"Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalis

"Pre-industrialism, essentially everyone was self-employed (if we want a specific example, lets take the USA 150 years ago, rather than regressing into feudalism or Egyptian slaves); despite the posited inability of non-elites to be entrepreneurs." Exactly. The same is apparently (according to John Taylor Gatto, writing in The Underground History of American Education) true of the Amish today. Are the Amish just that gifted with genes for entrepreneurialism? I think not. It's merely conventional, and a recent convention at that, to work for a Faceless Big Company by default, as pg points out in his essay "You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss."