Am I the Enemy?

The ultimate measure of success for big corporations, and little ones, and individuals, and governments, is profit. An enemy is anyone who reduces profits. And it doesn’t matter how the enemy reduces those profits. I certainly reduce the profits of corporations, and you probably do also. That makes us enemies of the corporations.

One way to reduce a corporation’s profits are for governments to force them to pay for their externalities—that is, the consequences of the harm they have been inflicting on people and the Earth. To force fossil fuel corporations to pay a carbon tax (so far, a failure); to force tobacco corporations to pay for the health effects of smoking (a partial success); to force pharmaceutical corporations to pay for the suffering that directly results from aggressive marketing of addictive drugs (a mixed record of success and failure).

But another way is for ordinary consumers to choose to buy less from corporations, choosing inexpensive and healthy alternatives. Those of us who choose this path are eating into the profitability of large corporations as surely as if they had lost a lawsuit or paid penalties.

On a recent weekend, my family and I visited the Black Forest National Park in Germany, right over the river from Alsace, where we now live. We walked around in the snow and let the kids throw snowballs. We had to drive there, in a family sized vehicle, but we only use the vehicle when there is an unavoidable reason for it. Most of the time we walk or take public transportation, which helps us avoid the parking nightmare that Strasbourg, like any city, is. Then we went home, and enjoyed the free entertainment of one another’s company and educational YouTube videos (such as mine or those of Jamy Gourmaud).

What we did not do was to go on a cruise or buy a lot of hiking equipment. The end of the day was also a perfect opportunity for us to go to a restaurant and have a family meal, but we did not do this; we went home and had leftovers which, I might add, were pretty good. We did not go out to a movie. In just these ways, we deprived corporations of about a couple of thousand euros of income. That money is not part of their income as surely as if it had been forbidden by government policy. We also had less debt, which meant that we deprived financial corporations of debt interest.

Corporations do not want us to consume less or to encourage others to do so. They do not want us to drive less, or buy smaller cars, but to buy big electric trucks. They do not want us to buy fewer of the items that have to be transported all over the continent. They do not want us to simply not smoke; they want us to vape, a market the tobacco corporations largely control. They do not want us to be healthy, but to be permanently in a state of requiring expensive medical intervention. They do not want us to reduce credit card debt, just avoid defaults.

I have a medical condition which requires prescriptions that are, for me as a French resident, free, but which in America required me to pay a thousand dollar deductible each year, and most of that money went directly to the recently-assassinated CEO of United HealthCare. I do not endorse assassination, of course. But for a million people in my situation, these charges were a billion dollar benefit to UHC. Even though my medication is now free, I do everything I can to avoid getting sicker and needing yet more medical intervention.

Any of my readers (which is not a large number) who are influenced by my enjoyment of low-impact pleasures will have a similar negative impact on corporate profits. This makes us, collectively, major enemies of the corporations. We may not be as obvious as the Marxist activists, but we are as significant.

And, I need hardly add, we are happy. To have my grandson try to throw a snowball at me, and miss, is as enjoyable as any cruise. And there is no chance whatever that I will contract the rotavirus for which cruises are famous, from the snowball.