IN CAPITALISM, a business makes money by taking great care of customers, that is, by delivering great value at a fair price. What keeps the price fair? Competition, of course.

Or so goes the fairy tale.

Ever bought a new car? There’s no great value at a fair price going on. What’s going on is a tactical war between dealer and customer, where the dealer is willing to accept less but tries to get the customer to pay more, and the customer is willing to pay more but tries to get the dealer to accept less.

Ever bought real estate? It’s essentially the same game.

Many forms of retail shopping are no better. I stepped into a well–known retail furniture store and found six barstools I wanted. A salesperson told me the price. “I’ll shop around,” I said, whereupon the salesperson immediately dropped the price by no small amount. The same thing happened in another store when I was shopping for an adjustable bed. 

Call me naive, but I would think that taking great care of a customer would entail leading with your best price.

When I owned an advertising agency, I stuck to a price list for our various services. By contrast, a good many of my competitors would learn how much the client had budgeted and simply take it. Again, call me naive, but that seemed to me a lot like grifting.

Consider all of the mergers and acquisitions going on with communications companies, streaming services, social media, and retail giants both online and in–store. Do not think for one moment that such are motivated by a desire to take better care of the customer. The idea is to return value to shareholders (whose interests are often at odds with those of customers — see my earlier post, Three Problems with Shareholders), plus control information, and wield power over those who might otherwise seek to regulate them. 

These and other abuses are inevitable results of so–called free markets, of unbridled capitalism. Capitalism has no regard for fairness or decency.

To be sure, some businesses still seek to treat customers with fairness. Here’s to the few.

IN MY marketing career, I worked with restaurant clients. When I would ask what set apart their restaurant, the answer was always the same: “Our food!”

Nope. 

For one thing, “our food tastes good” is hardly a unique much less a compelling claim.

For another, in general in the restaurant biz--exceptions acknowledged—the first marketing peg is location. The second is the experience you create for diners, e.g., setting, look, service, lighting, furnishings, acoustics, and so forth. Food comes in third. A great location paired with a good experience can do well with average fare. Think Old Spaghetti Factory, Applebee’s, or Chili’s. But when location and the diner experience fall short, great food will be hard–pressed to make up the difference.

But today there’s a caveat. The above priorities apply only for dining in.

Delivery services like DoorDash and GrubHub render location irrelevant. Attractive packaging, if a restaurant is smart enough to use it, can somewhat enhance the diner experience, but only to a point. For the most part, when food is but mediocre, a delivery service lays bare the mediocrity.

I personally have been surprised when GrubHub brings food from a favorite place and, with one bite, I realize it’s not as good as I’d thought. Now, some of that is due to 30 to 40 minutes of sitting on the passenger seat of a Prius. But much of it also has to do with the fact that I’m not seated in a place with great interior design, attentive waiters, swirling aromas, and, perhaps, a date I’m hoping to impress.

I learned the hard way that some plates lose their luster long before reaching my door. Steak? Don’t even try. But some types of fare make the journey quite well. Asian cuisine, for instance. Din Tai Fung manages to arrive fully equipped to make my taste buds stand up and sing hymns.

Which brings us back to the problem stated above: “our food tastes good” is hardly a unique much less a compelling claim.

Good luck to restaurateurs in a DoorDash economy.

KOURI RICHINS of Park City, Utah, stands accused of slipping her husband a fatal dose of fentanyl. So far from the articles I have read, admittedly an incomplete picture, I would vote to acquit.

Does it seem likely to me that she killed him? I’ll grant that. But when we’re talking about a murder conviction, for me there is huge gulf between “likely” and “beyond a reasonable doubt.”

To be sure, she had motive in the form of onerous debt and a lover on the side. She had opportunity and means. Aspects of her character certainly seem questionable.

But the dots from there to “ergo she killed him” remain unconnected, at least to my satisfaction. 

I’m surprised the court allowed testimony the likes of “she looked more put together than usual on that day” and other implications that she hadn’t met some standard of bereavement behavior. Such are worthless, non–expert opinions. Even taken at face value, poor decorum is not proof of murder.​

WITH MY move to Portland, Oregon, a little over five years ago, I lucked out when it comes to neighbors. They are kind, helpful, pleasant. We often get together socially.

But then there’s the RAB.

