I’ve been railing about the deleterious effects of capitalism in one form or another for some years now, slowly refining my views on it. If you want examples, see here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. My view currently is that capitalism doesn’t have to be a bad thing. It is an economic tool and the way we are currently employing it, broadly speaking, is causing some quite problematic social and environmental issues. At its root is a single misguided concept: that decisions are best made by considering net cost of every option and choosing the cheapest one. If you make decisions by any other metric you’re just being frivolous and dumb, and you will be punished for such. I’m simplifying but very frequently that’s how it comes down.
Case in point: the office branch in which I work closed down recently. The lease had come up for renewal, and since all 5 or 6 of us were now working from home due to the pandemic without issue, it didn’t really make sense to keep paying for an office. Getting rid of the furniture wasn’t difficult, but then came the question as to what to do about the signage. Sprinkled throughout the office were framed vision statements, a large glass sign with the company name etched on it, and the like — things that were of no use to any other company. What to do with these? There was a clear interest by management in keeping the signage, because there were plans to open other offices and these items could be used there. The final decision? Send them to the dump. That rankled me, and I made some weak noises about disliking that decision, but didn’t have the words or, frankly, the balls to make my point well. Others on the call picked up on my displeasure — not that I had any real power in the decision — and said “Yeah, we don’t like it either, but it doesn’t make sense to ship that stuff here. It’s cheaper to just make new ones.”
What I wanted to say was “Listen, you commissioned this shit. You created it. You take care of it, and don’t pawn it off onto everyone else by discarding it. This is your responsibility. I don’t give a shit how much it costs. You’re a multi-million dollar company. It’s not like this is going to break you. Do the right thing and reuse it instead of a) sending this perfectly good signage to the dump, and b) extracting yet more resources from the planet to make exactly the same thing again. Fuck you, you money-grubbing selfish pricks!” While I relish the idea of giving the corporate world a piece of my mind, alas, I also appreciate having a job, so it should come as a surprise to no one that I bit my tongue.
So the issue is this: when we continually make decisions by considering only the monetary cost and nothing else then all hope of creating a better world or repairing the one we’ve got is, to my mind, extinguished. The plaintive cry always heard when this is pointed out is “But it doesn’t make sense to [do the more expensive thing]”. And the insinuation in that cry is “You don’t know how to run a business. Don’t be stupid. Clearly, if the financial decisions were up to you we’d end up bankrupt.” I prefer to think that taking responsibility for your shit is something everyone should always strive to do. And if companies want to insist on retaining legal person-hood, then step the fuck up.
I’m hoping that the next time a situation like this arises I’ll have the words to make my point in a considered yet forceful way and change the decision apparatus a little bit without getting my ass fired.
At any rate those are my thoughts on that.