SEVERAL YEARS AGO, THERE WAS A well-publicized incident in which the brother of then-presidential candidate John McCain called 9-1-1 in the Washington, D.C. area to complain about some construction on a bridge that was taking place during rush hour. The call was played during reports on the incident in the news media.
McCain’s brother was (rightly) ridiculed at the time for doing something so clueless. The 9-1-1 system was set up to report emergencies, and using it to complain about a traffic problem was an abuse of the system, one that might have delayed help for someone in a life-threatening emergency.
In the aftermath of the incident, I had a recurring thought I couldn’t shake: Despite his poor judgment, I could understand what Joseph McCain was hoping to do. What he really wanted was to speak to The Guy Who Made the Decision. He wanted to hold someone accountable for making the idiotic decision to conduct traffic-clogging construction work on a busy bridge during rush hour.
This brings me to one consequence of industrial civilization — its mass production, specialization of skills and so on — that I call the Creeping Abstraction of Accountability.
Think about what life, and especially economic life, was like in a typical village in America in the time before mass industrialization. For fun, let’s name this hypothetical little town “Sylvan,” and we’ll say the year is 1800.
In Sylvan, accountability in economic relations was pervasive — inescapable, even. If you were a typical citizen of such a town, you knew who made your clothing, pots and pans, furniture, shoes, lamps, soap, window glass; you knew who built your carriage or wagon, and so on. And not just in an abstract way— you likely knew personally the makers of those things, and could thus hold them accountable if there was a problem. If the furniture-maker’s apprentice delivered a three-legged chair to your house, you could walk over to his shop with the chair, hold it up and ask (perhaps wryly), “Yea, Thomas? Wert thou just back from yon tavern when ye forgot this missing leg?” and expect that poor, hungover Thomas to groan a sheepish apology, and promise to correct the situation without delay. Similarly, if your skillet handle broke, you could march off to the local tinker’s shop and demand an explanation, and you would expect to receive one on the spot.
In short, you actually could in fact speak to The Guy Who Made the Decision, and this state of affairs obtained from roughly before the American Civil War, all the way back to the dimly known beginnings of civilization when the first farmer planted the first crop.
Now, let’s return to the year 2013 in Benicia, California.
I called my bank a couple months back because my checking account was inexplicably overdrawn. I use their bill payment service, and I had specified that the “pay date” of my rent payment should be the first of the month, yet they had deducted the payment on the 23rd of the previous month, overdrafting my account. When I called, a customer service representative said that the payment can come out that early so that the check has time to reach the payee. I apologized for misunderstanding, thanked her for the information, and hung up.
When I changed the pay date to the 7th of the next month to account for this new information, my landlord charged me a late fee because the rent check arrived on the 15th. I called the bank, and they said that it had been mailed on the 7th. When I said I was confused by this, given the information I received on my previous call, the rep explained that sometimes the money comes out on the pay date, and sometimes it comes out when the check arrives at the bank after being deposited by the payee, and they could not tell me in advance which of those two possibilities would happen each month. When I pointed out that this makes planning rather difficult, the rep told me that this was just how their (third-party) payment processor worked.
So even the bank I was speaking to could not tell me when the payment would be deducted. But worse than that, I wasn’t really speaking to “The Bank” at all — I was speaking to a rep wearing a headset in a call center in Arizona or Iowa or wherever, and she had virtually no power to change the way the bank did business (the first rep I spoke to did refund the overdraft fee, which was nice). The way the bank’s payment processor does payments was probably designed in a series of meetings involving a shifting bunch of personnel from their marketing and accounting departments, and the policy’s ultimate purpose could undoubtedly be summarized as: “Make as much money as possible for the company, in a way that is unlikely to get us successfully sued.”
Thus, our current world is a mirror image of Sylvan: In our world, accountability in economic relations is abstracted, nearly to the point of meaninglessness. Who made the shirt you’re wearing? What were the wages and working conditions for the people who made it? What about the chair you’re sitting in? Or computer on which you may be reading the online version of this column? Or the cell phone in your pocket? If you have concerns about those things, to whom do you turn for accountability?
There is no immediate, human accountability for many problems that arise from the production of most of the stuff we use every day. This is the Creeping Abstraction of Accountability.
This has had profound implications not just for economics, but for how we discuss politics. More in part two.
Matt Talbot is a writer and poet, as well as an old Benicia hand. He works for a tech start-up in San Francisco.
Sharing is caring!
