More than just an anti-statist ideology, being a hippie meant you wanted to start something on your own whether it was a commune, health-food store or another form of new business.
Hippies were fanatic friends of new business and saw the only way to change the world was through new businesses. Not a shred of Lefty love of government in them.
Again I know this personally because my book The Seven Laws of Money brought hundreds of new hippie businesses to me for advice. They also knew that I had founded MasterCard.
I created the Briarpatch network made up of more than 1000 hippie businesses at its peak in the mid-1970s. The Briarpatch network was known throughout the hippie world at the time. It symbolized the hippy love of business.
I was invited to help start similar networks in other parts of the United States and overseas. I was invited to Western England, Amsterdam, all of Sweden and France. I also spent many years developing a Briarpatch network in Japan where organic farming was extensive. Everywhere I was invited there were small businesses ready to blossom. They simply needed to hear the idea that businesses could be open, honest and loved.
The most important part of the Briarpatch was the fact that hippies loved business. Hippies found business to be their only clear and honest vehicle for bringing about change in the world …. and they were enthusiastic.
The few hippie businesses that grew large included Nolo self help press, Greens vegetarian restaurant, Body Shop, Apple Computer, Patagonia and Whole Foods. The hippies create the organic food movement, health practices from accupuncture to yoga, rock music, Eastern religions explosion, New Age shops of every kind… and countless businesses and classes that were never seen or imagined before 1970.
It was hippies anti-statist values combined with their pro-business values that together defeated the future of Leftism.
I was there, at the center of the storm, I saw it. Today I am one of the fortunate beneficiary.
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