The 75-Year Mistake Is Ending

Everyone thinks entrepreneurship is risky. Corporate employment is riskier. You just can't see it because we've been living inside a 75-year experiment that's finally breaking.

The Accident

For 10,000 years, humans worked for themselves. Blacksmiths made horseshoes and got paid. Bakers sold bread to neighbors. Farmers grew crops and sold them at markets.

Then World War II happened. Building fighter planes required coordinating millions of workers under military hierarchy. It worked for winning wars. But when peace came, we forgot it was supposed to be temporary.

Corporate America kept the wartime structure. Suddenly making a living meant reporting to managers who reported to managers who never touched your product. We called it progress. It was emergency protocol that got stuck.

The Evidence

Lisa works marketing for a software company in Austin. Makes $75,000 annually. Bakes custom cakes on weekends for $4,200 monthly.

Watch her Tuesday morning. She sits in a conference room with eight people discussing the Q3 campaign strategy that some VP will gut by Thursday. Everyone knows it. Everyone pretends it matters.

Then watch her Sunday night. She's responding to cake inquiry emails, updating her Instagram, calculating ingredient costs, and scheduling delivery routes. She spent 30 minutes actually baking and 4 hours running the business.

Both jobs have the same problem: Lisa isn't doing what she's good at.

Her corporate job forces a creative person into committee meetings and PowerPoint optimization. Her "entrepreneurial" solution forces a baker into customer service and logistics management. Society calls one stable and one risky, but both prevent Lisa from baking.

Lisa makes $35 per hour at her corporate job after factoring in the meetings about meetings. She makes $95 per hour when she's actually baking, but spends most of her "baking business" time not baking. We've convinced a generation that begging for raises is safer than setting your own prices, then told them entrepreneurship means becoming an accountant.

Why You're Wrong About Risk

Corporate stability is an illusion built on other people's decisions. Your job exists because some executive hasn't optimized you away yet. But even when you "work for yourself," you're still not working on what you're actually good at.

Lisa's real skill is creating cakes that make four-year-olds scream with joy. But she spends Tuesday mornings in marketing meetings and Sunday nights managing spreadsheets. The system won't let her bake, whether she's employed or self-employed.

If her employer cuts marketing budgets, Lisa gets fired. If her baking business grows, she'll spend even less time baking and more time managing operations. Neither path lets her do what she's actually valuable at.

The Numbers

Between 2010 and 2020, the U.S. job market grew by 1.1%, while the gig economy grew by 15%. The global freelance market grows at 15% annually and is worth $1.5 trillion.

Upwork research shows 38% of the U.S. workforce now freelances, contributing $1.27 trillion to the economy. These aren't people who couldn't find "real jobs." They're people discovering that working directly with customers provides better income and control.

But here's what they don't tell you: the average entrepreneur spends 68% of their time working "in" their business on day-to-day operations instead of "on" strategic growth. Entrepreneurs spend 36% of their work week on administrative tasks like invoicing and data entry. They escaped corporate bureaucracy only to build their own.

Lisa represents millions of Americans with profitable side businesses who don't realize they're still trapped. They think escaping corporate employment means freedom, but they're still not doing what they're actually good at.

What's Really Happening

The mental shift isn't about choosing employment versus entrepreneurship. It's about recognizing that both current options suck for creators.

For 10,000 years, bakers baked. Blacksmiths smithed. Farmers farmed. They didn't spend most of their time in meetings or managing spreadsheets.

We're not going back to corporate employment. But we're also not accepting that "entrepreneurship" means creators becoming operators.

The 75-year mistake is ending. The question is whether society will build systems that let creators create, or keep forcing them to choose between two kinds of operational hell.