"To the editor:
I thought the announcement and ad by Jerry's furniture this week to be not only succinct and poignant, but it speaks well to the fact that Americans actually vote with their dollars, sometimes more effectively than in the ballot box. Jerry's supplier lays it out: Americans must realize that by continually basing purchases on cheap prices, which favor foreign goods, it costs an American community, somewhere.
I'd like to remind folks that once upon a time our government shielded workers from "unfair" foreign competition. How fair is it to be a worker in China being paid 50 cents a day, zero if they are a political prisoner? How fair is it for a Malaysian village to have the teak forest stripped bare around them? How fair is it to Indian men, women and children to be poisoned by industrial waste? Simply so that we Americans can purchase cheap goods?
In removing the barriers to "free trade", not only has this country watched as literally millions of jobs disappeared out from under you and your extended families, we are also witnessing the wholesale destruction of the planet by the very corporations who benefit financially and, coincidentally, at one time employed our citizens. These corporations have become so powerful to overshadow portions of otherwise sovereign nations. The race for profits has become so relentless that nothing, even human lives, will impair the bottom line.
America, wake up! We vote with our dollar. Think before you buy that meaningless piece of plastic made in China that will be thrown out after one use. Support local craftsmen and locally owned stores, and plant a garden. It's our future; invest in it." - Maureen Westrick [Letter to the Editor, Conway NH Daily Sun, Feb. 27, 2007].
The word "globalization" has two different meanings that carry opposite connotations. It can mean development of a global community in which fairness, equality, diversity, and sustainability are valued and accepted. Or it can mean the dominance of Earth's politics and economics by global megacorporations. Unfortunately, the second meaning has become the dominant one, and I will use it here. In the context of Ecoshift, equating of "globalization" with corporations and capitalism carries a negative connotation.
Corporations were originally and still are licensed by governments to conduct business. In the United States this licensing power is held by the individual states and is only granted for a few years at a time. State governments have the legal power to withdraw corporate licenses, or to not renew them. But over centuries, corporations have gained political and thus legal power. In the United States much of this power can be traced to Supreme Court decisions that corporations have all the same constitutional rights as individual citizens. Over time, efforts of workers to limit corporate power via trade unions and efforts of governments to limit corporate power by anti-trust or anti-monopoly actions have been overcome by corporate power.
However, corporations that produce consumer products remain subject to the financial power of their customers. If no one buys a company's product the company will soon be out of business. Corporations fight against this power by advertising. When people believe advertising and consequently buy products, they contribute to corporate power. However, we should not blame the corporations or the government. As Pogo said: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Intentionally or not, we support corporate empires every time we buy their products. The Voluntary Simplicity chapter will discuss how to take back some of the power that we currently hand over to corporations.
The worldview of perhaps a majority of world population, of the governments of most if not all affluent and some poorer countries, and of most corporations, large and small, local or global, now is a capitalistic one. Under capitalism the sole objective of corporations is to make the most possible money for their owners. And even though some of this ownership is now in the hands of the middle class, it is still the already wealthy that are in control. This worldview believes that as the "economy", or turnover of money, grows, enough wealth will be generated to keep the poor happy and the middle class consuming. This worldview so dominates humanity now that it is being exported as rapidly as possible to most of the countries of the world. Unfortunately, the end result seems to be that the rich get richer, the poor get poorer, and the middle class gradually disappears.
Although "corporate greed" is often stated as a basic problem for an overexploited Earth, it is not just the greed of corporate executives, but the greed of corporate stockholders (owners) that is more fundamental. These are those millions of individuals who directly through their stocks and mutual funds, or indirectly through their pension plans, want to maximize their profit (return) regardless of side effects. Once again, "we have met the enemy and he is us." Everyone with investments bemoans each stock market decline, usually without recognizing that it connotes a reduction of many adverse impacts on Earth. Even I have a negative reaction to a declining stock market, though I know it's a good thing. For more on alternatives to unbridled maximizing of profit, see the Sustainability and Socially-responsible Investing chapters.
Two classic books, Paul Hawken's "The Ecology of Commerce" and David Korten's "When Corporations Rule the World" delve much more deeply into problems of corporate globalization. For more on corporate imperialism (if you haven't read or heard enough already), see Arundhati Roy's article "The New American Century" [The Nation, February 9, 2004]. If you are interested in pursuing the subject in more detail, you can get a group of friends together and use the Northwest Earth Institute study course on "Globalization and its Critics."
The corporate worldview is based on several unsustainable and even immoral premises:
A great deal of the cost of the corporate worldview has been and will be indirectly paid by the general public through taxes. The rapidly escalating American national debt represents a cost that will eventually be paid by future generations, either through increased taxes or by inflating away its value. Big recent increases in this debt have been created by bank bailouts (Savings and Loan banks in the 80/90s and Bear-Stearns/AIG/Lehman Brothers in 2008, by corporate bailouts (Chrysler Corp in 1980 and more), and by big oil wars, most notably the so-called "war" in Iraq. The public also subsidizes airlines, the trucking industry, agricultural giants, drug companies, and on and on.
