"Meet the new boss, same as the Old Boss.." The Who
Every Country has it's frustrations, it's mentality or self impression that keeps it moving forward limply from where it keeps shooting itself in the foot. America's is the Corporatocracy. I marvel at the evil brilliance of it when I search all over a city for a hotel room where a window opens. Fresh air now has a price.. and when I ask about it, the staff, often with righteous indignation, tell me that opening windows are a safety risk, like they are running a pre school. Nothing ever made me want to jump out more...only in America it seems...
This idea that the logic of the business should be accepted as the logic of the nation, the brave new world ideas of the Koch Brothers and the evil bean counters who have way more influence in the banal Bauhaus postwar world of Shaumberg's and Irvine's and Atlanta's then we want to admit, the world of your sold out cousin, and the world you have to pass through ever time you take a plane, go to a gas station, or have to visit when you go to see that guy from high school you can't help but like even though he moved to some shit hole of big box commerce and those houses that really do, as much as you tried to imagine it couldn't be so, look all exactly the same, for the worst reason of all.. for the school district (where the schools yes, look like prisons or factories, all ready to pump out the next generation of ambitious fucks you can't even imagine could think that way, ready to sell quality of life under the bridge to make you live more like them, to shave one more penny for them at the sake of you), convenience, and some sad fantasy of safety and a back yard.
For those of you who got that the above is code for being racist, unadventurous, formulaic and sold out, I will admit now that the people I am casually blaming are the MBA's who, since WWII, have been calling the shots on what the average American life should be that about half of us seem to be falling for. The marketing fucks you sometimes blame work for the aforementioned... The simple notion of Rational Analysis and Cost/Benefit Analysis, when the don't include human factors, are the notions responsible for depriving us of the charms of a more random and natural life if it doesn't benefit them, like opening windows at a Hampton Inn. These mass decision making tools are taught at business schools, and tell me, do any of your friends go to business school without a greed motive.. is there a business school out there that is what U Michigan or Columbia are to Law, places that train for careers of selflessness (not that I put that on a higher pedestal per se..).. not really. That guy whose dad seemed to have a secret gay crush on him who worked out too much in high school and reminded you of Christian Bale in his grooming habits a little too much, he's got an MBA by now you can be certain.. he didn't get it to make your life better. He might have learned some notion of Enlightened Self Interest, might have taken an ethics class or two, learned to charge you even more to treat you the way a human should be treated anyways (I'm looking at you Ritz Carleton, you soulless robot!) but he is not doing all that math to give you anything he doesn't make the better half on, and that's just the beginning of the tricks he might be mastering. Think about all the shit this last election was about, what Mitt represented... sure freedom, and I am not arguing for more regulations here, but freedom to do all the shit that makes you want to hang yourself before calling your cell phone company, the airlines, or deal with your mortgage broker after he sold off your loan, or the company that laid off your brother or shafted his assumed retirement.. Who.. MBA's, that's who.. and they aren't a race or a class.. it's a way of thinking, kind of a code, it's a mentality that enshrines fiduciary responsibility or financial gain above all else that I am bitching about.. it's what makes life just a little less dignified and a little less livable in the mainstream every day, that extra ad at a sports venue, or the damn new monolith of a bar in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium that takes all the fun out of the ol' cheap seats.. it's the smaller and smaller peanuts on the flight, and the annoying conversation you have to have when you sleep late in a hotel and someone talks to you on the phone as if you abused a sacred right since check out time is right now.. who? MBA's got um by the twat... steer clear if you can...
a peek into enlightened self interest:
http://hbswk.hbs.edu/topics/all-marketing.html
A peek into a sadder more conventional form of it, the kind we are most likely to face:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis
after reading this, think of millions of examples, from environmental disasters to the famous alleged case in the 60's of the RAND corporation coming up with a value for the life of a soldier to help make decisions on purchasing safety equipment under Robert MacNamara, who was a business school professor at first.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation
This makes me realize that perhaps some of my mistrust, though well founded in the present day by the nuisances stated above, leads back to an animosity for what might have been the successful but awful logic that those of us who remember the Cold War called Brinkmanship, the game of chess that seemed to be played at the expense of our peace of mind by those in Government, Business and Politics, the famed Military Industrial Complex of Eisenhower fame. It was at that moment more than perhaps any other in America and maybe the world, that even if it worked on some fucked up level, the game seemed to get out of hand, or if you were from any number of third world countries that got shoved into some awful war due to geopolitical forces like Guatemala or Ethiopia, or places that got contaminated by NBC production and deployment (Nuclear Biological and Chemical), like Hanford WA or the South Pacific, it sure as fuck got out of hand, and it all seemed to go back to paper sense overcoming common sense.. the MacNamaras of the world leading us down a road that the average guy can only scratch his head as to how he really benefits from it, or agrees that it saves him a few bucks and thinks no more, as that must be good, and the closest equivalent today would likely be seen in the conflict of practicality of inertia of how we do things now over action to change that is the battleground of the Global Warming Debate, another mess that, yup, I can kind of blame on the MBA's..it's almost fun...
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