THE WASHINGTON UNION PAPERS: NO. 18

SMALL BUSINESS & LOCALIZED CAPITAL: A TRUE PRO-GROWTH MODEL

To the People of the United States,

A nation that does not control its own economy is a nation that does not control its own future. And a nation that does not cultivate its small businesses, its local industries, its homegrown enterprises, is a nation that has surrendered its prosperity to forces beyond its command. There was a time when America understood that real economic strength did not come from the boardrooms of multinational corporations, nor from the speculative gambling of financiers who trade wealth without creating it. Real economic strength is found in the small business owner, in the family-run enterprise, in the skilled tradesman whose labor fuels the community in which he lives. It is found in the localized flow of capital that ensures wealth is not extracted from a town, but reinvested in it, allowing the engines of commerce to turn with the momentum of the people who sustain them.

But we have abandoned this understanding. We have allowed Wall Street to dictate the terms of our economic survival, allowed multinational conglomerates to crush competition with the force of monopoly, allowed financial institutions to consolidate the means of capital in their own hands, depriving small businesses of the resources they need to grow, expand, and prosper. We have allowed economic centralization to replace local self-reliance. And in doing so, we have not merely weakened our economy—we have weakened our republic. For when small businesses fail, when local industry collapses, when the means of prosperity are concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, the power of the people is diminished, and democracy itself is placed at risk.

Let us be clear: No great nation has ever built its prosperity upon corporate consolidation. No empire of strength has ever been sustained by an economy dictated by a handful of financial titans whose primary loyalty is to their own bottom line rather than the people whose labor makes wealth possible. A thriving economy is not constructed in the vacuum of corporate boardrooms, where decisions are made with spreadsheets and profit margins divorced from the realities of those who toil beneath their dictates. It is not dictated by multinational conglomerates whose allegiances shift with the tides of global finance, forsaking domestic interests whenever a foreign market offers cheaper labor or fewer regulations. True economic power is found not in the balance sheets of distant executives but in the hands of those who work, who create, who risk everything not for stock buybacks and executive bonuses, but to sustain their families, their communities, and their country.

The history of American wealth was not written by corporate giants alone, nor was it sculpted by those who saw economies as mere instruments of financial engineering. It was written by those who built—not with calculations of quarterly earnings, but with their hands, their sweat, and their ingenuity. It was forged in the small towns where craftsmen, artisans, and laborers transformed raw materials into the goods that made a nation thrive. It was cultivated in the workshops and storefronts where independent entrepreneurs, with little more than their skills and determination, provided the services and innovations that gave rise to entire industries. It was reinforced by the small manufacturers who refused to accept that only scale determined success, by the farmers who saw land not as an asset to be traded but as a legacy to be cultivated, by the merchants who invested not in abstract financial instruments but in the tangible prosperity of their neighbors.

America did not rise to economic supremacy through financial manipulation or monopolistic dominance, but through a relentless commitment to industriousness, competition, and local enterprise. The first steel mills, the earliest automobile workshops, the pioneering technology firms—none of them were born out of government-subsidized corporate empires. They were founded in garages, in small production facilities, in rented buildings by men and women who saw obstacles not as barriers but as challenges to overcome. They were built by individuals who did not have the luxury of failure being absorbed by a bureaucratic safety net, but who understood that their success or failure rested upon their own determination, innovation, and resilience.

What made America’s economy great was not its size alone, nor its accumulation of capital in the hands of a few. It was the decentralization of opportunity, the widespread accessibility of entrepreneurship, the belief that a worker could become a business owner, that a business owner could become an employer, and that economic success was not the exclusive domain of those born into privilege. This system did not merely benefit the entrepreneurs—it strengthened entire communities. When small businesses thrived, towns flourished. Schools were built, roads were paved, local charities were funded, and an entire network of interdependent economic activity emerged, ensuring that wealth was not siphoned to distant capitals, but reinvested where it was created.

Yet today, we are told that this model is obsolete. That the future belongs to corporate giants, to megabanks, to monopolies that have swallowed industries whole. We are told that consolidation is necessary, that small businesses must give way to corporate efficiency, that the corner store must yield to the chain retailer, that the local factory must be shuttered in favor of global supply chains that stretch across oceans and answer to no one. But history warns us of the perils of such thinking. No nation that has abandoned its local industries, that has surrendered its small businesses to the predations of monopolistic greed, has ever maintained its prosperity for long. The great civilizations that once dominated commerce—the Venetians, the British Empire, the early industrialists of the 20th century—each saw their dominance wane when they allowed financial speculation to outpace real production, when they allowed wealth to be hoarded rather than invested, when they placed efficiency above resilience, scale above competition, monopoly above self-sufficiency.

