The standard trope of Lefties and hippies is that big business controls politics and that they have a cozy relationship that is often described as plutocratic.

The only way such a preposterous and erroneous idea could become prevalent is that most people don't know a successful business person.

I do. I have known hundreds of business people who have gone from small business to large business.

In many cases small business people have to learn politics because local zoning requires such learning. In nearly all cases where businesses have grown to a substantial size, the businessperson must learn politics in order to survive.

The laws, regulations, taxes and the supervision by government of a business that is large enough to be effected requires the businessperson to learn politics.

If you have just lightly followed the previous two paragraphs it should be obvious that virtually nobody goes into business deliberately to learn about politics. Businesspeople are forced to learn about politics because the political world intrudes on them in a 100 different daily ways.

I watched Larry Ellison, founder of Oracle, learn politics. He decided to build his headquarters in San Carlos, California near a small airport that he could use for his regular travel. Ellison flies his own planes and helicopters including jets.

Ellison got permission to extend the runway on this small San Carlos airport in return for building his headquarters across the road.

When the headquarters was finished and the time came to ask the local city council to expand expand the runway, the council refused.  Ellison learned politics. You do not count on political promises. Honesty and trust are not part of the political moral value system. The runway should have been extended before the building was built.

The whole point of this is that businesspeople are forced to learn politics because the moral system in the political world is radically different. The political moral system is based on bribery and corruption. Businesspeople are forced to learn this.

I wish there were a way to put up big billboards that say ‘politics and government force businesses to be corrupt because that is the way of politics’. That is not the way of business in its dealings with employees and customers.