New technologies are constantly being created and iterated that change the way people interact in society and open new possibilities for people. An important technology that has recently emerged is the technology of micro-entrepreneurship platforms. Micro-entrepreneurship platforms are allowing people to diversity their income by creating new revenue streams that do not require significant startup capital. The United States government needs to generally support these micro-entrepreneurship platforms and make it as easy and frictionless as possible for individuals to use and make money from them.
Micro-entrepreneurship platforms like Etsy, Youtube Studio, online drop shipping stores (such as Printful), Uber, etc are allowing anyone with extremely small amounts to no capital to start business while also taking care of the legal, administrative, and often shipping/production portions of the business. They are essentially lowering the barriers to entry for individuals to engage in business activity.
Micro-entrepreneurship and micro-entrepreneurship platforms provide benefits for individuals and society. They allow people to diversify their income without accumulating large amounts of capital. Traditionally in order to create additional revenue someone had to have money to invest into stocks/bonds or buy a property to rent. These traditional avenues for earning additional revenue required large amounts of capital and were effectively out of reach for most people. But micro-enterprises allow people to start small businesses with little to no capital. Individuals without capital but with skills and knowledge can now monetize their skills or knowledge, especially their creativity.
Beyond helping people at an individual level, micro-entrepreneurship and micro-entrepreneurship platforms can also help alleviate larger issues both societal and economic. If utilized, micro-entrepreneurship can be used to help workers that have been left behind by outsourcing, technological innovation, and globalization in the past few decades. It can also help inoculate workers in the future when the same process of technological innovation and creative destruction happens again. It has the ability to help those who have traditionally been left behind. It can help take a slight burden off the social safety net by making workers that lose jobs less dependent on unemployment insurance. Workers who have more income streams and thus more income security in the sense they are not dependent entirely on one specific job for income are more likely to leave their job for another, which helps labor market flexibility and increases competition among employers to attract and retain workers.
The Federal Government should do what it can to support micro-entrepreneurship. One way the federal government can do this is by streamlining the tax code and making it as easy as possible for individuals who use micro-entrepreneurship platforms to earn additional revenue. In general the Federal and state governments should make it as easy as possible for individuals to use these platforms for income generation.
The technology to give large numbers of individuals access to micro-entrepreneurship without significant capital has emerged. The United States should embrace and encourage this development.
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