Her apartment sits on a street behind ours. She introduced herself to us by screaming at my daughter, Rebecca, who, before she’d quit, happened to have stepped outside for a smoke. “You raggedy–ass bitch!” screamed the RAB. “Out there smoking! The old man”—I assume she meant me—“never did that! You need to respect your elders!” On she went, ranting. Dumbfounded, Becca showed the good sense not to respond.

In that moment, we realized that “raggedy–ass bitch” makes for a delightful acronym. Thus we dubbed our new fan the RAB.

Becca has been smoke–free for over a year (I’m immensely proud of her for that), but the RAB has not ceased from harassing her. Instead, she started screaming about our dogs. 

We have three, the legal limit. Sometimes we let them romp, always supervised, in the side yard. They yip, wrestle, and play–roar as dogs are wont to do. I grant it could be disturbing, which is why I time them to ensure it doesn’t get out of hand. They tend to quiet down well within 20 seconds.

If the RAB happens to be home, her voice rings out. From her doorway or a window, phone–to–ear, she yells, “Hello? Humane Society? These people’s dogs are vicious! They’re attacking everyone! I’m afraid for my safety! The neighborhood is terrorized by them! They constantly fight! Those dogs are so abused!” 

I doubt she’s really on the phone to anyone. I suspect it is theater, with phone–as–prop. In any event, no authority has contacted us. I’m a little sad about that, for it would be a simple matter to establish that our dogs are well cared–for. I would love for the spying RAB to see police or Humane Society personnel leave our home with warm smiles and handshakes.

Becca’s room faces the back of the house and, thus, the RAB’s front door. Not long ago as she was relaxing with a book in her room, Becca overheard the RAB making a show of complaining to some supposed authority about the dogs. The dogs were indoors, one in the room at Becca’s side. Looking out her window, Becca saw the RAB staring up at her, once again phone–to–ear, and heard her describe the interior of Becca’s room, down to the color of the throw pillows.

To be fair, the RAB doesn’t always yell. Sometimes she contents herself with standing in plain sight while appearing to shoot video of us.

The RAB has four security cameras mounted on her apartment exterior. We recently noted that one permanently mounted camera appears to be pointed directly at Becca’s window. No wonder she knows the color of the throw pillows.

Two of the RAB’s fellow apartment dwellers have visited us. The first reassured us that we’re okay and that the RAB is crazy. The second asked us to join other neighbors, whom the RAB was also harassing, in a complaint to the RAB’s landlord. We gladly joined, which, of course, proved futile. Unable to get the RAB to move, both neighbors eventually moved instead.

At holiday time, the RAB hangs a neon sign in an upstairs window. “Joy,” it says.

CHRISTIANITY TEACHES that whatever God commands is right and moral, because God would not command anything that wasn’t right or moral. It’s circular reasoning on stilts. It places Christians in a position of finding ways to defend immoral acts like drowning everyone save a single family or mass slaughtering firstborns in Egypt. 

No matter if you don’t understand or, worse, don’t like what God commands. You’re playing in God’s ball game. If you don’t knuckle under, you’re in for unimaginable punishment. It’s authoritarianism on stilts, but what can you do?

So it’s little wonder that so many Christians* respond positively to Trump. When he claims to be unerringly right and threatens to punish all who resist or question him, many Christians find themselves in familiar, comfortable territory.
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* Yeah, I know, not all. No need to @ me.

Problem 1:

In theory, a business succeeds by pleasing enough customers to turn a profit. But a publicly traded company is first beholden to shareholders.

Remember when Target stores in the American South bowed to pressure and moved their Pride products to the back of the store? I don’t know how management felt about equity, but I do know that a boycott could have cost them their jobs and exposed them to civil actions — even if the stores survived and profited.

This was driven home to me early in my career. I worked for a company whose whose most profitable clients marketed products that, though legal, harmed people. I argued to our executives (who missed no opportunity to boast of their morality) that the more responsible course would be to decline such. An experienced Board member objected. “If you decline those clients,” he said, “I’ll resign from this Board. Shareholders could sue us for excluding most–profitable customers.”

Concepts like “right” and “wrong” have no place in a company whose shareholders care only about maximizing profits.