We must reject the notion that consolidation is inevitable, that small business is a relic of the past, that financial empires must rule our economy as kings once ruled nations. The path forward is not through the ever-growing accumulation of corporate power, but through the revitalization of local economies, through the reinvestment in the small businesses that have always been the backbone of American strength. We must ensure that opportunity is not dictated by the whims of conglomerates, that prosperity is not measured solely by stock indexes, but by the well-being of the communities where business is done not by faceless institutions, but by neighbors, by craftsmen, by entrepreneurs who understand that a nation is only as strong as the people who are given the chance to build it.

But now, in the name of efficiency, in the name of globalization, in the name of free trade agreements that do not serve those who labor but those who extract, we have turned our backs on the very economic model that made us strong. We have allowed credit to be hoarded by banks that lend not to small businesses, but to corporate giants who have no need for assistance. We have permitted small enterprises to be strangled by regulations that the wealthy can evade, but which crush the dreams of the independent entrepreneur. We have tolerated a system in which those who seek to build must fight for survival, while those who have already amassed fortunes are granted endless avenues to expand their dominance.

This is not an economy built on growth. It is an economy built on stagnation, on exclusion, on the slow but relentless consolidation of wealth into hands that have long since ceased to labor for it.

It is an economy where capital moves in endless circles among the privileged few, where investment is not directed toward production but toward speculation, where opportunity is rationed not according to merit, but according to proximity to power. It is a system that does not reward those who work, who innovate, who create—it rewards those who already possess, who already control, who have mastered the art of extracting value without adding to it. It is not an economy of builders. It is an economy of takers.

And it must end. The United States cannot remain a nation of free people if it ceases to be a nation of economic opportunity. Freedom is not merely the right to vote, nor is it merely the absence of political oppression. A man who cannot afford to support his family, who cannot start a business without being crushed by corporate competitors, who cannot accumulate wealth because every avenue of advancement has been monopolized, is not truly free. He may possess the legal right to strive, but that right is rendered meaningless if the system is rigged against him, if the doors of opportunity have been locked, if the playing field has been tilted so dramatically that his labor enriches others while leaving him struggling to survive. Economic liberty is the foundation of all other liberties, and without it, democracy is a hollow shell.

We cannot claim to stand for liberty while our markets are governed by monopolists. A nation that allows wealth to be concentrated into fewer and fewer hands is a nation that has already betrayed its promise. The great industrialists of the past, for all their ambition, at least built industries that employed millions, that constructed infrastructure, that forged the material wealth upon which this country grew. But today’s economic titans do not build—they acquire. They do not invest—they consolidate. They do not create—they consume. They buy out competitors rather than compete, they manipulate markets rather than develop them, they crush small businesses rather than foster them. And the government, rather than acting as a safeguard against such consolidation, has instead become its enabler, weakening antitrust laws, rolling back regulations, and allowing the most powerful corporations to dictate the very rules that govern them.

We cannot call ourselves champions of the working man while our policies favor only those who sit in the halls of financial power. The average American has been left to compete in a rigged game, where wages remain stagnant while corporate profits soar, where job security has been replaced with gig work and temporary contracts, where the very people who produce wealth are denied a fair share of it. The financial elite, entrenched and insulated from the struggles of ordinary citizens, have turned economic policy into an instrument of self-preservation. Bailouts are given not to the worker who has lost his job, not to the small business that has been strangled by corporate encroachment, but to the megabanks that gamble recklessly with the economy as their personal casino. Tax loopholes are crafted not to benefit the struggling entrepreneur, but to ensure that billionaires can shelter their wealth in offshore accounts while the working class shoulders the burden of funding the nation.

This is not how a free economy is supposed to function. A true market rewards those who contribute, who risk, who innovate—not those who merely sit atop pre-existing empires and drain them dry. A healthy economy is one where success is earned, where capital is invested in productivity, where growth is broad-based and not concentrated in the hands of a financial aristocracy. But today’s system rewards hoarding over investment, speculation over production, consolidation over competition. It discourages risk-taking among the enterprising while guaranteeing protection for the entrenched. It crushes ambition in the name of efficiency and ensures that those who have already amassed vast fortunes will never be challenged by those who might seek to build their own.

The consequences of this stagnation are clear. Innovation slows, entrepreneurship declines, social mobility grinds to a halt. The American Dream, once defined by the belief that hard work and determination could lead to prosperity, has been reduced to a relic of the past. In its place stands a new reality: one in which success is not achieved, but inherited; in which power is not earned, but consolidated; in which the economy does not lift all boats, but merely allows a privileged few to build ever-higher walls around their own castles of wealth.

