January 7, 2025

 

Dear reader,

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The world's largest companies are endangering humanity’s survival by putting profits before people, promoting relentless consumption. They've turned us—the People—into mindless consumers, fueling a vicious cycle that devastates our environment and undermines both our individual and collective well-being.

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With their windfall profits, rather than increasing wages and paying taxes at rates that could help reduce the national debt and secure the welfare of the American people—they bought off politicians to secure their outsized wealth.

 

In the 1950s, a crucial change occurred: stock options, previously taxed as ordinary income, became a tax loophole for both companies and executives. Paired with significant reductions in maximum tax rates, this shift fueled the explosion of stock awards for executives, creating perverse incentives to drive up sales (and hype) at all costs—often through practices that harm both people and the planet.

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As the net worth's of the already rich exploded, the median household income dropped relative to GDP per capita, leaving families with a lower share of the value they created. Now the majority of families in America live paycheck to paycheck.

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They kept increasingly more money from the value we all created and use it to continue to convince voters that it's in the best interest of everyone if they get to keep more than everyone else. It will trickle down, they say.... Tax cuts increase wages, they say...

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We've been waiting 45 years for any of that to come true, and it hasn't.​ But I digress.

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Higher profitability translates into higher stock prices, and that profitability often stems from making products cheaper through methods that fuel inequality—and selling more stuff by feeding on the insecurities of people with targeted advertising campaigns, keeping us all trapped, running on treadmills with the promise that it's how to get ahead.

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The People running on the treadmills creates the energy to propel the corporate owners further ahead. The harder we work for inequitable pay, the further out of reach the goal gets. 

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Who thought up such a plan? Hm...I wonder....But once again, I digress.

 

For humanity to become sustainable, corporations must ultimately sell less stuff. If they can’t innovate their value proposition, the only path to a sustainable business is to cease to exist. 

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We can control the situation. We can put them all out of business.

 

For humanity to become sustainable, we the People, need to buy less stuff.

 

We can make corporations sustainable by doing less business with them.

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No consumer brands are sustainable (except maybe Patagonia). Very few consumer brands can credibly speak about sustainability; in fact, many are essentially its antithesis. Every big-box store you shop at, every online retailer, every supermarket, every brand that’s part of a billion-dollar conglomerate—are fundamentally unsustainable. Their top priority is making money above all else, whereas sustainable businesses aim to solve legitimate problems.

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I founded THINKERER to help us recognize the ways that corporate owners drive us into unsustainable consumption patterns and to restore power to where it rightfully belongs—with the People. By practicing mindful consumption—making conscious choices about what we buy and how we live—and pursuing self-actualization—the full realization of our potential—we can diminish these companies’ influence and secure a sustainable future for humanity.

 

We the People are the solution.​​​​​​