Susanna J. Sturgis   Martha's Vineyard writer and editor
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How Can We Value What Doesn't Have a Price?

September 27, 2007

This was inspired by an excerpt from Robert B. Reich's new book Supercapitalism: The Transformation of Business, Democracy, and Everyday Life (Alfred A. Knopf). The excerpt discussed how "our" (U.S. consumers') passion for bargains, good deals, and cheap merchandise is partially responsible for some less than optimal consequences, like crummy wages, shoddy products, environmental degradation, and the outsourcing of production to countries where workers have little protection from exploitation and lousy working conditions. This has been an obsession of mine for a very long time. If only more of us would pay more attention to the mechanisms that are fueled by our passion for Stuff! But it's easier to rail against abstractions like capitalism or anonymous CEOs with seven-figure incomes or companies like Wal-Mart that some of us loathe but others of us see as the only way we can survive on our crummy incomes. Here goes:

From 1981 to 1985 I was the book buyer for Lammas, Washington, D.C.'s feminist bookstore. One of the best jobs I've ever had. We carried or could get just about anything by women or remotely related to women's history, feminist theory, lesbian fiction -- you name it. At its largest, the staff comprised one full-time person and three part-timers (including me -- I was also editing a newsletter for a nonsmokers'-rights group at the time). We knew our stuff. Day in, day out, we made knowledgeable recommendations to customers about books, records, and what was happening around the city. Any woman, customer or not, could post notices on the bulletin board or in the housing and job notebooks. Lammas was an indispensable part of the feminist and lesbian communities in the D.C. area. Hardly a week went by without at least one woman telling us that she didn't know how she'd survive if we weren't around.

At this time chain bookstores were starting and growing (growing, growing . . .). A big chain started in our city, advertising "If you paid full price, you didn't buy it at Crown Books." Pretty soon our regular customers were buying the new novel by Toni Morrison or Marge Piercy or Rita Mae Brown from Crown Books -- but coming to Lammas for the mid-list books, the feminist-press books, the university-press books, the poetry books, and the short-discount books that Crown Books wouldn't touch. How to explain the problem to the customers, and the community at large? We tried, over and over: "It's sales of the high-turnover books that make it possible to carry all these books that sell two or three copies a year, and to special-order single copies without charging for the service." Yadda yadda yadda.

On the whole, our customers were well educated and politically savvy -- often politically active as well. Most grasped the principles, and could have afforded to pay three bucks more for a new best-seller, but they still made a beeline for the bargains at Crown Books. (A few even thought we were fleecing them because we couldn't discount the way the heavily capitalized chain did.)

That experience woke me up to what I still believe is the fundamental problem with capitalism as practiced in this country: it only values things that can be measured in dollars and cents. Intellectually our customers valued the customer service and community resource our store provided, but since it didn't come with a price tag they had no easy way to measure it against the three bucks they were saving at Crown Books, where the clerks knew little about the books they were selling and whose main contribution to "the community" was the big ads they bought regularly in the Washington Post.

Lammas survived till October 2000, but by then it and I had headed off in separate directions. My last visit was, I think, in the early 1990s. Since I left Lammas, and D.C., in 1985, I've seen plenty of "you don't know what you've got till it's gone": towns and cities that cut deals with big retailers, seeing only Jobs! Lower taxes! Cheaper goods!, and realize belatedly that the neighborhood has been gutted, the jobs are menial, and the traffic is out of control. I could tell you a few stories about Martha's Vineyard, but I'm saving them for The Squatters' Speakeasy.

This excerpt from Robert Reich's book doesn't address what may be the most important issue, though I'm sure his book does: What happens to democratic institutions when we only know how to value things that come with a price tag attached? A glance at the headlines should give you an idea. Political corruption is nothing new, of course, but it seems to me that influence peddling and outright bribery escalates when the free-marketeers are riding high -- and why not? It's the good ol' market at work. Why shouldn't votes and public offices go to the highest bidder? And why shouldn't a conscientious company invest big bucks to ensure that an important vote goes its way?

The fix lies in regulating the market in such a way that it values the intangibles. It can be done if there's a will to do it. The question is "Do we love our bargains more than we love democracy or community or justice?" It's not really a new question. Most of us who know the story think Esau was short-sighted (literally) when he traded his birthright for a mess of pottage. What would it take to convince us that we're doing the same damn thing?

 

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