We keep hearing about "growth" being the solution to everything, along with "jobs."

If you missed it, go listen to yesterday's Blogtalk podcast; it spends the entire half-hour on this issue.

I'm an entrepreneur.  I've done everything from carrying golf bags to washing cars to programming computers to selling PCs to small, medium and large businesses.  I've pulled cable in hot warehouses, wired office buildings and repaired computers.  MCS, as a company, existed twice - once as a small computer and networking concern which operated for a few years and then was closed voluntarily as there just wasn't enough business to make it work, and then again as an ISP - when it "hit big."  I've worked for myself and I've worked for others, including Fortune 50 companies, IPO startups and, lastly, I was the CEO of my own small tech company (MCSNet.)  I've known both failure and success, as have most entrepreneurs.

I've been an employee and I've created jobs - about three dozen of them at MCSNet, prior to its sale to Winstar Communications.  And I've worked more than my share of 26-hour - and occasional 40 hour - days.

Large-company CEOs and other executives of that sort live in a different world.  They may work "relatively" long hours, but it is relative.  They fly in a private jet and are coddled in expensive suites with private cars and limousines.  Entrepreneurs don't have that sort of money to blow, and our long hours are spent huddled over a desk, writing code, interpreting business data - or humping routers into racks in our ISPs.

Big company CEOs don't get phone calls at 3:00 AM when something goes wrong - they have someone else for that.  Entrepreneurs are the ones with the pager - we're the ones who get up at 3:00 AM and go down to the data center to fix something our night guys can't handle, or just because we think we should make sure it's all ok.  We're the ones who age at three times the rate of the line guy making his 40-hour wage and we're the ones who risk our health and wealth so that other guy can have a job.  We're the ones who don't get a vacation for five straight years.

Finally, when we screw up we lose it all.  When the big company CEO screws up, he gets a golden parachute and retires to write books, living out his life with his LearJet in Monaco.

If you want people like me to create jobs you have to stop threatening to steal my capital.  I have several ideas for new enterprises, but today I wouldn't even consider committing that capital to these ventures.  Not because I might be wrong and fail - that's always a risk, and one that entrepreneurs accept as inherent in the game - but because government wishes to reserve the right to steal my capital any time they wish with their unconstitutional and outrageous mandates and demands.

Let's be very clear about this: I have every right to dissipate my capital doing nothing more or less than enjoying it, and I will do exactly that before I allow the government to steal it and give it to someone who has done nothing to deserve it.

That, Mr. Leviathan, is a promise.

So if Leviathan wants jobs then "he" has to change.  I do not have to change.  I have the option of not changing and there's nothing that Leviathan can do about it.  I have the right and the ability to dissipate my capital faster than Leviathan can seize it.  I will do so.  I therefore have the absolute right to make demands, should Leviathan wish for me to do things that would create jobs.

Chief among them is that Leviathan must stop protecting and incentivizing those who use leverage in an abusive fashion to undermine entrepreneurship.  Chief among them are tax and trade policy.  Borrowing should never be a tax-deductible act and neither should offshoring production.  In addition, compelling me as an entrepreneur to provide health coverage to all employees irrespective of cost means that the abusive leverage employed by the medical industry, including restraint of trade across national boundaries that forces me to pay for the health developments that benefit everyone in the world, falls on my lap.

I happen to prefer The Fair Tax but I'm not married to it.  A three or four-tier flat tax with no deductions whatsoever is acceptable as well.  What's not acceptable is for my competitors to receive special dispensations where they can offshore production and shift "earnings" so as to pay an effective zero tax rate on their corporate earnings, while I am forced to pay 20% or more - and then get taxed again on distributions. 

There's much more, of course, but the short version of this is that Leviathan, if it wants me to be an entrepreneur with my capital, must stop treating me as a vampiric resource to be sucked dry.

I've been there and done it.  I turned $60,000 in capital and thousands of hours in sweat equity into a business that employed dozens and paid in millions in taxes over a five year period.  Those employees not only paid taxes of their own, they spent their earnings that came about as a consequence of their employment with my firm.  We all - employee and executive - contributed to the economy and we did it without complaint.  Leviathan could have stolen that $60,000, but that's all it would have received. 

By not being a bastard, however, Leviathan received millions in tax revenue instead of $60,000 - a multiple of nearly 100 times.

Which would Leviathan prefer?

I will endeavor to do this again, and once again generate huge amounts of tax revenue - and profits - but only when I know what the terms are, and only when Leviathan stops threatening me. 

What I will not do is have my capital stolen and handed to people who have done nothing to earn it, nothing to deserve it, and who didn't acquire it as a consequence of my voluntary act of charity.

That's not negotiable, and I'm quite sure I'm not alone.