Five sim­ple ques­tions. Some­body should be able to answer them.

1. What frac­tion of the tax base of local folks work in small fam­ily busi­nesses, DBAs, indi­vid­ual con­trac­tors, con­sul­tants, and ad hoc for-​​profit part­ner­ships are there in Ann Arbor and Washt­e­naw County? [Best you don’t step across the line into the neigh­bor­ing coun­ties, just for this par­tic­u­lar ques­tion.] I don’t mean peo­ple col­lect­ing unem­ploy­ment insur­ance, nor peo­ple on the rolls as W-​​4 employ­ees; I mean actual self-​​employed and con­tract work­ers. What fraction?
2. What pro­por­tion of the peo­ple gen­er­at­ing use­ful, lucra­tive work in the region give a damn about more star­tups? In other words, what is the pro­por­tion of actual human beings involved in your “entre­pre­neur­ial” ven­tures, com­pared to what one might call, oh, I don’t know… going ven­tures maybe?
3. What is the median rent paid by a com­pany in Ann Arbor for office space, per square foot, as a func­tion of com­pany size (in real peo­ple)? I’d like to see charts or tables, at least, and not some list of low­est pos­si­ble prices in the air­port light indus­trial ghetto. Down­town is where peo­ple talk to each other.
4. Where is one sup­posed to host a fuck­ing busi­ness con­fer­ence, if you [SPARK, the Eco­nomic Devel­op­ment Peo­ple in the Address of Fuck­ing “Inno­va­tion”] don’t have room for a pal­try 120 peo­ple in your damned “head­quar­ters” down­town in the County Fuck­ing Seat? You think the base­ment next to the bums is too crowded, you should try a damned restau­rant bal­cony sometime.
5. What have you done, recently, to inform peo­ple who are (strangely) start­ing or run­ning busi­nesses in town? I don’t mean pimp­ing for angel investors and fuck­ing land­lords, or even start­ing folks “meet­ing and greet­ing” one another in the appro­pri­ate khaki attire. I don’t mean try­ing to pick up sexy young pro­gram­mers next to the park. I mean what have you actu­ally done to help peo­ple under­stand how to pro­duce a 1099 for a friend, or file trade­mark appli­ca­tions, or pro­tect intel­lec­tual prop­erty, or set up a web­site for themselves?

Bonus ques­tion: What use are you? Not to me. To the actual community.

Here’s what I think, frankly: I think you believe in the sad, inbred pop­u­la­tion of “suc­cess­ful” entre­pre­neurs around here, who for the most part sold their com­pa­nies just before eco­nomic down­turns, or surfed their way to suc­cess on University-​​funded research spin­offs, or who come here to rent cheap office space sub­si­dized by ridicu­lous tax cred­its with­out ever plan­ning on inter­act­ing with the actual com­mu­nity. I think you believe the middle-​​aged white men who made their bucks did it because of “skill” or “dili­gence” or maybe even (among the more lit­er­ate of you) “acu­men”, instead of being lucky and ruth­less and warm­ing a cor­ner office seat while actual peo­ple did actual work down the hall in their cubi­cle war­rens. I think you believe that the local hyena’s pack of angel investors and coast-​​connected VC are the way to fos­ter “inno­va­tion” around here (just like back in the early 1970s), the way to “boot­strap the econ­omy” around here (just like the com­mer­cial real­tors “boot­strapped” on the back of dying fam­ily busi­nesses), the way to “trans­fer” “inno­va­tion” some­how to “local” busi­nesses, just like Larry and Serge might do someday.

In other words, I think you believe their sto­ries, the mythol­ogy con­cocted by nor­mal peo­ple whose rewards were won because they stood in the right place at the right time, or told the right sucker the right story under the right eco­nomic con­di­tions, or just looked right. I like the cut of your jib too, but I’m not stu­pid enough to think you have a bet­ter chance of run­ning a real com­pany than that ugly fel­low over there.

And you know, I don’t mind you falling for that clap­trap. I don’t mind you believ­ing things informed more by sur­vivor­ship bias and received wis­dom than actual facts.

What I mind is you pass­ing that crap on to use­ful, earnest, dili­gent, kids, and lead­ing them to believe they’ll be the next Google if only they work harder. That they need to find some­body to bor­row money from, to lever­age their ideas so they can grow and launch a startup and exe­cute their exit strate­gies.

Why, instead, aren’t you teach­ing them to have rea­son­able, com­fort­able lives? To work no more than eight hours a day, to invest wisely and fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tions widely, to speak respect­fully with their elders and seek insight from their peers, to share and build per­sis­tent and sup­port­ive social and cul­tural net­works locally and abroad?

I know why. Because you don’t value them. You value your investors, your angels, your land­lords and insur­ance agents. You count the num­ber of asses warm­ing chairs in prop­er­ties other peo­ple own, the num­ber of dol­lars mov­ing up the hier­ar­chy and into the mea­sur­able tax base.

What gets mea­sured gets done. The prob­lem is, you mea­sure a myth.