*Written in late November of 2010
Five days, yes FIVE feckin’ dias (how many other writers use Irish colloquialisms mixed with Spanish?), after her 18th birthday, she starts her own business.
Like apples? How you like THOSE apples!
So gangster.
Government program? No.
Familial bequest? Nay.
Class project? If only – her classes are too busy teaching her variations on the crack-cocaine of modern academia, Victimology 101 (Chapter 27, “Feel Sorry for This Marginalized Group”).
Instead, it’s all HER. She decided to throw up a shingle, dude, to take control of her own life.
Has a fictitious business name registered with the county, running in the UT; TWO business licenses (one for where she lives, one for where she’ll principally operate); a Board of Equalization seller’s permit; AND an Employer Identification Number from the federal gobbamint! Website. Business cards. Merchant bank account. For good measure, she’s opened a Scottrade brokerage account to funnel her profits and make them grow.
Sure, sure, you mumble, but does she have CLIENTS? Does she! Is Big Gay Heart by The Lemonheads the funniest/saddest country/punk song ever written?
Yes!
Oh, whatever, you sigh, they’re only friends kicking down for la causa.
There’s no story, no point, if the business she creates is to funnel charity her way. I mean to write, A BUSINESS. Trade. Value for value. The only way ANY society has EVER bettered itself is by way of the entrepreneur, and she has joined THEIR ranks … even if she eventually fails.
It’s easy to be an employee. Show up. Hard part’s been DID, fool.
How about creating something where there was nothing, ex nihilo? Consider this: from where you draw your income didn’t exist until someone took the risk to form that business, to give it life. My god, she’s a teen mom! D-to-the-I-to-the-Y. Do It Yourself.
She has a straight job (engineering firm), one to make extra clams (babysitting), AND as of this typing at least five gigs on tap for her business – a wedding, corporate holiday party, family shoots (she’s never met ANY of these people prior to forming a business). Let us review: she is a mere 18 years old, five days. Whoa.
The least exciting, to me anyway, part of her personal adventure is college, officialdom. She’s aglow with professorial jesuitry (remember when the prof had all the answers simply because s/he listed consonants after their last name?). She’s … learning … a … lot, I’ll admit.
What will teach her more, ultimately?
An academic insulated from market pressure can turn her on to the life of the mind, which is a good thing as far as that goes. The academic is, for the most part, a state employee who, SHOCKER, glorifies and justifies and apologizes for the state. Government good. Taxing “the rich” better (how else would the academic be paid?). Intervening in EVERYONES life for any reason what-so-ever (wars on Muslims, wars on drugs, wars on poverty, wars on undocumented immigrants, wars on obesity, etc.) fantastic, noble even. IT IS FOR YOUR OWN GOOD.
But a business person, interacting with the real world, having to make live-ammunition decisions, having to call the occasional audible, and who is creator, doer, accountant, and networker will instruct her about money, time, trade-offs, opportunity costs, consequences, and RISK – no padding, no easy landing. Messy. Most small businesses ask nothing of the state except to be left alone. Often times an entrepreneur is coerced into comingling concerns with local bureaucrats; the business person would rather be growing the economic pie than filling out forms and paying fees to support a city worker’s fat pension fund. [And I could preach and preach to her, but nothing quite wakes a person up better than the experience of dealing with ones government masters – I could audibly hear the IRS woman SCREAMING at our heroine for not answering a question quickly enough!]
Business types are absolutely vilified in state curriculum (trust me, I had to convey such drivel to my students, and I tried to show them terms like ROBBER BARONS were slurs, verbal mind fucks to ON PURPOSE dissuade pupils from anything less than full dependence on the state; a war pig like JFK, for example, is a SAINT because he implored students to “ask not,” while Carnegie, who robbed NO ONE and who made life better for MILLIONS of people, is a THUG in the official state-controlled media version). Balls.
Here, then, in microcosm is what india.irie hums is to “live inside the glow” on track 14 of her Acoustic Soul album. It’s THIS gal, the 18 year old, this go-getter, this person attempting to make her way, who generates that glow. No politics, because politics is the arena of the small and ambitious power-seeker, using social mechanisms to control another’s life. No polemics, because polemical ideations are static fuzz to those who are creating. Commerce. Unadulterated profit-making for its own sake!
*Negress head bob* Ain’t nothin’ going on but the rent. MmmmHmmm.
She’s learning the art of navigating human wants. She’s learning the science of thrift. She’s learning to manage the cosmological constant of time. She’s taking the architect’s T-square and compass, constructing a financial blueprint from ether. Her hands. Her mind. Her initiative. HER.
She described the process as effortless, fun even. FUN!
To give her ideas physical form, to satisfy the human desire to create and steer ones talents, to risk failure … this is the stuff of a good, honest life.
*
checalaloskelsos@gmail.com
Craig Edward Kelso is the author of Anarcho-Capitalism (2014), a primer on the philosophy of peaceful, stateless cooperation. His curriculum vitae include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from San Diego State University, and a Post-Baccalaureate secondary education credential in both Social Science and English Language Arts. Kelso taught for nearly a decade in the American public school system, and was voted by colleagues Teacher of the Year, twice in his short tenure, earning numerous accolades from chambers of commerce, mayors, state assembly persons, governors, congresspersons, senators, and even Wal-Mart. Currently he struggles to earn an opportunity to be employed, working as a laborer, dishwasher. He is deliriously happily married to Myra Kelso, living in Southern California with their adorable children.
checalaloskelsos@gmail.com
Craig Edward Kelso is the author of Anarcho-Capitalism (2014), a primer on the philosophy of peaceful, stateless cooperation. His curriculum vitae include a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from San Diego State University, and a Post-Baccalaureate secondary education credential in both Social Science and English Language Arts. Kelso taught for nearly a decade in the American public school system, and was voted by colleagues Teacher of the Year, twice in his short tenure, earning numerous accolades from chambers of commerce, mayors, state assembly persons, governors, congresspersons, senators, and even Wal-Mart. Currently he struggles to earn an opportunity to be employed, working as a laborer, dishwasher. He is deliriously happily married to Myra Kelso, living in Southern California with their adorable children.
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