Got stuck on the freeway during rush-hour traffic the other day. It was interesting to view the people in all kinds of cars which mostly looked the same. Undoubtedly, some commuters were frustrated at the sense of being yet another “brick-in-the [corporate] wall” during their daily commute. Some tried to ease the pain by listening to music, some undoubtedly ate snacks or illegally texted, some probably did all three. Me, I simply worried that our way-too-old car would overheat on the hot creeping parking lot of metal and plastic machines.
The vast majority of these carbon-spewing machines sat and wastefully consumed refined fuel for which millions of people have died, been displaced, or suffered other horrific atrocities, as nations have exerted territorial control, through war, in order to maintain access to oil resources in the Middle East and elsewhere.
The wasteful and damaging commute is egged on by private corporate bodies which currently promote the return to offices so that colluding heads can conjure up new products and conspire about new ways to sell us stuff we simply do not need–further adding to the waste of resources and damage to the environment characteristic of private competitive markets.
The private dominated economy promotes overconsumption. Given that we live in a profit-driven economy with accounting measures which measure all the wrong things, but yet determine a firm’s fate, there is no possible path to the elimination of overconsumption and environmental destruction. New accounting measures which reveal the communal impact of corporate behavior, both positive and negative, will need to be developed in order to escape the current system and its accounting measures which solely measure events which directly impact the individual firm, without regard for the communal impact of its activities, e.g., environmental damage, depletion of resources, the soul-sucking spiritual depletion associated with unsatiating-endless consumption, wars tied to the competition for resources, and the general denigration of humanity relative to the elevation of excessive material consumption which lays the foundation for war.
Public policy should pull in the opposite direction. It is the job of government to restrain the destructive manifestations of corporate behavior. But it is the profit-spewing corporate bodies along with their wealthy shareholders which fund the political campaigns which maintain the sometimes thinking, other times talking heads, who hold public office, so this is unlikely to occur.
Imagine the pressures on a politician who called for less destructive work-from-home policies. Fewer commutes would mean automakers would sell fewer cars, restaurants would sell fewer meals, the commercial real estate crisis would be worse than it already is, and the incremental increased consumption which results from the daily rubbing of shoulders with co-workers would disappear–all of which would put pressure on corporate income statements and balance sheets; but, would also lessen the burden on the environment and slow the competition for resources which, again, in practice, leads to war.
So the machine accelerates onward, sacrificing planet, lives, spirits, and souls in its inherent quest for greater profits and increased consumption. In the process we lose our humanity, or any sense that we are part of an international community in which our individual lives impact each other. All of this naturally flows from accounting measures which measure the wrong things, overalue the material relative to the humane, and in general promotes a value system in complete contradiction to the best in our humanitarian and religious traditions.
While all of this might inspire anger at certain classes of people, it shouldn’t. Overconsumption, environmental damage, class disparity . . . . are structural components of a generally accepted economic ideology which emphasizes and measures the economic activity of individual units without consideration of broader social impacts. When the ideology changes, peoples’ behaviors will change, and so will the accounting.
Comments are welcomed, civility is requested, please avoid partisan politics.