Money, Profit, and Well-Being

I won't trash-talk money:  it's useful for creating well-being.

But the goal of making and accumulating money, as an end in itself, is very different;  I'm going to call that "profit".

Working to increase our well-being is natural.  But "profit" as a way of life is something we've learned from corporations, and it's killing us.  I'll show you what I mean.

First, let's agree on one thing:  corporations don't think like other people.

Our kind of people are carbon-based, whereas corporations are built of money.  Just as human people need human-people-things in order to survive -- love, food, water, shelter, health care, dentistry, coffee -- corporations, to survive, need to make money.  They need profit.  In fact, it's built in to their legal definition:  a corporation's prime responsibility, which it must fulfill in order to maintain its existence, is to make money for its owners.  If a corporation talks about other values, they are always secondary to the top priority: make money.  (And I'm talking about the big important corporations in our world today, the ones that have noticeable effect on our day to day lives.)  Profitability is the one truth about a corporation we can count on.  We could even say that "well-being" for corporations is measured by profit. 

That's fine, nothing wrong with it;  but let's remember that fact.

For people, our health and well-being is measured completely differently:  Are we free from pain?  Are we free from fear?  Do we have enough healthy food to eat?  Is there a safe and comfortable place for us to live?  Do we have rewarding work?  Do we live happily with friends and family?  Is there beauty around us?  Can we create and do what makes us happy?

None of this is measured in dollars.

Dollars may certainly be part of the transactions that create and maintain well-being, but dollars don't measure that well-being.  The accumulation of more dollars isn't how we know that we are happier.  Exchanging money is one strategy -- among many -- that we use to enhance our well-being;  but the money isn't the goal, and the amount of money isn't the measure of the things we want.

So well-being for people is not the same as "well-being" for corporations.  That's inherent and built-in.  What we want isn't what they want.  Profit is not well-being, and profit cannot measure well-being.

(This is especially true considering that well-being is in large part shared -- in a community, every member's well-being is improved when the total well-being is improved -- but profit is by nature not shared.  Corporate profit tends to accumulate with individuals, not collectively.)

Ok, that all seems clear;  can't we just treat people like people and corporations like corporations?

Here's the problem:  as fish breathe water, we inhale an almost undetectable value system disguised as an economic system.

We know how to describe our economic system:  free market capitalism, market driven economy, "invisible hand" of supply and demand, private enterprise;  and the modern corporation is its supremely successful embodiment.

But can we describe the all-pervasive but hidden value system that comes with it?

That value system -- which is pretty much forced on us, just by participating in our economy -- is actually very simple:  "The source and measure of our human well-being is monetary profit".

In other words, we (both as individuals and as a nation) judge how well off we are by how much money we make;  and the way to improve our life is to make more money.

This isn't the same as saying "money is useful";  it's saying "accumulation of money is how we know and measure what's good".   Profit defines good, and so profit becomes our top value.  This is corporation thinking.

When we, people, take on the thinking of corporations, when we believe that for us, as for corporations, making a profit is our well-being, and amount of profit is its measure, then we lose control of our own real well-being.

Part One - Advertising

This error -- thinking like a corporation -- happens in three ways.  The most obvious is advertising.

Most big corporations make their necessary money by selling things to people.  More selling equals more money, and they naturally advertise to get people to buy more.  (Of course, this doesn't work if people don't have the money to spend;  so part of the whole system has to be convincing people that making more money for themselves is also a good thing, so they can then give that money to the corporations.)  Advertising is a legitimate concern for a corporation.  It's simple.  Effective.  And insidious, because it encourages us to think like corporations, value what they value.

We can counteract the error in thinking induced by advertising, by becoming "advertising resistant".  We start by paying careful attention.  Look at an ad -- billboard, bus, boob-tube, banner, whatever -- and stand in the corporation's shoes:  what do they need, what do they value, where's their survival?  What do they want us to do and why?  Are they being completely truthful and open, about facts and about motivations?  How do my well-being and the corporation's well-being differ?  Is that divergence clear from the ad?  Do some companies do better than others?  This kind of thoughtful attention creates a healthy cynicism, accurate but without judgment.

