[A]In a 2005 essay in the Economist (pdf file), Ian Davis, current managing director of the consulting firm, McKinsey & Co, argues that "big businesses" (his term) should treat social issues, and social critiques engendered by these issues, around how they act (and how they should be acting) in the world, in a more integrated and strategic fashion, for two important reasons:

1. economic self-interest, because these critiques act as early warning systems to broader shifts in consumer preferences and regulatory environment, which invariably impact the business bottom line. For example, the relation between obesity issues and the subsequent shift in customer preferences for fast food

2. business is important to global well-being: such integration will enable big businesses to engage in a more proactive dialog (vs. defensive rebuttals) with society of which they are an important part of, and to which they add value for , in Mr. Davis's view, "it might be more accurate, more motivating - and indeed more beneficial to shareholder value over the long term - to describe business's ultimate purpose as the efficient provision of good and services that the society wants."

While the first strand of Davis's thought is clearly a no-brainer, I would argue that his latter strand of thought is incomplete, if not somewhat disingenuous, mainly because it completely obscures the fact that modern businesses not only simply provide stuff that society wants (e.g., cheap sneakers made in China or Pakistan) but more importantly actively seek to amplify and meditate these "wants" (e.g., by branding the same cheap basketball shoes Air Jordan), in the service of shareholder value.

Given this, I am wondering if I should submit to Mr. Davis that small book, "Small Is Beautiful", which I am slowly re-reading, in silvers of time I find between working for "big businesses", which refers back to a more fundamental and elegant philosophy (how true it is can only be verified, I submit, by acting upon it), the core argument of which can be this (taken from the essay "Buddhist Economics"):

"Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity, taking the factors of production—and, labor, and capital—as the means. The former (ed note: Buddhist economics), in short, tries to maximize human satisfactions by the optimal pattern of consumption, while the latter tries to maximize consumption by the optimal pattern of productive effort. It is easy to see that the effort needed to sustain a way of life which seeks to attain the optimal pattern of consumption is likely to be much smaller than the effort needed to sustain a drive for maximum consumption."

This essay also came to me, when I scanned through this NYT article on "freegans", which N emailed me, as a thought extender to our running conversation on going "off the grid"^[1].

[B] "Freegan-ism" is also on my mind, since I am spending this weekend at the Cave in Atlanta, my North American home, where I have furnished my corner of it, with furniture picked off the sidewalk, including the folding table and the chair that I am using to write this.

Walking around my old neighborhood here late last night, savoring the forest-ness and creek-ness (Peavine Creek flows as gently as ever) of this city, I also realized that it might be only a matter of time before I leave the urban soup of New York (with its attendant cultural smorgasbord) to return to one such Walden, where I can sit under a tree and think.

[1] Yet given the increased frequency of visits to the mall, and the spike in my credit card bills, I suspect that I am regressing, more than ever, from my ideal state of being "a man with two suitcases of stuff" - perhaps the economic variant of Murphy's Law ("wants expand to fill all available income") is at work, and I must combat it more diligently!