MBA Follies: The Age of Hyper-Productivity and the Abandonment of the Consumer

There is a frenzied concern these days about the increasing concentration of wealth at the top of the American social pyramid. ThIs phenomenon is called ‘wealth inequality’, income disparity, and even ‘the coming revolution’. We are in an age of focus paid solely to productivity and the consumer has been abandoned - the #AbandonedConsumer Age.

The concentration of wealth at the top is no longer denied or excused - it is here, it has been happening, there doesn’t seem to be any stopping of it, and it will probably continue unchecked until some countervailing movement steps in. And this, #countervailingmovement, is where things are getting dicey, because included in this term are such notions as social revolution (yes, that term is now seen in mainstream commentaries), #wageless-economic-leveling via government-industry subsidizing of idle workers displaced by productivity advances, and even simple largess to artificially sustain the consumer base.

We just can’t let go of the traditional model of capital-comes-first. The opinion of ‘Perched Eye’ is we might 'go down’ just because we are stuck in the cement boots of 19th century industrial thinking. Though, a notable exception to this trap (of hubris of the ‘haves’) was Henry Ford who realized what should be a universally recognized truth - the welfare and economic health of the populace (including the worker-consumer base)is needed to sustain industry and, by elementary linkage, likewise assure the well-being of the capitalist.

Henry Ford was a prime example of the market ‘truth that capitalism is an organic, symbiotic ‘thing’ of cooperating species - worker, owner, financiers, consumers - all interdependent on one another for what keeps them individually afloat.

Ford’s model of capitalism, that capitalists have responsibilities outside the ledger book and even outside working hours and outside the plant gates, is breaking down. Maybe has almost completely broken down because it appears current capitalist thinking has almost completely abandoned any consideration of external dependencies (and influences) on capitalist productivity,i.e., Ford’s fundamental notion that somebody else’s money is required to buy product and keep the company going.

There are signs of this break-down of Henry Ford’s interdependent market model.

First, we are in an ‘age of unthinking search for productivity gain’ with little thought that this goal is forcing consumers out of the picture, i.e. the goal of productivity gains is more profitability resulting more concentration of wealth from the base to the top with less recirculation (fewer jobs). This can’t logically be sustained. The result can take several forms: open political revolution, disease culling of the growing numbers of ‘#catastrophicpoor’, and #totalsystemcollapse.

There seems to be little discussion of ‘total system collapse’. This might occur when so little production gain is recycled into jobs that the consumer base disappears. The consumer base can no longer consume because the consumer can't afford the goods of production at whatever discount, profit disappears and companies go broke and financing debt becomes impossible. (One solution might be #discountedConsumption, the non-wage subsidizing of the consumer base just to sustain its purchasing power.

A first stage of ‘total system collapse’ is occurring right now. We are currently seeing attempts to adjust to the reduced purchasing power of the consumer base by making cheaper goods, i.e. goods of less quality using cheaper components and faux ingredients. Another sign of collapse is the relabeling schemes accepted by our food quality guardians,e.g. cheese is now ‘cheese product’ which is the signal that some minimal modicum of this product has ever seen an animal. Lesser quality goods even now are starting to dominate our American food market - more ‘food' is not only being processed with cheaper ( ‘ersatz’ ) ingredients but even ‘ersatz’ food is being replaced by #foodexperiences where only taste remains and there is zero food value. And, our fast food and snack markets are now seeing their turn to be forced out of the market by even cheaper substitutes that bear no link to food except that now labeling redefinitons allow ‘organic’ to mean the product contains carbon and hydrogen atoms that a high schooler associates with simple organic chemistry which also includes plastics.

Can humans survive on ‘food’ that is mostly plastic - or all plastic, as the end-goal of productivity savings? The answer is definitely, commonsensical, ‘NO’! But in the increasing absence of our guardians of common sense, i.e. the weakening of our food quality regulating agencies,...’Well, hell, let’s give it a try’. We don’t need so many people laying around doing nothing, anyway."