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eor"It didn't take any ballot boxes and it didn't take any political parties. It's called direct action and it comes to us highly recommended."
"Sometimes the operation of the machine becomes so odious, you cannot even tacitly participate."
In some big ways I participate in the operation of the odious machine. I don't like to admit it, but I do.
I believe not shopping at Walmart is a moral act, because they do incredible damage to our society, our planet, and our economy. I also believe it is for the most part an economically viable act because the stuff they sell at outrageously low prices is junk that falls apart in five seconds.
But I make my living from the heart of the consumerist culture. I feel I work for one of the best companies in the whole rotten industry and I think it's being dragged kicking and screaming into selling low quality crap by the attitudes of American consumers, but it does respond to those pressures. It has to, or it would be bankrupt by now.
Another evil I have to look in the mirror and face is corporate stewardship. In capitalist theory, if a corporation is behaving so badly that it pisses off shareholders it suffers economic consequence. It used to be individual shareholders could and did make decisions based on future revenue streams and their opinion of a company. Today that consequence has been removed because the end shareholder no longer knows what investments they have, most of the money in the US is tied up in funds. Fund managers are concerned with daily or at most quarterly results, not longer term consequences. Their decisions are not based on the behavior of the company, but on the behavior of the company's stock. The system is broken just as surely as a system that rewards loan writers for writing loans and doesn't give them the responsibility of holding those loans.
But each week I contribute to this system, because I feel the need to save for retirement. I could invest on my own, but there are notable downsides. Not only am I bad at saving on my own, I'd also loose my employer's matching funds by not participating.
So I try to reduce consumption, I try to recycle, and I try to be a reasonably good human. But is that a contradiction in terms?
"Sometimes the operation of the machine becomes so odious, you cannot even tacitly participate."
In some big ways I participate in the operation of the odious machine. I don't like to admit it, but I do.
I believe not shopping at Walmart is a moral act, because they do incredible damage to our society, our planet, and our economy. I also believe it is for the most part an economically viable act because the stuff they sell at outrageously low prices is junk that falls apart in five seconds.
But I make my living from the heart of the consumerist culture. I feel I work for one of the best companies in the whole rotten industry and I think it's being dragged kicking and screaming into selling low quality crap by the attitudes of American consumers, but it does respond to those pressures. It has to, or it would be bankrupt by now.
Another evil I have to look in the mirror and face is corporate stewardship. In capitalist theory, if a corporation is behaving so badly that it pisses off shareholders it suffers economic consequence. It used to be individual shareholders could and did make decisions based on future revenue streams and their opinion of a company. Today that consequence has been removed because the end shareholder no longer knows what investments they have, most of the money in the US is tied up in funds. Fund managers are concerned with daily or at most quarterly results, not longer term consequences. Their decisions are not based on the behavior of the company, but on the behavior of the company's stock. The system is broken just as surely as a system that rewards loan writers for writing loans and doesn't give them the responsibility of holding those loans.
But each week I contribute to this system, because I feel the need to save for retirement. I could invest on my own, but there are notable downsides. Not only am I bad at saving on my own, I'd also loose my employer's matching funds by not participating.
So I try to reduce consumption, I try to recycle, and I try to be a reasonably good human. But is that a contradiction in terms?
