The value of values: Sufficiency among single‐person businesses in the United States

Abstract

According to the cultural consensus model of business ownership in the United States, business entities seek to grow both in organization size and in revenues. To borrow the framing used by Patrick Bigger and Morgan Robertson (2017), business firms create value for their owners and/or shareholders through growth and maximization of profit, but the underlying societal value of business growth is the foundational semiotic value of the orderly conduct of US society, which, it could be argued, flows from the moralized, economic value (Braverman, [1974] 1998) of human material well‐being. In this article, I examine nonemployer (single‐person) businesses in the context of the economic values of capitalism and the fundamental societal values underlying the capitalist values. In doing so, I ask: What is the noneconomic value contributed to the United States by its 27 million nonemployer business firms? What value does the operation of a nonemployer business firm offer to its owner? My research suggests that nonemployer business firms, through practices of sufficiency, create both economic and social value for their owners. Their foundational societal semiotic value is self‐produced, material self‐sufficiency, which flows from the almost‐mythically American values of independence, freedom, and humility.

Introduction to special issue: Value, values, and anthropology

“…1. In considering the ethical and ontological presuppositions that always precede the ascription of value (Field, 2023;Rivers, 2023); 2. In taking seriously the affordances that various qualia provide to specific things when they become valued (Graber, 2023); 3.…”

“…It is likely, too, that these more basic commitments are stickier than any given ascription of value or particular social relationship. To this end, Dawn Rivers (2023) highlights the difference between the financial values that play a significant role in structuring our engagement with “the economy”—including how we approach aspects of our lives like work and education—and the “human values” that often supersede and drive much of people's work lives. Crucial to Rivers's account are the ways that ideas about what is important in life and in relationships can lead to specific work choices that often supersede, frame, and then disrupt runaway profit seeking.…”

“…In reflecting on our discussions at the Annual Meeting of the 2022 Society for Economic Anthropology as well as on the articles collected in the following pages, we suggest that there are at least six ways we can become more precise with value theory: In considering the ethical and ontological presuppositions that always precede the ascription of value (Field, 2023; Rivers, 2023); In taking seriously the affordances that various qualia provide to specific things when they become valued (Graber, 2023); In noting how the relationships that underscore value ascriptions shift when people find themselves relating not to other people but rather to imaginary social totalities such as states or national communities (Majeed, 2023; Phillips, 2023); In appreciating the weird ways that value ascriptions are often sticky despite the best wishes of a given group of people (Majeed, 2023; Phillips, 2023); In accepting how value ascriptions are often retrospective and infused with certain claims about what the past was like (Khorasani, 2023); and In reckoning with the fact that humans often occupy multiple contradictory value regimes at the same time (Dean, 2023; DuBois, 2023). …”

“…And, put a bit more simply, this special issue answers the following question: Once we accept the basic premises of value theory, what can we say that is more specific about how life works?In reflecting on our discussions at the Annual Meeting of the 2022 Society for Economic Anthropology as well as on the articles collected in the following pages, we suggest that there are at least six ways we can become more precise with value theory:1. In considering the ethical and ontological presuppositions that always precede the ascription of value (Field, 2023;Rivers, 2023); 2. In taking seriously the affordances that various qualia provide to specific things when they become valued (Graber, 2023); 3.…”