In one episode of Corner Gas, Brent mentions that he runs the only gas station for 40 km. In another episode, he mentions that he's started renting out movies because no one else in town does. When Lacey is renovating the Ruby, the townsfolk are at loose ends because there's nowhere to get a good cup of coffee. Watching this, it occurred to me that it might be easier to run a business in a very small community, because you'd be the only game in town.
This made me think of a book I'd read a while back, Big Sort. One of the points made in Big Sort was that, as a general demographic trend, people who live in less urban areas tend to prioritize self-sufficiency. The book didn't comment on entrepreneurship, but in life in general I have observed a correlation between valuing self-sufficiency and valuing entrepreneurship. In the more extreme cases, this manifests itself as thinking that applying for jobs and waiting for someone to hire you is insufficiently diligent, and what you should really be doing is starting your own business and creating your own job.
So I wonder if this entrepreneurship-über-alles attitude correlates with more rural environments, and, if so, if entrepreneurship looks more feasible to them just because the small businesses with which they're familiar are the only game in town, rather than one of three on the same block?
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Now I can leave all the comments I've saved up from work...
Some large cities are notorious for making it difficult for small businesses to start up - NYC and Toronto are both supposedly crazy that way.
It's interesting that people equate self-sufficiency with entrepreneurship. (I've noticed that, too.) Because small business owners are no more self-sufficient than any other kind of worker. Their dependency or inter-dependency just takes different forms.
I didn't even get as far as thinking about licencing and by-laws and such that cities do that makes it difficult, I was just thinking of local competition!
I wonder exurban areas might have the same effect in reverse as well. For example, one reason why I assume it's unlikely a business would succeed is that there are so many businesses I don't patronize at all. I walk by dozens and dozens of businesses every day and pay no attention to them whatsoever. So why would anyone assume people would patronize their business, even if they are good at what they do? But if you live in Dog River, you may well patronize every single business there because there are like five of them. So your normal would be that everyone patronizes every business.
In heavily populated areas like Mississauga or my old working-class neighbourhood in NYC, I look at so many small businesses and think, how do they survive? Little tiny joints selling random housewares, taking passport photos, cutting keys. And there's one around every corner! I don't know how they manage.
And yeah, in Dog River, they manage because they're the only housewares -key cutting-passport photos place in town.
I know! I've got one of those on each side of the street, plus one around the one corner and one around the other corner. (And this with two supermarkets and six chain drug stores within a five-minute walk.) They've all been there for over eight years, but it still doesn't make sense to me that any of them are surviving. Then there's things like nail salons and dinky little restaurants and yoga studios, and they all manage to survive somehow. I mean, it's a good thing, but I can't understand how it works.
Nail salons! Throw a rock in any urban area, you hit a nail salon. Is their rent $100/month? Are all the employees undocumented, so they can get away with paying them $2/hr? Are they fronts for illegal activity? If not any of these things, how do they do it?
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