A British friend was commenting to me on how “odd” he found the American celebration of Thanksgiving. “There is no equivalent holiday in Europe, or anywhere else in the world.” he said. “You have an entire day devoted to conspicuous consumption, where everyone anticipates eating and drinking far more than usual, and boasts about how excessive their indulgence was. It’s so quintessentially American.”
Of course, Thanksgiving Day is just a warm-up to what follows; the 
holiday shopping season. How did we become disposed as a nation to consume as a national sport?
I think it is an expression of luck. We began as a series of small settlements on the coast of the greatest treasure trove of exploitable resources on the planet. Not only did the European colonists find fertile ground for agriculture, but there was ample water, navigable rivers, vast forests and abundant minerals. Success was only limited by how smart you were, and how hard you were willing to work.
Of course there are plenty of issues of exploitation in other areas as well. Indians and slaves didn’t have the same opportunities. I’m not an apologist, and some of our history is shameful, but so is some of the history of every other nation on Earth.
For over two hundred years we’ve attracted the ambitious and creative from all over the world. They came here because they would be allowed to succeed or starve according to their abilities. After a couple of centuries some of the momentum has faded, and we are getting a bit calcified around the edges, but the abundance that has characterized our culture remains.
My clients are all small business owners. A few have outgrown any reasonable definition of “small,” but even those started out that way. Most are the founders of their companies. They set out to build a business with a set of assumptions that apply in few, if any other places on the planet.
They set up their businesses under a system of laws that protects their right to create and keep wealth. We complain about burdensome regulation and taxation, but we don’t even consider the possibility that we might be building an enterprise that someone else with better connections and political power could confiscate just because it is successful.
We have a free labor market. While unions and labor laws restrict the ultimate freedom to shamelessly exploit employees, few of us would argue that is a completely bad thing. We can compete for better workers, and give the one’s who don’t produce the right to find success elsewhere. No one tells us whom we have to hire, or forbids us the ultimate right to fire them.
We can protect our ideas and property. The concept of differentiation is basic in American business. In much of the developing world it’s difficult to develop something that isn’t stolen and copied the moment it succeeds. That includes brands, designs, and creative content. How much does it restrain an economy when its best ideas are hidden and secret?
We are free to fail. At last we are free to do so until we are “too big to fail” which by definition isn’t an issue for small business. Our business markets are still among the most Darwinian in the world. A bad idea, sloppy execution or lack of commitment can cause a small business to disappear without a trace.
What we take most for granted is our freedom to act. We live in a 
society that is predisposed to action. With an Internet connection or a small store front we can be in business in a matter of days. There is no issue getting power or communications supplied. We can hire employees without proving any ability to pay them. All that it really takes to go into business is a desire to do so.
It’s messy, and there is collateral damage when the dishonest or incompetent screw it up. That doesn’t change the fact that hundreds of thousands of people go into business for themselves every year. Most don’t make it, but if it wasn’t so easy we wouldn’t have the successes either.
So I’m thankful to live in a place and time where I can take a shot, and no one is allowed to determine whether what I choose to do is good for me or not.
