is just silly, I’m anti-big. I like slow food, and that by its very nature means small local farmers producing higher quality. I like small locally owned banks, hospitals, retirement homes, and gas stations. I like small businesses because the good ones offer better service and often better quality. I like small to medium size churches because they create community and can better meet the specific needs of a niche market. I like small non-profits because the well run ones are closer to the people they serve and better understand the real need.
Please, don’t get me wrong. I admire my friends who run large organizations from banks to tech companies to World Vision to Opportunity International to any number of pastors of large churches. I also like the people I know who work in the “big” government. It’s just that I prefer working with the small organizations because I believe they are more effective pound for pound, and they are much less dangerous when they fail.
Currently my company is dealing with a “too big to fail” bank. What’s particularly galling to me is that this bank is running ads saying that “we’ll be there for you.” Um, no, you are not. In fact, you are zealously making my life difficult so that you can maximize profit. And you are putting investors, employees, families, indeed an entire community at risk. How, exactly, is this the partnership you promised when we started doing business with you? The other galling part is when a guy who helped run his bank into bankruptcy is insisting on managing my business his way. Don’t they see the irony of that?
This idea of big organizations is relatively new to our world. In his book, “The Future of Management”, Gary Hamel writes: “The idea of spending your entire life working for somebody else would have seemed strange, even repugnant, to most Americans living before the Civil War. In the 19th Century, America was a republic of the self-employed…Manufacturers, as the census described them, typically employed no more than three or four individuals.”
That would be great! I know, I know…it’s not realistic in todays modern society and modern economy. But one can dream, right? Because let’s face it, often these big companies and big organizations become too big too fail. Which means we pay for their sheer size. All the economies of scale promised from such institutions is just a discount now that we pay later.