‘We’re just providing what the market, what people, demand.’ ‘The customer is squarely in the driver’s seat.’ Yeah right. Gosh, shucks, don’t-look-at-me.
One, I doubt that’s true. I mean, if people really wanted your product, you wouldn’t (have to) spend millions on advertising, advertising to persuade them to buy it. Supply isn’t (just) following demand; demand is (also) following supply. Your supply. You’re in the driver’s seat.
Two, even if it is true, that people do want it, I find it hard to believe that someone with enough whatever to get into positions of power, decision-making positions, would be so meekly obedient to the desires, the demands, of the common people.
Or so helpless: ‘demands’ is such loaded language, implying that resistance, your resistance, is futile, implying that you are without power here.
Or so spineless – as if you have no mind, no desire, no will of your own.
Please, have the guts, the maturity, to take responsibility for your actions. You have a choice. You produce/provide what you do because you choose to, because you want to. If you are acceding to market demands – and I have no doubt that you are – it’s because it’s profitable, it’s because (you think) it’s in your best interests. You ‘want to make it easy for the customer to do business with [you]’ because business with you is business for you. Customers are a means to your end of profit. Otherwise you’d be as interested in poverty management as you are in wealth management.
‘Our shareholders demand high returns.’ Another pass-the-buck denial of responsibility. One, again, I doubt that’s strictly true. Did you ask them all? And was their response fully informed? Were they aware that their high returns come at the expense of others? (Others’ low wages, loss of employment; others’ high prices, loss of choice through monopoly; environmental degradation; etc.)
And two, even if they do, again, do you have to obey them? Of course not. Unless – and here’s the all important hidden (by you, from you) assumption – unless you want the value of your company to be ‘high’ so people will give you money. There’s that self-interest again.
‘Return on equity is an important measure of our success.’ Not the amount of good one does, not the amount of happiness one creates, no, these things don’t matter; success isn’t even justice, isn’t getting back what one puts out, no, success is how much more one gets back than one puts out. Self-interest. Literally, interest. For the self. It’s egoism, pure and simple. And childish and dangerous. I don’t think ‘society as a whole’ is in the vocabulary. The total inability to recognize, let alone deal with, the moral dimension – i.e., the consideration of others – is frightening.
And the ego knows no satisfaction. ‘From start-up to growth.’ The life cycle of a business seems to stop there. At growth. And more growth. And more growth. Excuse me? What about stasis? What about decline? They are part of the entire life cycle. Only a cancer grows and grows and grows.
