I have lived for 10 years in the small town of Patzcuaro, in the central mountain highlands of Mexico. The population is about 50,000, about half of which are scattered in little satellite towns governed from the main town of Patzcuaro proper. There are certainly plenty of people without much money here, but most everyone gets by, even without much in the way of the government social services i was used to growing up in Canada. The land is fertile and most people have some, especially in the satellite towns dominated by native families, whose people have been here for many centuries. Even on small plots people have livestock, even in Patzcuaro itself. Outside of the centre of town plenty of people have a few chickens, or a couple of pigs, or a handful of goats or cows that are penned up in small quarters at night, and led out to the fields on the edge of town during the day. Now, that is a way of living i know most rich-world folk would not be comfortable with. In a future post we'll look at what kinds of limited livestock undertakings can work in urban settings, and why it would be a good idea. There are some things that can work, especially if you give the benefits the weight they deserve. Certainly the extra food and income it gives people here makes an important difference.
Patzcuaro definitely has a shortage of formal work, and what there is often doesn't pay an amount that is at all fair for the labour involved (there is a gaping vacuum between rich and poor in Mexico that leaves the poor very unprotected). So people have small informal businesses that provide enough to get by or to top up their day job income. They sell meals on the stoops of their houses, usually specializing in either breakfast, lunch, or dinner, or they have food carts they roll around, with snacks or drinks. They build tiny shops onto the fronts of their houses, no zoning required. Or, they rent a small stall in the market for cheap because it is government subsidized, or put a 'pirate' stall just outside the market for a small 'tip' to the local police. They put in hair and nail salons, or kiosks specializing in snack foods, or household goods, or fruits and veggies, or plastic items, or fresh meat or cheese, or plants. Signs are posted on telephone poles offering to repair your scooter, or wash your car, or fix anything electronic or mechanical. They have informal taxis or micro-buses. It is a chaotic commercial system, completely unregulated - reputation is everything. In the centre of town you will find more standard businesses like we're used to, owned by the rich and the growing middle class. Everywhere else there are tons of microbusinesses and people farming on the tiniest scraps of land.
I grew up partly in a small town in Canada. There, work was also hard to come by, but if you didn't find a formal job you were kind of screwed. Most of the stores in town were outlets of major chains. Their employees didn't earn much, the money mostly went to the local owner and the faceless owners of the chain or their shareholders far away. If you tried to start a small business, you had to rent an area in a commercial zone, which sucked up so much of your income your business was likely to fail in the first year. Selling meals or snacks without investing in a licensed commercial kitchen would get you shut down in no time. And having chickens in town? Are you kidding me?
Good regulation is a very good thing, but now i see that most of the small business regulation in Canada is bad. It mostly makes it hard to start a business, or to make enough money at it if you do, and rarely protects consumers from anything. Restaurant inspectors are supposed to protect you from food that's gone bad, but i haven't once gotten food poisoning from any of the small food stands here - and remember that this is the tropics. People keep clean kitchens because if word got out that their clients got food poisoning, their business would plummet. Anyhow, they cook the food right in front of you, you can see what's going on.
And really, why can't we have businesses in our homes? I would understand regulations requiring that they not be eyesores or noisy or hog all the parking, but aside from that, why not? Think of how much easier it would be to have a business if you didn't have commercial rent always hanging over your head. People think it would make their neighbourhood chaotic and maybe dangerous, but you know what? Actually you get to know your neighbours, and you start watching out for each other, helping each other out.
It is so much nicer to go get your hair cut with Martha over in #5 Yourstreet, and know you can catch up with neighbours on Fridays while you get that great homemade pizza Leslie makes on that day at #12. Maybe you'll buy a bottle of home-brew wine from Hank at #26 on Saturday when guests come unexpectedly. Too busy these days to do all your laundry and ironing? Cyril at #17 will take it in and you can pick it up the next day, plus he'll sew on any loose buttons and fix any open seams, and he's a wonder with stains. Tax season goes by easy with the help of Jackie at #33. You know your baby is in good hands at Barb's micro daycare at #8. In fact, everyone on the block helps keep an eye on everyone else's kids, which is much easier when there are always a few people home, because they work there. Break-ins? Forget about it on this block. There are too many eyes.
You know who is helped by countless regulations about where and how and when you can have a business? People who already have a successful business, especially the ones who have gotten rich at it. Not coincidentally, those are also exactly the people able to make big campaign contributions and pay for lobbyists. Instead of a few people making a lot at a business, it would be much better to have a lot of people making enough at smaller businesses to get along or top up, with job security, greater freedom, and the special satisfactions of having made something yourself, that is an expression of you.
And that doesn't just work in cities. It works just as well in small towns. In fact, now that the internet connects us all, it can even work in the countryside.
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