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What Happened to Society's Life Script
In the fifties, the American dream was, for the vast majority of people, pretty obvious. You find a job with the main employer of the town, whether that was a coal mine or a factory or a railyard or whatever the case may be. You marry, if not literally the girl next door, then something close; maybe a high school sweetheart. If you were a woman you were then expected to stay home and be a housewife, and except for a few very highly-female coded jobs, that's just what you did. If you were a man you might have been required to serve in the army beforehand, but few people went to college; only if you were wealthy and/or very, very smart. It mostly wasn't your decision either way, about any of it. 'Should I go into the military, or skilled labor, or go to college?' wasn't a question very many people had to ask; usually what you did next after finishing high school was readily apparent, often literally by having only a single option or a very small set thereof. If you did have the opportunity to go to college- most people didn't- both the university and your parents had much more say in what you did there. And I think we should note- the vast majority of people here could find respect as a worker bee. This is important because the vast majority of people have to be worker bees to have a functioning society.
Today, that is not the case. Everyone who wants to can go to university, or near enough. Many people stay in university long past the point at which it does any good, in point of fact. The military is 100% volunteer, and few people live with access to a single major employer. Young people can't find spouses, and these days don't seem to be able to blunder into relationships either. Every individual can, with certain reasonable limits, do what he wishes, and nobody with institutional power seems keen to say no, that's stupid, do this instead.
And it seems that we have lost something, there. Occasionally conservative pundits will start talking about the success sequence- finish high school, work full time, get married, and then have children. There's some other obvious things that go along with it, like 'don't do drugs'. But the gist of the success sequence is, well, a (somewhat vague)life script. And realistically the success sequence is the sort of thing our culture should be putting more effort into promoting; it isn't the default message despite every idea therein being a good one.
I think the youth agree with me, here. Jordan Peterson's popularity, notoriously, came from offering boomer dad advice. Recently there's been discussion of positive male role models to replace Andrew Tate; Andrew Tate's pitch isn't much different from tons of other redpill influencers. What's different is he's selling 'you, too, can be like me, just do x, y, z'. Obviously he's a lying grifter, but his fanbase are mostly teens. What replacement for his (dumb)life script are these positive male role models offering? The pro-social version of Andrew Tate isn't the male feminist activist. It's Mike Rowe.
Unfortunately, "work hard, at a quite possibly unpleasant job" isn't a great sales pitch. But I want to circle back to the point I made ending my discussion of the fifties- most people have to be worker bees. In a functioning society there are few girlbosses because there simply are not very many bosses- the average person will always make the median income, live a not particularly impressive lifestyle, and live in flyover. To put it more pithily, average people will always be average. And being average isn't, well, a flashy and appealing thing. In the past, lack of options meant people became average worker bees. Today, people have the option not to do that; they may not be Indian chiefs and fighter pilots and surgeons and other high status jobs instead, but they're being something, and usually that something is below average, gig workers and basement dwellers. It has to be said, therefore- most people can't figure it out on their own. For every unrecognized genius there's a dozen schizos. Boring middle-aged advice serves a useful purpose; to throw out the social pressure to follow it was a mistake. The question becomes, then, 'how do we bring it back?'
Housing Prices in most affluent Western countries have combined with the deterioration of the sexual marketplace and decline of employer-employee relations to cause this, though. I'd love it if my lifepath was getting an okay sinecure somewhere here, making 75th percentile wage for my country and buying a free-standing house and get some kids going.
Instead in order to achieve the unfathomable wealth required to buy a free-standing 3bedroom house somewhere within an hour's drive of my CBD I've had to do pretty well in the startup lottery and pick a fairly disreputable industry on top of that. The system no longer facilitates the normal path.
The Western World seems to be following Asia in many important ways.
#1 is sexlessness, apathy, and cratering fertility.
#2 is the meme that there is a narrow path to success, which runs only through approved channels.
They say that, to succeed, you have to get into a top school, get a specific corporate job, etc... And only like 10% of people can do that. By definition, high class jobs are only available to a few.
But riches have never been easier to obtain in the U.S. (can't comment on your specific country). A motivated young person can easily earn $300k annually by age 30. Not as a doctor, not as a lawyer or consultant, nor as a software engineer. But it's quite possible, even trivial. The catch is that you have to work in a disfavored trade such as tire repair, HVAC, or construction. Every year thousands of boomer millionaires retire, selling their incredibly profitable businesses for a pittance. You can buy a business doing $500k in profit for $1.5 million. Don't have a $1.5 million? Seller financing is available.
No one wants to do it because they want a path. They want someone to tell them what to do. They want to take some bullshit test, and then get that sinecure. There was a brief time in a few select countries where that was possible. The post-war boom was a unique time in history. But it's not coming back. Welcome to zero sum world! Unless you are talented, you have to forge your own path now. No one's going to give it to you.
Can you though? I've recently started watching these things, and the closest I've seen is a business with $700k revenue selling for $3 million. Supposedly "highly profitable" but I doubt the profit reached $500k.
Sure. Here you go: https://www.bizbuysell.com/Business-Opportunity/profitable-landscape-business-for-sale/2147774/
$300k/yr cash flow selling for $900k. Comes with $500k of equipment and over a million of signed contracts. Caveat emptor.
I'm confused about the business you are referring to. $700k/yr revenue for $3 million is a joke. Is this software? Because if not, no one is touching that. Standard price for a small business is 3-4x PROFIT not revenue. Reality check: you are expecting to actually run the business and not just collect checks, right?
Do I recommend buying this specific business or any business that is actively shopping itself? No. But this is an iceberg situation. For every business shopping itself, there are 10x more for sale. They are just begging for someone halfway competent to take over and continue their legacy.
If it's that good, I'd wonder why the guy is selling up. The link says that they invested a lot recently. Unless it's that he wants to retire or there is some other reason (family problems, health, so forth) to sell up now, I really would check out why he's selling this off.
Maybe there's problems coming up like new regulations, rent increases, or people giving up their contracts once they expire because they're cutting costs. You might buy this expecting to continue on with the million worth of contracts, only to find that half those contracts are due to expire and won't be renewed.
It's to fleece people that @jeroboam is "helping" with this "it's EZ to buy a business" nonsense.
The macro theory that retiring Boomer's are selling profitable businesses is true. But the devil is always in the details. There are toxic pills in so many of these businesses and, because markets eventually optimize to information, there are emerging small / micro PE firms that will blow you out of the water because they don't need to finance the way a solo-preneur does. It's a similar formula to what has happened in housing - it's not that you're competing on buying a house with another young couple, it's that BlackRock is coming to town with all cash offers sight unseen 10% above asking.
Again, it's about risk and number of opportunities. There are numbers aplenty for "1 out of every 10 startups" makes it. Fine. I want to see numbers for "of people who started a business 1/2/3/4+ times, here's how they make out"
We shouldn't shy away from risk and failure as a country. We should encourage it. The real evil of MegaCorp jobs is they slow feed you a median outcome when, if it were possible to weather some storms a little better, you might eventually catch a wave.
Color me skeptical. While PE is rolling up certain kinds of businesses, they are not buying landscaping and tire repair shops at the $1 million level. They aren't going to buy anything that depends on the sweat equity of the owner.
Financing as a solo-preneur is not prohibitive. There are SBA loans. There is seller financing. You can do it for 10-20% down, maybe less.
It's not "EZ" nor did I claim it was. That's why people don't do it. Most people would rather earn W2 income where someone else has all the responsibility and they just show up and drone.
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