Race to the Bottom & the Osterich Principle
How many people would you be willing to accept die for that new iPhone or for those off-the-rack Levis? Consumers really don’t want to know…
And I can tell you from experimentation that even PhD lecturers in MBA business programs DON’T WANT TO KNOW what that gadget, food item, garment or christmas present cost in resources. Which is odd because in a world with rapidly (scarily) depleting resources you’d think business schools would be particularly interested in teaching MBAs about effective resource management. Not simply strategic management in the grander sense but actual factual education about what we have to compete for and how we plan to compete for and use those resources into the next generations.
My personal view is that the great managers and leaders of 10 years from now will be those who understand and can manage depleting resources – not finance background MBAs. Not exploitative wasteful managers racing to the bottom for the cheapest, mass produced commodity. Why? Simply, our world’s resources won’t stack up to provide us with the exponential growth we’re all hooked into believing will happen.
How much of mineral X still exists? Where is it located? Hey, we don’t even want to face the fact that the tide is coming in because the day our government accepts that a rise is inevitable – a ban on buying or selling foreshore land property – then we’ll have global financial collapse. Our economic systems don’t stomach bad news.
Here’s a rule of thumb for you: All things are made from something and wind up somewhere.
A second rule of thumb: People who don’t believe in slavery and murder sure as hell don’t mind paying for it vicariously.
Its the meeting of those two rules of thumb that makes our lives unsustainable. First, consumers want ever cheaper products. Second, consumers want them in such a way as not to feel bad about the people forced to work below a living wage, those killed and raped and maimed in our industrial wars… Ultimately people wind up getting irate at the messenger who tells them that somebody is dying OUT THERE SOMEWHERE.
Yes I’m a hypocrite. Yes I’m a know-it-all. But am I actually wrong? Because when you’re inside a broken system it just doesn’t seem broken so everything just cruises along… but now you know… what do you do?
Third rule of thumb: ITS NOT US.
I guess its alright then. What do you think?