This must not be the fate of our republic. We must reclaim the promise of economic opportunity. We must restore competition, dismantle monopolies, and ensure that no single entity, no single industry, no single class of financiers holds dominion over the American economy. We must recognize that the true strength of a nation lies not in the wealth of the few, but in the prosperity of the many. We must take back the economy from those who have perverted its purpose, from those who seek only to control and extract, and return it to those who seek to build, to create, to expand the bounds of human potential. For without economic justice, without true opportunity, without a market that serves the people rather than a people who serve the market, there can be no lasting freedom.

The path forward is clear. We must decentralize capital. We must break the stranglehold that Wall Street has placed upon American enterprise.

We must ensure that financial power flows not into the coffers of speculative financiers, but into the hands of those who seek to build, to create, to grow businesses that serve their communities rather than extract from them. This is not anti-business; it is pro-growth. It is not radical; it is necessary. The government’s role must not be to pick winners and losers, nor to subsidize failure while punishing effort, but to create an environment in which small businesses can compete, in which capital is accessible to those who will use it to create jobs rather than to hoard wealth, in which local economies thrive because they are sustained by the people who live within them.

This means reforming the financial system so that community banks and credit unions are strengthened, not undermined, so that lending practices favor small businesses rather than multinational monopolies, so that capital flows through communities rather than being siphoned away to the balance sheets of global corporations. It means breaking up the monopolies that have turned entire industries into private fiefdoms, where competition is crushed before it can emerge. It means ending the absurdity of tax policies that reward outsourcing while punishing local investment. It means empowering small businesses with the same tools and incentives that have long been handed to corporate giants under the false promise that prosperity will trickle down rather than be cultivated from the ground up.

This is not a call for government handouts. It is a call for economic justice. The difference is stark, and it must be understood. A government handout is an act of charity, a temporary solution to a problem that demands structural reform. It is a bandage placed over a wound that will continue to fester if the root cause is not addressed. Economic justice, on the other hand, is the recognition that opportunity must not be concentrated in the hands of the privileged few, that prosperity must not be treated as an inheritance reserved for those with pre-existing wealth. It is the affirmation that capitalism is not meant to function as a closed-loop system, where capital begets more capital for those who already hold it, but as a dynamic force where those who create value are allowed to reap the rewards of their labor.

It is a demand that the playing field be leveled, that the same access to credit, to resources, to opportunity be afforded to the entrepreneur, to the tradesman, to the small manufacturer as is given to the financial elite who have long since ceased to produce anything of value. In its ideal form, a free market does not choose favorites. It does not tip the scales in favor of one class while imposing insurmountable burdens upon another. Yet, that is precisely what we have allowed to happen. Banks, once the engines of local investment, now prioritize lending to the wealthiest firms while denying credit to the very individuals whose success would yield the greatest economic benefit to their communities. Regulatory frameworks, written by those who already dominate their industries, have been designed not to promote competition, but to stifle it—to ensure that those who already control the market will never have to contend with an upstart who might dare to challenge their supremacy.

Economic justice demands an end to this rigged system. It demands that the barriers erected to preserve corporate monopolies be dismantled. It demands that the regulatory framework of this country cease to be a tool of exclusion and once again become a means of ensuring fair competition. It demands that financial institutions fulfill their intended role as facilitators of commerce and innovation, rather than gatekeepers who hoard access to capital for those who least require it. It demands that tax policies cease to punish small enterprises while granting loopholes and shelters to multinational conglomerates. It demands that we cease the absurd practice of allowing economic empires to be passed down like noble titles in a feudal system, ensuring that the wealth of the nation remains fluid, dynamic, and available to those who seek to contribute to its expansion rather than those who simply wish to extract from it.

It is a declaration that America will not be ruled by economic dynasties, that the economy exists to serve the people, not the other way around. The promise of America was never that a small handful of families would hoard generational wealth, that their fortunes would be shielded from risk while the rest of the population was subjected to the brutal reality of economic instability. The promise of America was that any man, any woman, who possessed the determination, the skill, the drive to create something new, to innovate, to produce, to provide, would be given a fair chance to do so. That is the foundation of a free economy. That is the promise upon which this nation built its early industries, upon which it expanded from a fledgling collection of states to an industrial powerhouse. And yet, over the course of the past century, we have allowed this promise to erode. We have tolerated a system in which the economy has become the domain of a privileged few, where decisions about industry, about commerce, about wealth are made not by those who work and build, but by those who inherit power from their predecessors.

This is not capitalism. This is aristocracy by another name. And it must not stand.

