The language of the market

Have you noticed how commercial, how financial, how economic our language has become? I'm not talking about the simple fact that things like the stock market have their own shows when they really don't deserve to be talked about at all. No, I'm talking about the shift in tone, attitude, and impact that a general change in vocabulary brings with it.

For example, as noted last time, we don't talk about "careers" or even "employment" anymore, we only talk about "jobs". The first two terms has some longevity, some continuity to them, but the last one doesn't. Or how about a phrase like "ownership of learning"? What's owned? What was wrong with motivation? Everyone knows that to get ahead in life or to succeed anywhere, you have to "pay your dues". We no longer ask people to support our causes, we have to get them to "buy in". Goals have become "targets", effort is now an "investment". We don't give up, we "sell out". We no longer have people working for us, we have "human capital"; we no longer have reputations, we have "social capital". The most fundamental reason for something is now "the bottom line". Citizens have been reduced to "consumers". Schools and government agencies now have "customers" too. Is this really necessary?

The words we use, whether we like it or not, say more about us than most of us are aware. Our everyday discourse has been turned into an economic exchange. We have reduced our vocabulary, and consequently our thinking, to merely economic terms. Language, which was once considered a social medium, is now more of an economic medium: as I've said before, we gave up our society for an economy. I don't think it was a "good deal", it wasn't a step along the road to progress.

There is more to life than just money, and there is more to the interactions among human beings than the market. When we forget that, we run the risk of reducing everyone and everything to an object of exchange ... yes, an object ... a commodity, something that can be bought and sold like anything else. I once took silent and humble pride in the fact that I belonged to the species homo sapiens, the one creature on earth who not only knew about instinctual interaction but higher, nobler, more meaningful interactions as well. The biologists did their best to reduce us to just clever animals, but what's even worse is our degradation to the simplified, somewhat crippled homo economicus.

Our lives aren't the richer for it. There may be more money floating around than there once was, but there's no real indication that most of us are happier or really leading better, higher quality lives because of it. If it didn't work in economics where it had its greatest chance, why would we think that chasing after that less happy model in the other areas of our lives would have more success? Oh yeah, I forgot, we dropped that sapiens thing, didn't we?

2012 Reboot

Here we are, a week into the new year, and what has changed? Nothing really. Why should it have? We don't do the holidays like we should. We've forgotten some of the most important lessons we ever learned, or at least repressed them. I can't say we're all the better for it either, but we must make do, even with what we've got.

By all appearances, 2012 is going to be a challenging year. The Americans will be having elections; the Germans are squabbling over their Federal President; the English are trying to save their last "industry" financial services; the French are trying to save their banks; the Russians are trying to have a say, as are most of the Arab world; the Chinese are finally realizing capitalism isn't all it's cracked up to be. Oh yes, I think we've still got a lot of excitement in store for this year ... and we'll have to figure it all out fast if it's coming to an end next December. Those feisty Mayans ... what'll they think of next?

I was reminiscing this morning – a prerogative of folks my age – about the "old days". I'm not sure they were all that good, but they had one thing going for them: people used to work for a living. Remember that? Oh, it's not what you might be thinking. I'm not talking about the evils of the welfare state, on the contrary, I'm talking about the time when people were employed, maybe even had careers, and were halfway secure in thinking that they could support themselves and their families (i.e. live) from their work. There's not a lot of that around anymore, is there?

No, we traded in employment for "jobs": something we're required to do, for which we expect to get paid, but those who do the paying think this should be as low as possible. It doesn't matter if you can live from it or not. That's not the job-provider's problem, is it? I was wondering because in most of what I have to do at the training company I work for is to ensure that when people have taken our training, that in the end, they have a job. Our job, if you will, is to make these people "employable" ... whatever that means.

When I was growing up, even the service-station attendant could live a modest life from what he earned. Not only don't we have service-station attendants anymore, if we did, they certainly couldn't live from what they earned. That "lowest rung" in the worker's hierarchy has been raised above the reach of a lot of young people these days. Is it really because the "market" doesn't need them or want them, or is because we, "society", don't want them anymore? Or, who decided that it's OK not to be able to live even a modest life when working full-time? Was that the "market", too? And if it was, who put the "market" in charge?

Business 101b

Turning one's thinking around isn't really as difficult as most would make it out to be. You simply need to take a step back, move slightly to the side, and then take a new look at the old idea. Failing that, sometimes a gentle nudge from without can help. Let's see:

Peter Drucker, the grandfather of American business theory, maintained that the purpose of a business (organization) is to satisfy needs in markets. I know that last word is a red flag for some, but let's keep it simple: by market I mean any "place" (real or virtual) where value is exchanged. This can be a swap meet, a flea market, an online bartering site or a commercial or industrial trade sector, or more.

In a world as complex as ours is today, this definition of purpose easily accommodates both for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. If there is a need for, say, computers and you have a business than makes them, then you are satisfying that need. If there is a need for charitable assistance for homeless people, then if you organize to do that, you are satisfying that need. If there is a need for government oversight in some area of the economy, then that agency, by performing its function, satisfies a need. Now that everyone is accounted for, we can move on to more meaningful topics like strategy, operational efficiency, environmental effectiveness or anything else that might help us get more out of what we do ... and by "more", I certainly don't mean just money.

Profit is money, so if the primary purpose of business is profit maximization, then you are trying to maximize your money. It follows, however, that if this is your first purpose, any other purpose you have can be, at best, second or lower. And it is here that too many businesses become disingenuous and start losing credibility in many people's eyes ... and rightfully so. You can claim that "product quality" or "customer satisfaction" or "the health of the patient" is paramount, but if you believe the mantra, you are not telling the truth. Profit maximization means nothing less than money first, and everything else comes after that. The order in which they come is really not all that important, for what's important is money. Naturally this does not and cannot work for not-for-profit organizations, but over the long-term it's not good for for-profit businesses either. At some point the customer starts asking him or herself what their getting for their money. Theirs is less; the businesses is more.

I would be the last person to maintain that money isn't important. Just because it isn't the absolute top priority doesn't mean it has no priority at all or that we shouldn't care about it. Quite the contrary. It is essential for businesses to strive for sustainability, to ensure their long-term existence, not just for their owners, but for the employees, their families, the community and any other stakeholder in the business. In order to do this, it is absolutely necessary to take in more than you spend. This is just commonsense housekeeping. Making profit the measure of success, though, defeats this purpose because the needs that should be satsified by organizations become relegated to second-class status, then ignored, then forgotten.

We need a new measure of success, but we won't be able to find one till we are ready to give up on ideas that have proved themselves wrong. Profit-maximization is one of them. It's time to give another idea a chance.