Tuesday, July 16, 2013

Another Instance of the Commercial Burqa

As a culture we’re disgusted with the Muslim veil—while permitting its use to shield corporations from face-to-face communications with their customers. Corporations are wrapped up in layers and layers of veiling made of recorded voices, long waits, and musac dispensed while we wait. Many a long wait is then brusquely terminated by a dial tone as the imperious Other just cuts off the call, no doubt by a clock-driven computer or by the length of a call-queue. It was of those days yesterday that make it all too easy to be a grumpy old man…

This is a deep subject, actually.  It brings resonances of the tragedy of the commons, suggests that free markets don’t actually work, and that our “greatest economy” is committing slo-mo suicide. What began positively when Henry Ford realized that his employees ought to be able to afford the cars they make, ends with corporations so hating “labor” that they decimate their customer base. But let me go and clean up my pitchfork. It may come in handy one of these days.

The first instance on this blog? It’s here.

1 comment:

  1. The commonly seen Burqas cover the body completely except, in some instances, the eyes. These are often poetically referred to as the "window into the soul". And what I too often see in these corporate windows is pure greed, unfortunately.

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