The financial collapse of 2009 was at least partially caused by Wall Street financial wizards who were divorced from the consequences of their actions.
In finance, there’s a phrase for this: “I’ll be gone, you’ll be gone”. In other words, by the time the crap hits the fan, you and I will have made our money, and someone else will pay the price.
BeniciaAmerican said: The financial collapse of 2009 was at least partially caused by Wall Street financial wizards who were divorced from the consequences of their actions.
Unfortunately those who share in the responsibility for the collapse have also been “divorced from the consequences of their action” by being reelected.
Too general a response, Dennis. Name people responsible for the collapse who’ve been reelected. Give us a little analysis that we can verify from our own knowledge and experience?
Well, start with Barney Frank, he was literally sleeping with a FM and insider while defending them. Are you really this ignorant of the facts regarding this issue? Bush and McCain gave warnings of this on several occasions, yet you are oblivious to this.
This is why I like the Herald better than the NYT, WashPost, etc.
I recall years ago when President Jimmy Carter’s brother urinated somewhere in a semi-public manner…such is the importance and relevance of critical news reporting in the media…The more I think about it, the human species appears to have been “raised in the woods by wolves.” The yapping, snarling, bitching at everything kind, dragging their scruffy bad breath and eating habits back into their smelly caves and wondering why everything stinks.
Walt Kelly and Pogo were right, “I have seen the enemy and he is us.” Equally right was Robert Frost: We “have miles to go before we sleep”…Good luck to us all on the trails to and from our caves –
With light edits, that becomes:
Raised by Wolves
Years ago I recall
when President Jimmy Carter’s brother
urinated somewhere in a semi-public manner…
Such is the importance and relevance
of critical news reporting in the media…
The more I think about it, the human species
appears to have been “raised in the woods by wolves.”
The yapping, snarling, bitching at everything kind,
dragging their scruffy bad breath and eating habits
back into their smelly caves and wondering why
everything stinks.
Walt Kelly and Pogo were right,
“I have seen the enemy and he is us.”
Equally right was Robert Frost:
We “have miles to go before we sleep”…
Good luck to us all on the trails
to and from our caves.
©Peter Bray, 3/21/13 All rights reserved
Keep a decent minimum balance in that bank account . and your service will improve greatly. Or deal with a smaller bank. Buy your groceries directly from the growers at the farmers markets. There are some terrific furniture makers right here in Benicia. Shop on line and buy your stuff from independents.
And stay off the freeways. Also I believe a man of your esteem has no business being out and about during rush hour.
You need to find the better world and not be a victim.
If you would like a little help with this – let me know.
Or – maybe you just wanted something to write about?
Let’s hear more from you, Richard.
Thanks for the comment, Richard.
I can certainly do all those things, but my purpose in the column is to describe the typical, normative way most people do things in the two time periods. The change has had profound and important impacts on our society – impacts that are worth discussing, in my view.
I guess I don’t know what normative is. Or – I travel with a different set of people. Perhaps your next installment will enlighten me.
Also – thank you for writing. I take my hat off to all you chaps who have the intestinal fortitude to hang it all out there.
You’re right that it takes intestinal fortitude to write a column here … as well as testicular fortitude
and ovarian?
Matt I do not know what world you live in. Tell you what I do not live there. I just had a very good customer service issue with Lowes. Thats right that national chain Lowes. They exchanged a BBQ Grill that had gone bad, Beyond waranty and used for ten months. I was willing to pay for the parts and fix it myself. Lowes called the manufacture and they explained what was wrong and what needed to be done to fix it. It meant tearing it down and putting it back together. Lowes would have no part of that and we did a straight exchange on the grill but the newer model with no pick up or delivery charge. Talk about customer service. Some say customer service is a lost art. I see it getting better all the time. Safeway is a very good example right here in Benicia. They are the best. Also many other business locally owned are also very good on customer service. I was in the retail and wholesale apparel business along with the Healthcare industry. I never gave a customer a chance to complain about a product or issue. Told them right up front it would be resolved to their satisfacton and no questions asked. There will always be issues but not to the extreme as some say. I think in most cases if talking to a decision maker it will be resolved and resolved quickly. Think about it Matt and start telling us some positive experiences. I hope that is what part two does. Its a wonderful life start living it Matt.
For once, Livesay has a couple of things right. He has the right idea about customer service, AND, we could all be a bit more positive (including himself.)
Thanks Robert Shelby