America has always been a nation powered by small businesses—local merchants, family-run service businesses, independent companies, restaurants, dry cleaners, and home service businesses. Such companies once formed the backbone of middle-class opportunity, offering a path to economic independence and intergenerational mobility. Entrepreneurship drove our rise, especially among immigrant communities, where opening a storefront or service business meant the difference between survival and prosperity.
Consider office supply stores. Family-run shops once dotted small communities across the country, but today they’ve been consolidated into regional giants like Office Depot and OfficeMax—typical private equity roll-ups. Who would realistically ever start a small office supply store to compete with these giants? The result? Local owners become employees, losing the wealth-creation opportunity that is unique to business ownership.
This isn’t accidental. In fact, it’s a textbook PE strategy: Acquire fragmented businesses, lower costs through centralization, underprice competitors, and then, once market share is secured, raise prices for maximum profit. These deals are cloaked in financial engineering, but their real impact is socioeconomic: fewer owners, fewer options, less upward mobility.
Put simply, private equity roll-ups are reversing the heartbeat of entrepreneurship. Wealth and control are concentrating. The outcome? Less competition, higher consumer prices, limited options, and a shrinking middle class, a trend many economists warn flirts with oligarchy.
What would happen in 20 years if we continue down this path? Independent entrepreneurship will be a distant memory. Owning your own small business will be as rare as owning a standalone bookstore is today. Workers become permanent employees with a minimal equity stake. Communities lose their character. And the American Dream, once synonymous with starting your own business, becomes a nostalgic myth.
The real threat is not foreign; it’s our own financial system. It’s time to release the squeeze. Let’s rebuild a landscape where local entrepreneurs can compete, prosper, and uplift their communities. Let’s ensure the path to business ownership isn’t closed off by Wall Street’s python but remains open to every American willing to lift themselves and their families.
That’s how we preserve not just capitalism, but the American promise.
The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.
