mardi 26 avril 2011

Capitalism and diversity

A few days ago, I was walking back home from work as usual, and I noticed that the grocery next door was bought by Carrefour, a big multinational retailer. I entered the shop, and I started wandering around to check what has changed. It was amazing how they managed to fill every small corner of the place with a shiny product. There was a much bigger diversity of products than the older shop had. I said to myself how great capitalism and the current global economical system are.
I kept thinking about it on the road ..but ...NO WAIT A MINUTE!! Diversity??? Actually what I saw in the shop was exactly the same as what I saw in the other branches of this retailing brand in Paris, in Lille...and in all the cities I have visited.

Capitalism means open markets and free worldwide circulation of goods. It means an inevitable and atrocious competition among companies on the international scale. It means a race toward critical size.and the dominance of corporates over local business. It means lower prices to make more profit. It means rationalizing all of  the production and distribution processes. It means convergence to the same model. Simply, it means you are going to eat the same McDonald hamburger and drink the same Coca Cola whether you are in London, Paris or Rome, in spite of all of the rich local diverse products you may have in those wonderful cities. What we reached is a local diversity, but a horrible global monotony! a global monotony that is killing all of the beautiful local cultures worldwide. Same fast food, same fashion, same music, same same same!! This is really sad, all of the richness that the humanity has produced over the past centuries are just fading behind modern capitalism.

The same effect has changed our individual human knowledge. The rationalization of processes and the search for minimizing costs, has lead to very very specific functions. Our jobs are very specialized in a specific subject: mobile developer, UMTS specialist... We need a doctor to solve all of our health problem,s we need a specialized person in every problem that urges in the house, we need a bank to take care of our money, we need, we need ... The knowledge scope of our minds is being narrowed continually.

I am not really criticizing, nor do I have solutions. I am just writing about what I see everyday.

Achraf

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