I have a theory about marriage and divorce-not the impulsive, never should have done that marriage instead the marriage where both are best friends and over time find they can’t make things work. Speaking from being divorced myself, all I can say is knowing the problem doesn’t always fix the situation. My theory is the missing ingredient. When you meet some one for the first time there is something both of you bring to the relationship and there are ingredients that each possess that make the relationship special. I equate the relationship with making an amazing cake for years and than over the years leaving out certain ingredients-the cake is still average but not amazing and over time it becomes a bland flavor that never satisfies. A marriage is much the same and that missing ingredient will one day change a wonderful relationship to a stale flavorless affair.

This post is not about marriage though nor baking a cake, this post is about business as the missing ingredient still applies. Starting a business is a beautiful thing, doing a service or creating a product that one is passionate about and allowing others to share in the success and passion of creating and selling that product or service. These days success and profit seem to be synonymous with greed and the evils of a capitalist society which I believe is quite sad and agenda driven but my post is not about politics its business; the good the bad and the ugly.

I miss the day of the small town merchant where everyone knows each other and goods and services can be bartered and conducted over a handshake and an IOU. I miss the days when a workers passion for a product or service amounted to a lifetime of loyalty and a company that returns the favor in assisting with the inevitable retirement of the employee. Instead, now a company uses up its employees as tools and squeezes all the passion and creativity out of them until the bottom line says the employees services are no longer cost effective. On the other side of the coin the dispassionate employee that takes advantage of a companies’ small favors and than expects that the employer owes them something. We have replaced honor and honesty with lawyers and contracts, the confidence in a pension with the instability of a 401k run by a stock market that is only interested in its own interests. No one can trust anyone, the company share holders are out to protect its shareholders, the employee is out the protect themselves and their family and the government is desperate to take as much from all of the above as it can. The bottom line has replaced common sense and loyalty, the small company that once could rely on its workers is now a hostage to its share holders, greed is a necessary evil to keep the entire network of people that all have their hands in the pot reaching for whatever is deserved or deemed deserved.

I think the problem is the fact that things get too big, too quickly and the common sense of keeping the margin down and the profits up leaves any hope for compassion or humanity as an unsustainable cost that must be managed. The small business becomes the organism that is comprised of its pieces, it can only feed itself to keep all of its pieces alive without any concern for any individual element. The competition of business motivates the company to get larger and larger and the small business is devoured until the cold unfeeling conglomerate is the only option and the small ma and pa business is not a sustainable luxury. Although honesty and integrity are beautiful things they can not compete with the bottom line which keeps the whole structure alive and although we all want these virtues to enjoy them risks losing that which we all need to live the lives we have forged which again seem too large and sustainable to support with the smaller profits and honesty of the small town business.

So what is this missing ingredient, through this whole process I have been trying to articulate in my mind and the obvious virtues of honesty, integrity and compassion are not the actual structure but more the beams that create something we have lost as our small towns turn into large cities; community. The community was the organism that could maintain its pieces and each piece gave back to the organism so the organism could keep its loyalty and compassion to its individual elements. The stock market, the corporate machine and all of the trappings of business have replaced the community, to keep this new community alive compassion and loyalty are unsustainable costs. Everything we gain we lose something and one of the most crucial products that allow people to be people is the community and I think we all need to find a way to resurrect this vital missing ingredient.