Opposition to chain stores in the United States is nothing new. In 1930 the national high school/college debate subject was "Resolved: That chain stores are detrimental to the best interests of the American public." They were seen as a threat to independent local economy and to community because they siphoned money from the area and created absentee ownership. The chains immediately counter-attacked with the now-familiar message that low prices were the primary goal of consumers. That winning argument has produced global megacorporations.
Wal-Mart is just one of the many megacorporations in the big-box retail business that are exporting the "low price" argument to the rest of the world. Stacy Mitchell's "Big Box Swindle" discusses Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Staples, and more as a group. While practices differ some, they each are trying to capture as much retail business as possible. Mitchell and others have shown how local businesses suffer when big-box stores open. I got a wrong number yesterday reminding me of my appointment at Wal-Mart Vision Center; they even want to drive the local optometrists and opticians out of business. The big-boxes start with low prices to undercut local businesses, then raise prices when the locals have disappeared and the customer base has been built. The end result is more workers and fewer owners, thus increasing the gap between fewer richer owners and more poorer workers. More money leaves the local community instead of recirculating within it. The "Andersonville Study" of 2004 showed that for every $100 spent in local businesses, $68 stayed in the local economy, whereas only $48 of $100 spent in national chains stayed local. In big box stores, worker salaries decrease, job security is lost, medical insurance is questionable, and unionization is strongly discouraged. The close relations between customer and owner is lost and in-store service declines because the sales-persons know less about what they are selling. The trend is ultimately to only a single store providing all a consumer's needs, a return to the "company store" of the nineteenth century - no choice and lots of credit indebtedness.
Although big-box stores form the core of many shopping malls and strip developments, it is automobiles, not megacorporations, that have caused the demise of downtown shopping. Negative aesthetics and traffic issues involved in strip development are much discussed, and are controlled by some local governments. Governments are less able to deal with the fact that proximity to shopping malls and big-box stores reduces the value of nearby housing, whereas vibrant downtowns add to the value of nearby housing. And what benefits accrue to the community when local governments provide tax incentives for mall development then later are left with empty stores as corporations either go bankrupt or build even larger stores nearby? Many of these hulks are stilled owned by the corporation in order to prevent purchase by a competitor.
In addition to issues with the local economy are the issues of sweat shops, child labor, poverty wages, and overseas production. It seems as if nearly all the famous name manufacturers have been in hot water for one or more of these problems. Millions of American (and European?) jobs have been exported to poor countries where stricter laws about working conditions and wages do not apply. Unemployment and poverty in the U.S. rise as corporate manufacturing goes elsewhere. This is driven, of course, by Americans' insistence on buying everything possible as cheaply as possible.
The last issue I will mention is the "environmental" one. Taking production out of the U.S. and other developed countries to poorer countries avoids the always stricter environmental protection laws of the affluent countries. Toxic waste disposal and toxic workplace conditions are far less regulated, saving the corporation lots of bucks. The news has been full recently of such things as lead in children's toys from China. Another side of the environmental problem involves the big-box stores ignoring local pollution and zoning regulations. Megacorporations have lots of money and lots of lawyers and over and over again have bulldozed (figuratively and literally) local communities into submission on issues of location, appearance, and access for big-box stores.
Corporations claim they are bringing jobs and money to the community when the reality is that more jobs are lost than are gained and more money leaves than comes in. Often the community is so bamboozled that it offers tax incentives, such as reduced property tax, to the big boxes, and forgets that it will have to pay for increased fire and police protection, increased water and sewer use, increased wear on local roads, and increased waste disposal.
But all is not quite lost. Mitchell's "Big Box Swindle" documents innovative and often successful efforts of local communities to fight off big-boxes and redevelop a locally-owned economy. It can be done, but it takes a small group of committed citizens who understand and publicize all the negatives of big-boxes and megacorporations. Mitchell points out that when citizen opposition is sufficient to induce opposition by local government agencies, lawsuits by a corporation against local government almost always lose. Alternative, more positive approaches, include "Main Street" programs to revitalize local business districts and fostering locally-owned franchises and cooperatives like Subway or Ace Hardware. (Ace offers on-line shopping that is credited to the local store and can be picked up there with no shipping charge.) The Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) encourages locally-owned businesses by networking through local chapters. Individual supporters of local ownership proudly display "Buy Local" bumper stickers on their presumably domestic-make automobiles.
|
Avoiding Big Box Stores
The only big-box store that I patronize regularly is Staples. So far I have successfully avoided ever setting foot in a Target, Lowes, Home Depot, or Wal-Mart store. I get some kind of phobia whenever I enter a huge supermarket; it must be the way some people feel about being lost in the woods -- frustrated and disoriented. It takes an increasing amount of work to find things at small, and especially locally-owned, stores, but the rewards, both in better customer service and in self-gratification for fighting the system, are worth it. |
To the next chapter - Population Growth: Too Many Humans
ECOSHIFT: Globalization - by Tony Federer