Things Fall Apart April 11, 2007
Harold Meyerson presents an interesting story today in the Washington Post about one of our country’s big box retailers:
On March 28, Circuit City announced that it was laying off 3,400 of its salesclerks. Not because they had poor performance records, mind you: Their performance was utterly beside the point. They were shown the door, said the chain, simply because they were the highest-salaried salesclerks that Circuit City employed.
Their positions were not eliminated. Rather, the store announced that it would hire their replacements at the normal starting salary.
One can only imagine the effect of Circuit City’s announcement on the morale of the workers who didn’t get fired. The remaining salesclerks can only conclude: Do a good job, get promoted, and you’re outta here.
It was, in short, just a normal day in contemporary American capitalism.
This just is not going to work. It is an unsustainable condition in our society. Economists, business leaders, whomever, have to come down from the theory and view the reality of our humanity.
Capitalism as we know it has served humanity well for centuries. But I think that is has passed some threshold in the U.S. Its efficiency has become excessive. It no longer is serving the interests of society as a whole. And what the upper strata of America does not realize, I think, is that we are a democracy. Our capitalism works well because the consensus of our country allows it to do so. Cultural intertia–a well-bred American devotion to capitalism–is buying time to allow our systems to go on unchecked. But eventually the popular will is going to mandate changes to how things function.
What should that change be? Meyerson goes on to suggest typical liberal tweaks. I don’t know if they are the answer. And of course the inverse of capitalism–socialism–has been proven by the 20th century to be a grand failure.
I think it is yet something different. To me it is also tied to the environment, as fossil fuels behind the scenes have really been what has enabled our social and economic perversion. Maybe Bill McKibben has some thoughts . . .
In my mind, this is just Circuit City being irresponsible. They should have had a pay ceiling that’s set and that salesclerks can’t exceed. If people have a problem with the low wage of that position, they can decide whether or not to do something about it.
I’m not so sure if the entire system (or the theory of capitalism) is to blame for this.
Also, most people know that Walmart and other others put local stores out of business - but most seem to value the low cost and wide selection over the local jobs. It is just another example of America’s self-centered attitude, which i think is going to continue forever. Any change must take this into account. People won’t change because of guilt nor sympathy. They will change for money or convenience and those need to be a big part of any proposed solution
Which makes me wonder - why don’t car companies make hybrid cars the same price as the non-hybrid models?
I think that America’s self-centered attitude is actually going to be forced to change. If we fire all of our low wage employees and continue to value cheap imports, we are going to have to change because it’s just not sustainable. Our economy will run itself into the ground that way and we will have both huge welfare and social security costs to deal with. It’s just a matter of whether or not we realize this in time.
I agree that people will change because of money, etc. and convenience,and fortunately I do think companies are starting to realize that if they can make environmentally friendly/fair trade/etc products that actually benefit the consumer, then it’s a win/win situation. I just don’t know if it will be too little too late - I think some encouraging events have happened recently on this front, but they all seem like bandaids on an overwhelmingly large problem.
I think this is all a matter of evolution. We are confronting ourselves with adjacent problems to the system that best works for us in our stage of evolution (capitalism). I think the future will bring new improved social and economical systems with less and less problems.
That’s if we don’t blow ourselves up for another 200-300 years.