Especially when an ad might be an inappropriate mixing of corporate and public interests, it's important to observe and question it:  Look, that public city bus is being used by GiggaCorp to convince me to buy a Widgett I may or may not need.  Look, this public post office is offering free space to Dimsley Studios to advertise their new movie.  Look, my children are forced to walk back and forth every day in a hallway advertising WantItNow Soda.  Look, Giggle is buying advertising space in a non-profit's newsletter simply by donating to charity.  Look, public radio isn't really non-commercial after all.  (Can you find other examples?)

Another technique is to take an "ad vacation":  find a way to spend an entire day without seeing (or wearing) a single advertisement, brand name or corporate logo.  (Then write about your experience!)

(Resisting and avoiding ads isn't easy.  The long-anticipated dawn of computer Artificial Intelligence has finally arrived, in the form of "Big Data":  intimate personal information about each of us is collected and used to individually target advertisements.  This is powerful, not just economically but politically and morally.  While learning to resist advertising, we shouldn't underestimate what we're up against.  Advertising has been around for a very long time, of course;  so we may think modern online advertising is just more of the same.  It isn't.  A.I. plus Big Data, applied to advertising and political opinion, is causing a qualitative, not quantitative, change:  it's not just bigger, it's completely different.  Until we know the full implications, a healthy mistrust of targeted advertising, or any other use of Big Data, seems necessary.)

Besides careful scrutiny of the ads we are constantly bombarded with, there's a second important form of advertising resistance:  don't make it worse.  Don't accept it as normal and do what they do.  Don't do marketing like big corporations.  Don't aspire to spin.  Rather, design and evaluate personal and business presentation based on human well-being, not corporate marketing techniques.  Start defining corporate advertising as inherently unreliable (based as it is on dishonest obfuscation of the inherent incompatibility of corporate and human values), and start creating and defining a new "gold standard" of honesty and openness in communication, with well-being for all as its highest criteria.  Think and talk like a human, not a corporation.

Part Two - Employee-Thinking

Ironically, most of our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms, to which we attribute the success of our economic system, are completely negated within the main institution of that system:  employees have no rights.  While I am a corporate employee, my right to privacy, my freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom from unreasonable search and seizure, freedom to print what I wish, and even some commonly held interpretations of freedom to bear arms -- all are abolished.  Similarly, many real human needs are disregarded, and work places must often be described as inhumane.

This isn't surprising, because all those human freedoms and needs get in the way of corporate efficiency and profit.  A corporation's inherent values are incompatible with the values of human well-being;  so of course, a corporation may sacrifice human values for its own profit.

But since most of us spend most of our time as employees, and since we are totally committed to our employer as our source of money, health care, and usually meaning and social connection (and sometimes breakfast, lunch, and dinner), it's natural that we tend to treat our condition as employees as the normal condition for the rest of our lives as well.  We act like an employee, even off the job.  We don't worry too much when the freedoms denied us as employees start being denied in the rest of life as well.  We take on the corporation's goals as our own.  We believe that a corporation's way of doing work and accomplishing tasks is the best way, or the only way;  we evaluate based on efficiency, measurability, and profitibility. We start to think like corporations, and to devalue the components of real well-being that are devalued by corporations.

(Can you think of other ways we think and act like employees instead of humans…?)

Part Three - Loss of Self-Governance

Self-governance -- autonomy -- is a "fundamental tenet of democracy";  it simply means we decide and act for ourselves.  Our units of government (federal, state, etc.) are the clearest form of our self-governance.

Well-being on a societal level is a big concept, and many of its components are big efforts.  Creating easy transportation across the country has taken huge coordinated projects to build first roads and railroads, shipping ports, then airports.  Supplying good drinking water to everyone requires large facilities and constant vigilance.  Educating children and adults, keeping food safe, protecting citizens, interacting with other countries all are massive endeavors.  So are making sure everyone gets good medical and dental care, making sure everyone has a place to live and means of survival, making sure infants and elderly are well cared for, and making sure everyone's working conditions are humane.  These and similar components of well-being are best created and managed by all of us together, because we all (mainly) agree on their value, we all in fairness must contribute, and we all benefit from the results.  One of the purposes of self-governance is simply to do together what requires all of us and helps all of us.

