I keep hearing the tagline ‘The Age of the Entrepreneur’ to promote the home based business industry, which, don’t get me wrong, is a great idea, but let’s think about this logically..

Communities often complain that the big superstores are going to move in and close down all of the smaller, family run businesses through their cheaper prices. The age of the entrepreneur is a thing of the past! All families WERE entrepreneurial pretty much by default. There was an array of butchers, locksmiths, barbers etc.. Family run businesses, with entrepreneurs at the helm.. And loads of them!

In 1908, a lovely man named Henry T Ford created his first assembly line for his new automobiles and things began to change. I’m not sure if Mr. Ford is wholly responsible for what happened next but he is the most revered industriallist for a change in production techniques. He, possibly unwittingly, started the age of the employee, which we are still in. He and his droogs were the innovators of creating massive systems with employees doing very small and highly repetitive tasks for hours on end, in order to create maximum efficiency. Something very apparent still today.

It does make me worry when people are proud of their title at work. If they stopped and realised that it is just a verbalisation of which cog in someone’s machine you are, they might not be so proud… Ok, you’re right, that probably is a little unfair, these people do work hard and deserve all the success they get. I am just trying to illustrate the reality of what a job title really is.

So why is there such a demand for employees again?.. To get a big job done?.. Yes, in essence, but it is even more about leverage. As the employer you get to dictate what you percieve to be the value of the employee.. That is called a wage, payable in fiat currency. A wage is the amount that an employer wants to pay you so that he can maximise his profit when he sells the output of his system, it is not the true value of the work that you do nor what you offer the employer. If it was, there would be no profit for the employer, how would he buy his personal luxury goods or second or third home?

I hear you all cry ‘but there is security in being an employee.. At least you can count on the wage to pay your bills each month’. Well the logic is good, but in reality we all know different. How many people have, in essence, had to fund the survival of their employer’s system directly.. By means of a drop in wage? If you think what that really is another way around.. You should still be getting what you agreed to in your contract as means of payment for your services, but the employer wants you to pay him x amount to finance his system.. Do you see what I am saying? Will you get a share dividend in future company profits, when the crisis is over, for your investment in the company? I doubt it!

Sorry, I’m ranting. So… the ‘Age of the Entrepreneur’ is technically over, it all happened prior to the assembly line. But, what I think is far more exciting is the ‘Employee Rebellion’ that is occuring, seeing a vast increase in people searching for the entrepreneur route. We have all been to school and some of us through university, where we are all taught how to become the best employees, but still there is this cultural shift. I love and believe it to be highly empowering for us all!