Roddick's rant against modern capitalism
From reading this book I get the feeling that the author really has a bee in her bonnet about the nature of corporate America, and in a way I don't blame her. As we are probably aware (and for the benefit of those who do not) Anita Roddick was the founder and chief executive officer of a chain of stores known as The Body Shop. Any of us living in the developed world have probably heard of this store, and while I generally only go and shop there to buy presents for women, the idea behind the store is commendable, and that is that she would only stock products that were not tested on animals.
However, the problem arose that if she were to be able to expand the store to the extent that she wanted to she needed to become that which she hated, and that is a part of corporate America, which meant borrowing money from banks and listing on the New York Stock Exchange. It is all well and good to set up a business with an ethical foundation and an ethical outlook, but the problem is that once you seek to raise capital from the capitalists, there has to be a sacrifice, and that sacrifice is to hand control of the company over to those you hate. While raising capital through share placements can still keep you in control of the company, you suddenly begin to find that the shareholders, and the shareholders that tend to have the most control are the institutional holders such as the investment houses and the banks, are only interested in one thing: profit.
I won't go into any further details regarding the pitfalls that have since come about with regards to the relentless pursuit of profit, as came about in the global financial crisis, but profit was never Roddick's guiding motive, but rather the creation of a more ethical and environmentally responsible corporate environment. However, the problem arises that such a basis is never really a profitable enterprise. For instance, it is much more expensive to produce organic food as opposed to producing food using modern, chemically enhanced and genetically engineered, processes, which means that the end consumer will look at the two products, and go for the cheaper alternative. Further, rigorous testing tends to be much more expensive than simply throwing some half tested genetically engineered brand onto the market, and while the ideal result is bumper crops, it is far too expensive to wait for the results of rigorous testing, so bribes are thrown about, and a substandard product is released.
As for the testing of products on animals, we come to an even bigger problem. Granted, I do not support the testing of products on animals, and one of the main reasons for this is that animals are not human. Just because a product is not harmful to an animal does not necessarily mean that it is not harmful to a human. Consider this for instance: I could feed something to a dog that the dog will eat and go on its merry way, however if I were to eat the same thing I would get really sick. In the alternative, I can eat chocolate (well, sort of, too much makes me sick and I occasionally get an allergic reaction to it, however for the point of argument, humans can eat chocolate) but if I were to feed chocolate to a dog, the dog will die. So, my argument is that in the long run testing on animals is not necessarily going to produce the result that we are looking for, so why do it?
There are lots of books like this out in the market, and I would encourage people to go out and read them. There is so much going on in this world that we blind ourselves too, and we also have much more rights and powers than any other middle class person in history has ever had, and as such we should be prepared to educate ourselves as to what is going on in the world and we should be prepared to take a stance against many of the evils that we are confronted with, however, I should also point back to history to outline how progress develops, and in many cases progress came about because people took to the streets and said to the government that this is not right.
The example I use is the underpaid workers in third world export processing zones. I will agree that the treatment and the working conditions that these workers are facing is appalling in the extreme, but so were the conditions of the working class in 19th century America and England. However, if we go to these nations now we find that many of the working classes are living quite comfortably, but this was because people took to the streets and demanded better living standards. However, on the flip side, I remember reading an article by Frederick Engels that outlined the living standards of the Irish in Manchester, and it was appalling. However, this was not because they were paid bad wages, to the contrary, they were paid quite decent wages, however they did not have the financial skills to be able to use that money, so ended up simply using it to buy alcohol. They had no need for furniture, they were used to mud floored huts, so that is what they did with the houses, simply lived in a state they were used to. The same is the case for the Australian aboriginals in the homelands. We westerners are appalled at their living standards, but that is how they live and how they like to live. Just because they don't have comfy sofas or television sets, does not mean that they want them. However, the problem with them is not the living standards, but the fact that we are forcing Western values onto them, which includes tobacco and alcohol. It is these two vices that are destroying their communities, not the houses. For centuries they didn't even have houses, but we came along, said that to be a civilised human being you must live in a beautiful house with a white picket fence. True to Asterix, they tapped themselves on the head and said 'these white people are crazy'.
It is a shame that they didn't then turn around and lock us up on Christmas Island to be processed as illegal refugees, because, honestly, that is what we were.