When such large scale cooperative projects to meet basic human needs and create well-being are instead transferred from government to private corporations, how can it go well?  We remember that the corporations, even though they may be assigned a task of creating human well-being, do not have that as their top priority.  We realize that some of the energy allocated for a project will always have to go into profit for the corporation, and that the amount of profit will be maximized by the corporation.  We can predict that for a project that affects all of us, if the control and management is removed from all of us, all of us won't be well served.

Privatizing basic human services is a loss of self-governance, and results in a predictable loss of well-being.

My urge to create well-being for myself is natural, but sometimes misdirected, as when I get confused about what's really good for me and how to get it.  So creating well-being can take thought and planning.  This is even more true for creating community well-being, when every member has their own ideas of what's best for everyone.  Sharing ideas, listening, cooperating, compromising, negotiating, arguing, agreeing, voting, planning:  for ages, that's how people have worked together in communities to improve their lives together.  That's also pretty much the operational definition of "self-governance";  that's how democratic government works.

Notice that list of attributes:  aren't they largely compatible with the kind of human well-being we've been discussing?  And aren't they largely incompatible with the top-down hierarchical boss-controls-worker decision making that makes corporations so efficient?  (And isn't the difference especially striking, considering our current national administration?!)  Based on corporations' values, and based on observation, it seems that traditional democratic government isn't what corporations want.

Given the mismatch between the kind of government that's good for corporations, and the kind of government that's good for people, we shouldn't be surprised that corporations try to undermine democratic government.  I think the trend toward cynicism and mistrust of government is a crucial way in which we -- without meaning to -- are led into erroneously thinking like corporations instead of people.

Cynicism and mistrust of ineffective government, and resulting displacement of government functions, or reshaping government to run like a corporation, is manifest in many obvious ways:

    •    Attempts by political parties (and I mean one in particular) to make national government ineffective, such as by "shutting down the government".

    •    Privatization (corporatization) of public institutions:  schools, parks, public space, streets and alleys, roadways, public transportation, police and security, prisons, electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), internet, utilities, news, city services, information services, and many many more.

    •    Evaluation of government's efforts based on corporate values: government must above all be efficient and "cost effective".

    •    "Externalization" of true costs (a notorious corporate behavior):  paying for what we do in hidden ways, such as environmental damage, loss of international goodwill, low paying jobs, racism, sexism, foreign exploitation, and unsustainable extraction.

    •    Extreme attempts to make commonly held human rights best fulfilled by self-governance -- such as housing, safety, health care -- into highly profitable private "market segments".

    •    "Fear-mongering" -- obsession on threat, protection, safety and security -- encourages authoritarianism, consistent with corporation values.

    •    Competitive and combative zero-sum win-lose "America First" attitude toward other countries, very much a profit/loss view of life.

    •    "One dollar, one vote":  corporate interests are in charge of highest level government decision making.  Enough said?

What to do?

Loss of self-governance -- through obstruction and subversion, cynicism and mistrust, corruption and corporatization -- goes hand in hand with the other two ways (advertising and employee-thinking) in which we learn to think and act like corporations, not people, and so lose our well-being.

All three can be seen as errors of self-concept:  if we always remembered the truth of what makes us happy, we would simply laugh at absurd advertising telling us something different;  if we fully honored our integrity and worth, we would not give up our rights, at work or not;  if we understood the depth of our connection to others, we would work together to create what we all need.

These aren't meant to be trite wishes, or unrealistic demands, and certainly not guilt invoking reprimands.

Rather, the message is this:  imagine how impossible it would be for corporations to fool us if we did stand firm in our deep self assurance;  and now understand that developing this kind of self is a very good way to fight the foolery.

That's good work to do any time;  but it's especially effective when we also happen to be surrounded by thousands of other people, doing the same work, and marching down the middle of 4th Avenue.

"Whose streets? Our streets!"
Whose well-being?  People's well-being.