Problem 2:

Having shareholders places stress upon a company to report positive quarterly earnings. Thus a fear of showing low earnings or even a loss in the short term can prevent management from investing in long–term profitability and growth strategies. Thus the pressure for positive quarterly returns works against the company and, ultimately, against the very shareholders management seeks to please.

Problem 3:

Then there’s the whole private equity thing. Ideally, you’d think people would acquire a business for its profit and growth potential. But there are firms whose business model is to acquire a company’s shares and then make money by driving it into the ground, ultimately bankrupting it.

Unbridled capitalism is an amoral system.

I HAVE LONG been loath to say anything akin to “if you support Trump you’re a bad person.” It seems so arbitrary.

But it only seems arbitrary. 

To support Trump it is to support one horrid position after another. Positions that no good person would support.

This is not to say that you have no redeeming qualities. Maybe you’re nice to kittens. Maybe you’re good at your job. Maybe you’re a skillful chef. Maybe you’re a good raconteur. These are all things I can like about you. These are things that let me remain friends, or at least friendly, with Trump supporters of my acquaintance.

But you cannot at once support Trump and be a good person. 

It really is that simple.

For a quick overview of Trump’s horrid positions, please read this brief piece by John Pavlovitz.

A LONG–TIME resident was sharing with me a bit of our neighborhood’s unsavory, pre–development history.

The police, I learned, had once dubbed the area Felony Flats. Charming.

Some years ago, he told me, during housing construction that would vastly improve the neighborhood, a sex worker had commandeered a Porta–Potty for turning tricks. A senior citizen burst from her home, barefoot, glass of wine in hand, and chased the sex worker down the street, screaming, “Get your Black ass outta here!” He chuckled that the senior had managed not to spill a drop of her wine.

I winced. Choosing not to go into the empathy I have for a sex worker driven to that extreme, I said that I wish the senior had omitted “Black” in favor of, simply, “your ass.”

The man, who, I hardly need point out, is white, defended the word choice. He found it funny.

Not incidentally, he and his husband have faced their share of prejudice, intolerance, and hate. It saddens me when members of one marginalized community cannot summon empathy for members of another. Pitting the marginalized against one another is one way that a plurality maintains undue power.

In the lovely and spacious atrium of a nearby hospital stands a small grand piano. A little over three years ago, I signed up as a volunteer pianist. Each week for an hour or two, I hammer out tunes while patients, visitors, and staff filter through, some hanging out, some bringing their lunch.

During my first month, a man requested “In My Life,” by the Beatles. I had to reach back into my memory for that one, but there it was. He burst into tears as I played. I learned that his wife of 50–plus years had just passed, in that very hospital, and that he had heard the piano as he was leaving and followed the sound to the atrium. “That’s our song,” he choked out between sobs. I wept with him. I couldn’t not.

Not long after, a woman requested Gershwin’s “Someone to Watch Over Me.” It’s one of my favorites, and I was happy to play it for her. Her husband of 60–some years lay in serious condition in the upper floors. It was their song. Again, there were tears, and again I joined in.

Just last week, a woman in perhaps her 30s or 40s took a seat near the stairs, handkerchief to her face, shaking with stifled sobs. Who was this person? What was amiss? Of course I couldn’t know. More than likely, a loved one was fighting for life on a floor above. She was a stranger, and yet I cared. Lord, did I care. “Play something soothing,” whispered my conscience. I did, doing my best, not successfully, to fight back tears of my own.

Elon Musk once vomited that empathy is “the fundamental weakness of Western civilization.” He’s a fool. Empathy is a gift to be nurtured and cherished.

“See ya,” said my passenger, on whom I’d just spent a considerable sum, before exiting the car and disappearing down the walk.

I looked at the now empty passenger seat. “You’re welcome,” I told it. It said nothing. Off I drove, unthanked.

Yet it was fine. I was fine. My goal had been to treat someone I care about to a positive experience. Mission accomplished. Sure, a “thank you” would have been nice. But even so, well, mission accomplished.

I bring this up because it’s that wonderful time of year when advice columnists publish letters from people expressing outrage at gift recipients who fail to say “thank you.” 

Don’t get me wrong. For lots of reasons, “thank you” is important. If you expected and didn’t receive a “thank you,” I understand your disappointment or even hurt. You might even discontinue giving. Totally up to you.

But it’s not worth getting incensed. Why? See Paragraph 3 above.