Corporate Employment vs. Self-Employment
Henry Ford compares the freedom and dignity of an employee to that of a businessman and finds the life of a businessman sometimes inferior to that of an employee:
I am sometimes asked whether it is better to go into business for oneself, or to take employment. Employment as a career competes with private business in a way which few realize. Employment now offers a career such as men sought in their own business and often failed to attain. The very growth of business has tended to give employment a status which even business ownership did not have fifty years ago. A great deal of nonsense had been written about the freedom of the workman under the old system. The old-time guild system held nothing of the ideal. The union rules and repressive tradition of that system weighed heavily alike upon master and man, and led to little satisfaction for the individual and to no prosperity for society.
—Henry Ford, Today and Tomorrow
It is still fashionable for employees to dream of striking out on their own, while those who actually run businesses would cast off the cares of accounting and compliance and making payroll and marketing to focus on practicing their trade and serving customers.
Perhaps it is just another case of the grass always being greener on the other side.
But who has greater potential for fulfillment? The employee who can engage in work they have passion for while (relatively) unencumbered by mundane business cares, or the business owner who is struggling with sales or taxes or accounting and barely has time to think about their primary service?
There is potential for fulfillment, as well as risk, in either path.
