By Morf Morford, Tacoma Daily Index
You may have noticed on these pages that I veer into politics – or at least the process of politics on occasion.
You might wonder what politics and business/economics have in common. I would say that it is very fundamental, so fundamental that it is barely visible.
Both politics and economics are tangible expressions of what we really believe – and what we really care about.
I am not very interested in ideology or political positions, issues or even candidates. But I am very interested in how the processes we have created, and to a degree, support and believe in, deliver on what they promise.
Many religious people, for example, make the argument that their “faith” is best expressed by what they “believe” – not what they do.
Some religious people I know, for example, firmly refute the idea that “faith” has anything to do with “works” – what they do in a career or in public.
Those in politics or business have no such illusions.
In the marketplace of politics and business, it is not what we say or “believe” that defines or expresses us – it is, in a very pragmatic, measurable way, what we do.
For many reasons, some valid and some preposterous, if not outright delusional, we are questioning the systems – political, social and economic, that surround us and that, for better or worse, we have become accustomed to – and, for more and more of us, do not seem to get us where we want to go.
Ever more visible clusters of homeless “camps” in virtually every city, even all too many neighborhoods, across America and much of Europe, tell us that something in our economy is not working as planned.
America has, for a couple centuries, defined, even marketed itself as the ultimate, and primary “land of opportunity. For those hundreds, if not thousands, of US citizens huddled on our streets, continually exposed to weather, crime and public humiliation, this is clearly not the case.
For those of us not subjected to this “shelter uncertainty,” when encountering empty grocery shelves, wildly erratic interest rates, fluctuating gas prices and home prices (and rents) subject to some subterranean shifts and upheavals most of us could never foresee, we must react at the risk of our own financial stability.
Several years ago there was a saying among those who worked with homeless people – we are all just a couple paychecks away from being homeless.
Factor in enormous levels of student debt, increasing health care costs, and, at best, a jumbled and mixed-up job market and the hazards inherent in what had been a fairly predictable career track, young people (in particular) have more choices and danger zones than any other generation.
All politics is local. And personal.
The world of politics is just as varied – and laden with hazards – as the economy.
The one belief that we, as Americans, (and many around the world) share across every political spectrum is that we don’t trust our politicians – or their parties.
The first political principle of many us is that we want to be left alone.
Any political party that could promise (and deliver) maximum personal autonomy would win overwhelming at any level virtually every time.
Oddly enough, the Republican party, at one time promoted itself as just such a party (though the other party has, at times, taken that position).
Freedom of association, of expression and religion are core to who we are as a nation.
As a child, I would have assumed that the party of “limited government interference” would have been the party that would have been the first to advocate for something akin to marriage equality (what, after all, is more basic than the right to marry the person one chooses?).
And, in a similar way, which party would be most likely to allow for any individual to self-medicate or use any drug or drink within the privacy of their own home?
This is obviously not the case and the party once dedicated to individual rights seems to, in the 2020s, be the party that wants to restrict what books we read and medical procedures that we, as individuals, request.
Such was not always the case, of course.
Barry Goldwater, a life-long Republican, supported abortion rights, the ban on semiautomatic rifles, expanding voting rights and actively advocated gay rights, especially in the military – decades ago.
Many back then (and still) considered Goldwater extreme, but at least he was largely consistent; individual rights and opportunity – in politics and economics – is what, ideally, set us apart and makes us, when we hold true to our own beliefs, the land of opportunity that we have always, to some degree at least, aspired to.
Our major political parties, like our long-standing chain stores and corporations (like Sears, Penney’s, Kodak and General Motors, among many others) seem to lumber toward their own obsolescence and irrelevance as they struggle to maintain market share – or even their own survival.
Fewer and fewer of us care about, or believe in, what the major political parties or retailers have to offer us.
The landscape is shifting under their feet.
They might work to “energize the base” and keep their most loyal customers.
Or they might make feeble and clumsy attempts to reach out and try to keep our interest, but the real “bottom-line” is that we will only care about them if they care about us.
Yes, all politics is local, and personal.
But so is every business transaction, and hiring decision and experience in a grocery store.
There was a time, not that long ago, when the first principle of commerce was that “the customer is always right”.
By a set of circumstances many years in the making, American (and in many cases, those around the world) “customers” are not feeling valued or respected by politicians or corporations.
Economically or politically, we all vote, with our dollars or with our ballots, and what more and more of us are deciding is that what once worked is no longer working.
Corporations and political parties need to decide if self-preservation of a museum piece is more important than responding to shifting market forces. It’s a decision every corporation and empire has had to make.
History is littered with those who have chosen self-preservation over responding to an ever-shifting political or economic terrain.
No economic or political formula lasts forever, and few victories are final.
The trick to success, in politics and business, is to ride the waves without being submerged by them.
