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- I’ve always considered it to be very strange — intuitively, ever since I was a little kid — that Americans are so proud, so damned proud, of working for corporations; proud of their titles, their salary, the number of years they been on the job. It’s never made sense to me. It’s tantamount to saying: I’m proud to be working to exploit the American consumer; or rather — I’m proud to be turning the American into a consumer so that I can then exploit them.
- No matter what point we find ourselves along the supply chain, or the money chain, we’re working to divest someone of their personal resources. The political obsession with the small or local businesses — politicians talk about them endlessly — comes from the fact that a) these businesses don’t really exist anymore and b) these are the kinds of businesses that stand some chance to do some good; that community businesses are part of the life-cycle of a community and aren’t just there to strip-mine. American political economy is dominated by nostalgia for the decent.
- What do I mean by nostalgia for the decent? I mean an economic system in which there is definable human agency, a human face, behind economic decisions; in which, buying or selling is not purely transactional, but informed by broader social and even spiritual factors. To borrow from Max Weber, the Protestant was a good businessperson in part because they could be trusted — because their religious beliefs informed their business ethics. For years, for instance, I’ve bought my dairy products from the Amish; not only is their dairy…
