Nothing beyond the profit motive or self-interest?

I think I have been to Whole Foods stores three times.  Maybe only twice.  Even those trips were only because of the unique circumstances in a city that I was visiting.  A few months ago, a Whole Foods store opened in town; I don't go anywhere near it.

The founder of that business, John Mackey, has always interested me though.  Because, he seemed to offer a political vision through his business.  A libertarian, Mackey articulated his socio-business philosophy in Conscious Capitalism.  In a blog-post on this more than four years ago, I quoted from an essay:

In Conscious Capitalism: Liberating the Heroic Spirit of Business, Mackey and his co-author, Raj Sisodia, make a case that businesses are at their best when reaching for a higher purpose that ranges far beyond any simplistic notions of the profit motive or self-interest.

The business as a higher purpose that is "far beyond any simplistic notions of the profit motive or self-interest."  This is why even the anti-libertarian limousine-liberals embraced Whole Foods.

Mackey has now sold his business to Amazon, whose socio-business philosophy does not have anything "far beyond any simplistic notions of the profit motive or self-interest."

After initial enthusiasm for Amazon, I have been trying to avoid buying anything through that behemoth.  Because, it is a ruthless business that couldn't care about anything other than to be the biggest and baddest of them all.  I have been increasingly worried about its tentacles into various aspects of life--the more a person shops at Amazon, the more the big-data driven profile of that customer.  My data becomes their dollars, and I am their raw material!  I way prefer to keep my preferences about books and rice-cookers away from those businesses.

And then my worries about the worker-bees at Amazon.

Amazon’s grand proclamations, on the other hand, tend to focus on domi­nation, not on providing any sort of abstract benefit to society outside the lowering of prices and the delivery of goods. The company has never put forth a rosy vision of the future of service labor. Amazon warehouse work is hard, often subcontracted and kept out of sight of consumers. According to a 2015 investigation by The Times, even at the corporate office, the work culture is unapologetically ruthless.

Ruthless is the word!

It is not merely the contemporary situation that Amazon that worries me.  Nope.  What really worries me is that Amazon might be the model as we rapidly enter into a future service economy, in which most humans become easily replaceable workers in a ruthless business environment that helps a very,  very few accumulate all the benefits.

Amazon’s attitude toward labor is emblematic of the culture it grew out of — and an augur of the service economy that’s on the rise today. Other tech companies, in particular platforms like Uber and TaskRabbit, have helped regular consumers grow comfortable with a software-mediated system wherein jobs are sliced into an endless series of assignments, with compensation negotiated wordlessly, instantly and without room for a second thought. Even Starbucks — once a champion of compassionate capitalism — recently began experimenting with pitiless automated scheduling software to assign shifts, before backing off after public outcry.

Yep, it is for these very reasons I have not ever used Uber either.

I wish more people thought about these rapid transformations.  But, apparently most humans do not care for anything "beyond any simplistic notions of the profit motive or self-interest." Even the uber-religious evangelicals who voted for a horrible human being, despite the message of selflessness from Jesus himself!

We are screwed!

Why do "intellectuals" hate capitalism?

Note upfront that it is "intellectuals" in the title and not intellectuals.  Because of the presumption that there cannot be any intellectual on the right side of the political center.  To "intellectuals," a "leftist intellectual" is tautological because, ahem, intellectuals by definition are leftist!

I like to think of myself as an intellectual (haha, the joke is on me and I don't even know it!) but throughout my professional life I seem to be only pissing off the "intellectuals."  Ever since my graduate school days, when I started to systematically inquire about different ways in which we humans organize and govern ourselves, which is also when I started developing my own flavor of a libertarian-left approach, I have been puzzled at how much the "intellectuals" oppose, dislike, and hate capitalism, even as they benefit from it.

Source

One of my earliest introductions into understanding this came from reading Robert Nozick's "Why Do Intellectuals Oppose Capitalism?"  Nozick noted there:

By intellectuals, I do not mean all people of intelligence or of a certain level of education, but those who, in their vocation, deal with ideas as expressed in words, shaping the word flow others receive. These wordsmiths include poets, novelists, literary critics, newspaper and magazine journalists, and many professors. It does not include those who primarily produce and transmit quantitatively or mathematically formulated information (the numbersmiths) or those working in visual media, painters, sculptors, cameramen. Unlike the wordsmiths, people in these occupations do not disproportionately oppose capitalism. The wordsmiths are concentrated in certain occupational sites: academia, the media, government bureaucracy.

Do you feel yourself agreeing with that definition of "intellectuals" and nodding yes?  Read up that complete essay then and find out Nozick's explanation for why "intellectuals" oppose capitalism! ;)

Of course, I have done my share of complaining and protesting.  A favorite example is from way back when WalMart was aggressively expanding.  I hated it but not because of the profits the corporation made.  I couldn't care about its profits.  But, my distaste for WalMart has always been with respect to how it dramatically alters the urban layout.  The huge store is typically located far away from downtown and away from populated areas, and almost overnight shutters the downtown stores.  The town loses its charm.  The kind of charm that attracts me to towns when I travel.  I couldn't care who made the money, but worried that the urban space was becoming less attractive.  To me, the quality of the place matters--immensely.

Thus, as I keep marching to my own libertarian-left music, I continue to fine-tune my understanding of how we humans govern ourselves.  While never a rah-rah cheerleader for capitalism, I am impressed by how much the profit motive makes people do things that they might not otherwise do.  While people talk big about "do the right thing," they rarely seem to actually do the right thing.  But then provide them with the dollar incentive to do the right thing and they seem a lot more eager to do it.

Over the years, I have also been struck by the contradictions that "intellectuals" display--and have often blogged about it too.  My favorite example these days is Apple.  "Intellectuals" seem to love, love Apple and its products.  Their scathing essays that are highly critical of capitalism are almost always composed on expensive Apple products.  While protesting against capitalism, they tweet using their iPhones.  They seem oblivious to the fact that Apple generates humongous profits.  Profits that are larger than the oil companies that the "intellectuals" protest against.  Profits that make Walmart seem insignificant.  My "socialist" colleagues, who proudly chant their union solidarity songs use expensive Apple laptops while I, who have never been a member of any union, am stuck with a cheap PC!  

It is one crazy world out there.  Perhaps it is the craziness that also makes it all the more exciting for the dull and boring wannabe intellectuals like me!

McDonald's growing while Whole Foods shrinking

Earlier I noted how McDonald's is highly profitable in Europe. Well, more news about this, particularly as a contrast to other companies struggling in this global economic slowdown. The Guardian reports that,
McDonald's, one of Britain's largest low wage employers, is creating 4,000 new jobs in Britain to cope with increased demand for its keenly priced Big Macs, McNuggets and McFlurry ice creams.
While upmarket US healthfoods supermarket chain Whole Foods may pull out of the UK altogether, McDonald's appears to be thriving in the economic downturn.
Its recruitment drive comes two weeks after McDonald's operations in the UK and France generated some of the strongest growth for the world's largest fast food chain. European comparable sales for the three months to June 30 rose 7.4%, with the UK and France slightly ahead of this figure.
The group's 1,200 owned and franchised outlets in the UK have seen a rise in the number of customers of two million a month.

And, Whole Foods shares have taken quite a beating. Bloomberg reports that the stock plunged $4.30, or 19 percent, to $18.62 at 9:42 a.m. in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, the biggest decline since November 2006. Earlier the shares fell to $18.26. The stock had lost 44 percent this year before today.