The wealthiest and most successful owners in the diverse category called "small business" are an independent lot, so it is no surprise that they rate government policies as their biggest threat.
Yes, government, the institution that bogs them down with taxes and regulations and loads them up with paperwork that goes unread. Practical as well as freedom-loving, they resent such intrusions.They are far less afraid of such things as competition, or that the demand for their products or services will diminish, or their prospects in a global economy, or that advances in technology will obsolete their best efforts.
All of this is confirmed in the latest effort to understand the entrepreneurial mind, a study of small-business owners among the wealthiest of Americans by U.S. Trust, a financial adviser to the rich.
One aspect of the study centered on threats to business. It was no contest: 88 percent said a serious threat existed in the trend of government policies and regulations. Only 55 percent felt that way about domestic competitors.
Considering the personality traits that directed them toward business in the first place, this finding is no surprise.
Entrepreneurs need freedom to think and do things their own way. They are tenacious, zealous, impatient, risk-takers. The successful ones are practical, unable to tolerate waste. They enjoy working if it is for a purpose.
Similar findings are confirmed repeatedly by other studies and surveys. That small-business people resent government intrusions, for example, is documented each month and quarter in surveys for the National Federation of Independent Business by Professor William Dunkelberg of Temple University in Philadelphia.
For certain, what these people share is a love of freedom.
Many would have as much difficulty with corporate bureaucracy as with government. Most would feel restricted in now-large companies beaing their names. Many might not be hired. Perhaps most wouldn't even apply.
Entrepreneurs are individualists who want freedom within the law to create and accomplish, and not to be hamstrung by requirements they consider foolish and unproductive and needlessy restrictive.
It isn't that they consider government evil, just that it gets in the way. If regulations were as tight as they are now, how could Jack Daniels possibly have opened his distillery when he did? He was 13 at the time.