My parents were both businesspeople, successful ones, owning and operating a wholesale drapery fabric and window treatment business in Kansas City, Missouri. My mom was a shrewd, pragmatic manager, while my dad was the visionary and ideologue. He believed firmly in capitalism, and I suppose, if everyone was as honest and interested in the common good as my father, it would work well, in the way it was ideally intended. He was known for being scrupulously fair. A set of circumstances that brought this aspect of his vividly home to me took place the summer after my freshman year in college. I was dating a man who was friends with a single mom who rented a small house from my dad, one of several that he owned in a marginal neighborhood. She was a total hippie, and my dad fell to the right of John Birch, but she adored him, according to my friend, because he was so conscientious and fair in addressing her needs as a tenant. She was responsible in making her payments and took good care of the home, which was all my dad required; and since she wasn’t his daughter, the fact that she was a hippie didn’t bother him, evidently. They met on a level playing field where both parties had a mutual, shared interest that they didn’t want to jeopardize or take advantage of. Neither one of them was out to rip off the other one or gain an advantage to the other’s detriment.

 

At some point—and I’m neither economist nor historian enough to know who first espoused this theory or when it came into vogue—the belief emerged that, in a free-market capitalist system, everyone’s self-interest would act as some sort of balancing factor. With everyone acting selfishly, things would somehow all work out because with all the jostling and grabbing and pushing and striving, everyone would end up with something.

 

It’s my impression that this belief became even more firmly embedded in this country as the U.S. became more secular. I myself don’t adhere to an organized religion, and I believe that some particularly judgmental religions have caused as much harm as untrammeled capitalism, but it does seem to me, looking back over the history I’ve experienced in my lifetime, that in the Fifties and Sixties, people’s religious and spiritual beliefs acted as the true balancing agent for capitalism, not unmitigated selfishness. People possessed moral beliefs that discouraged them from being dishonest, behaving gluttonously, or taking advantage of others. They had a more holistic conception of the economy that was integrated into their personal, social, and spiritual lives, which contained the conscious or unconscious belief that when each individual had enough and was doing well, the whole thrived as well. The “I’ve got mine” mentality was not looked upon as something admirable. (Now, even religions are trumpeting the “God wants you to be rich!” philosophy, people pray for wealth, shysters are infiltrating religious movements in record numbers, and corruption is rife in government, business, and the health industry.) Somewhere along the way, money became the measure of both value and goodness: If it makes money, it’s good.

 

Little by little, our more ethical belief system became eroded by the cynical form of capitalism that is now in place. I remember first hearing about “planned obsolescence” from my brother, an Economics major in college at the time, when the Ford Motor Company had been found guilty of deliberately creating parts that would fail in the cars they manufactured so that the consumer would have to replace them. That way, Ford would make more money. I remember thinking when they were busted that this would discourage them and any other company from ever doing this again, that the shame of such naked greed and callous contempt for their customers would act as a powerful deterrent.

 

Instead, these days, it seems like it just gave everyone the idea. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but lately, most everything you can buy in this country seems to be crap that falls apart a lot faster than goods that were made in earlier times. Even expensive stuff. And as much as I love the computer age, it makes me crazy that my computers, printers, monitors, etc., become basically obsolete in five years or so. I have to buy new ones if I want to stay in the game. And the old ones eventually end up as landfill, even though I do my best to recycle. There are a lot of items for which it would make all kinds of sense to have remain the same in their design rather than be upgraded and “improved” constantly, and that would have interchangeable parts; but that rarely happens because it doesn’t encourage revved-up spending. Somewhere along the way, it would appear that most corporations’ missions became simply making money for their shareholders and top executives, while making a quality product or providing a quality service came second, if at all.

 

 

 

 

Theoretically, capitalism itself is perhaps not the problem. But capitalism as practiced by sociopaths is a very big problem. (Any system that’s dominated by sociopaths sours sooner or later, for everyone except the few who end up on the top of the heap; this applies as much to Communism as it does to Capitalism.) And that’s where we find ourselves today, with honest, well-intentioned, hard-working people getting ground up and spit out by the system daily, while bloated billionaires live their lives in unimaginable opulence that I am guessing is probably not really bringing them happiness. I would imagine they’re looking over their shoulders constantly, afraid that someone is going to try to take their wealth away or kidnap their child or con them the way they’ve conned so many others. It’s an odious, heartless, toxic situation, for everyone, quite frankly. And it’s unsustainable in the long run, creating pollution and epic waste and befouled watersheds and ugliness and poverty and disease and cynicism and hopelessness. And it brings out the worst in people, not the best.

 

So … what can we do as peons, when we don’t have billions of dollars nor the kind of power you find in Washington? The only solutions I can think of are small and simple. And maybe they won’t work. But if enough of us do them, they might.  

 

One thing I do is always, always try to buy whatever I can from independent business owners, even if their prices are a little more expensive. The business model of Wal-Mart demonstrates what happens when consumers are consistently seduced by low prices: they put all the local vendors out of business, and then the only jobs available are low-paying with no benefits. Short-term thinking and unmitigated self-interest don’t actually work out well in the long term. And we really don’t, in many cases, have to obscenely enrich a small number of sociopathically greedy and narcissistic captains of industry. We give corporations power by voluntarily buying their products. If we didn’t buy their wares, their power would shrink.

 

If we can’t afford new items, we can always shop at thrift stores, secondhand stores, and garage sales. There’s a lot of leftover stuff at this point. We can trade and share items with our friends and families, too. We can downsize.

 

Of course, there is not much to do about certain purchases such as a car. We have to buy automobiles from a corporation, as well as the gas that they run on, but there are alternatives that we can try that will increase our own power and possibly help over time to make things different. We can car pool, walk, bike, and take public transportation. Some enterprising individuals are even making alternative fuels and vehicles. Another thing we can do is support the development of village lifestyles in our communities so that we aren’t so dependent on cars to get to jobs and needed services.

 

Another thing we can do is to take pride in our own modest achievements and try to resist succumbing to addictive, mind-numbing celebrity worship. Corporations use celebrity worship to take our minds off of what is really important and make us dissatisfied with ourselves so that we will spend money trying to feel better. And in the process, they usually destroy the happiness and peaceful existence of the celebrity. Who in their right mind would really have wanted to be Michael Jackson, poor tortured soul that he was? (Emphasis on “in their right mind.”) I read an interview once with J.K. Rowling in which she said, essentially: “If anyone had told me before I published my first novel what was going to happen, I wouldn’t have believed them. And if I had, I wouldn’t have gone through with it.” It’s very human to compare ourselves to others and to envy outrageous success and fortune; but I think if we scratch the surface and think more deeply about the issue, it’s not so hard to realize what a trap it can become—in addition to a mirage that we chase after fruitlessly.

 

 

Personally, I have always felt that change begins with myself. I can’t change the world, but I can change myself. And I can always hope that the choices I make, ones made with the sincere desire for the well-being of everyone on the planet as well as the planet itself, will ripple outward and have far-reaching positive effects.

 

If anyone reading this is aware of corporations that are notable in their efforts to behave ethically, please let me know about them, and I’ll post them so that we can patronize them and reward their behavior in the marketplace. Also, if any one has any additional ideas about ways we can become more independent—less dependent upon indifferent and/or unscrupulous corporations—I’d love to hear about and post those, too.