An economy that serves the people is an economy that ensures wealth is created through effort, not mere inheritance. It is an economy where credit flows not simply to those who have accumulated vast assets but to those who have the ambition to build something new. It is an economy where government policy does not prioritize the interests of conglomerates that move capital across borders at will, but where it focuses on cultivating a resilient, self-sustaining foundation of small businesses and local enterprises that provide stable employment, innovation, and community prosperity. It is an economy where wages rise with productivity, where work is rewarded, where financial power is not so centralized that a handful of decision-makers can determine the fate of millions through speculation alone.

The fight for economic justice is not a fight for redistribution—it is a fight for fairness. It is not an attack on the wealthy, nor is it a rejection of ambition. It is, in fact, the ultimate affirmation of ambition, for nothing suffocates the entrepreneurial spirit more than an economy in which success is reserved for those who have already attained it. It is not a demand that wealth be taken from the successful; it is a demand that success be achievable for those who are willing to strive for it. It is a call to return to a system in which the economic ladder is not a mirage, where the climb is difficult but possible, where those who start at the bottom can reach the top through merit rather than favoritism.

America cannot afford to remain a nation where opportunity is restricted to the well-connected. It cannot endure as a country where financial security is available only to those whose families were wealthy enough to provide them with an advantage from birth. It cannot stand as a beacon of prosperity while operating under a system where risk is socialized but reward is privatized, where failure is punished for the common entrepreneur but subsidized for the financial elite. The time has come to break this cycle, to reaffirm the principles upon which our economic system was meant to be built, to ensure that this country remains not merely a place where wealth exists, but a place where wealth can be built, where dreams can be realized, where opportunity is a right and not a privilege.

This is not a radical vision. It is the restoration of the American economy to its intended purpose. It is the renewal of the principles that first gave rise to our prosperity. And it is the only path forward if we are to reclaim our status as a nation that truly rewards those who seek to build, to create, and to contribute to the common good. The time for empty rhetoric is over. The time for decisive action has come.

A small business-driven economy is not just about economic fairness—it is about national strength. An economy that is diversified, that is rooted in local enterprise rather than corporate monopoly, is an economy that cannot be easily destabilized, that cannot be held hostage by the failures of a few oversized institutions, that does not crumble when one financial empire collapses under the weight of its own excess. It is an economy that is resilient, that is flexible, that is built on a foundation that cannot be outsourced, cannot be consolidated, cannot be bought and sold like a commodity. It is an economy worthy of a free people.

The time has come to take back our economic sovereignty. To break the cycle of dependence on financial overlords who seek only to maximize their own wealth at the expense of national prosperity. To ensure that the means of economic opportunity are not the privilege of the few, but the right of all. Let it be said that in this generation, we did not surrender to economic feudalism. That we did not allow monopolies to dictate the terms of our prosperity. That we did not stand idly by while the very foundation of American enterprise was hollowed out and replaced with a system that rewards accumulation rather than creation. Let it be said that we chose to build, to produce, to reclaim the future—not for the powerful, but for the people.

For in the end, the strength of a nation is not measured by the obscene wealth of a few gilded oligarchs perched atop ivory towers, hoarding riches they neither built nor earned. No, the true measure of a nation is found in the prosperity of its people—the worker who toils with calloused hands but returns home with dignity; the entrepreneur who risks everything to build, to create, to contribute; the families who dream not of mere survival, but of a future rich with opportunity, security, and pride.

A nation that allows its people to struggle while a privileged class gorges itself on the labor of others is not a great nation—it is a rotting empire masquerading as a republic. It is a failed promise. It is a betrayal written in the ink of every unchecked bailout, every tax loophole for the powerful, every law designed not to protect the people, but to shield the ruling class from accountability.

We shall not tolerate it. We shall not be governed by greed. We shall not allow this republic to be reduced to a playground for the elite, where the laws apply only to the weak, where the wealth of a nation is siphoned into private coffers while the streets crack and the schools decay. That era of quiet submission is over. The American people will reclaim what is theirs—their wages, their industries, their dignity, their power.

We shall not rest until that prosperity is restored—not as charity, not as a temporary reprieve, but as the permanent and unshakable foundation of an economy that serves all, not just a chosen few. We shall tear down the walls of economic servitude, rip the levers of power from the hands of those who believe themselves untouchable, and forge a new order—one where work is valued, where ambition is rewarded, and where no man, no woman, no child is shackled by the greed of those who mistake themselves for kings.

The age of economic feudalism is ending. The time for reckoning has come. And when the dust settles, let the history books say that this was the moment America woke up, stood up, and took back what was always hers. The prosperity of the people is not a privilege—it is the heartbeat of a free nation. And we will not stop until it beats stronger than ever before.