ADVANTAGES FOR "HOME" COMPANIES 

Two decades ago came the cry "small is beautiful". Small is becoming more and more successful in such fields as economics and business and the way they work in a communications age setting. It's also making it even more simplified and profitable to work from the home.

StatsCanada reported two years ago that 62 percent of all new net jobs were coming from companies with five or fewer employees. A year later 82 percent of new jobs came from companies with 10 or fewer employees. What's happening? At this rate in ten years more than two-thirds of the work force will consist of very small companies. With today's technology companies require few employees to produce a high dollar-value of business. A successful software company, contracting with part-time peak-level workers, even working from their own homes, can produce $5 million worth of business with only 10 employee's (more likely "partners"). That's $500,000 worth of productivity per employee per year. That has to be profitable. What is the best your current employer can expect?

Meanwhile, what is happening to the large companies that used to hire thousands, make large contributions to political parties and be the foundation of union strength?

Everything now seems to be moving to empower small companies and weaken large ones. Almost every political move speeds up the process. Technology provides laser beams to small, gazelle-like companies while speeding up action to such a level that reaction from a large, public or private organization is as slow as an elephant with arthritis. The big outfit, illiterate to the new times, ends up able to use only bows and arrows. Every new "zap!" hits them hard.

Even as governments pass new legislation to "protect" failing large companies, that very same legislation works towards the fracturing of the business world and works towards the benefit of very small companies which can be ran from the home. When laws state that "all companies with 20 or more employee's must be unionized", that gives rise to very small companies that can handle sub-contracting work for, say, a company with 15 employee's and prevent them from falling under the new "over 20 employee's" threshold of the new law. There are now dozens of such "legislative incentives" to stay small. Wasn't the way government expects the law to work, but, governments aren't into reality.

Small companies can move fast -- in or out of any community, province or country. Electrons travelling at the speed of light make it possible. Meanwhile the old system of government, requiring ever more taxes piles on more burdens for those that still play the old game. Large companies, old political parties and old (35 years plus) executives who still play the same game find empires disintegrating under their feet. An earlier column pointed out how the mere thought of an impending political action could make almost any employee an "official of the company" (and be responsible for wind-up costs of that company). This caused companies to move out of a province and caused several (17 at latest count) U.S. states to open offices in Toronto to speed up the progress by enticing companies to move to their "right-to-work" states. Suggestions which would lead to compulsory unionization of all companies in Ontario with more than 20 employees made it imperative to stay small. Little companies don't have to carry the union costs of unrealistic higher wages, rigid working regulations and the disruptive and financial burden of strikes. So the small company is continually in a position to steal some of the large organization's customers every time a problem arises. How many times can this occur before the large company becomes a bankrupt? But, more than that is happening: as more people become "clients" or "partners" they become interdependent. They become nicer to one another. Service improves. Big business can't do that.

But these imposed conditions do far more invisibly. Money moves rapidly via electronic winds to gentler isles. Entrepreneurs so urgently required to instigate and maintain a vibrant economy depart for other more attractive environs or, are convinced to move by the inducements offered by other communities, states and countries that are learning how the new game is played. To ignore what is happening, to think the old ways will eventually return, is the latest route to economic suicide. The definition of patrioti$m has been forced to switch from devotion to country to devotion to another "currency".

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