Sunday 27 March 2022
ANYSTORE: On Farm Boy, Stores and values
ANYSTORE VALUES
As reported recently - "Ontario
Farm Boy fans freak the heck out as tweet about maskless employees goes viral
(blogto.com)" - store fans who “love”
a store are criticizing criticism of a store not mandating masks, though the requiurement for masks in Ontario has now been lifted in most locations. In our
increasingly commercial world picking a store is, for some, like having a favourite
racehorse. But there is more to this than innocent favouritism based largely on
marketing. Criticizing critics of store critics is a steep grammatical spiral but here we risk the descent
for the greater/better good of firming up the level ground of values-based
enterprise.
Complaining about complaints when the complaints are in the
name of public health at a time when thousands are threatened is an unfortunate sign of our “sponsored” times but
the topic of interest here is rather why anybody would get upset about raising
the issue of optimal social values for
commerce.
We do not live by bread alone but we do live better by supporting the health of bread buyers and the workers who make bread and all food, available. TorontotheBetter encourages engagement with the social performance of private enterprise. We think of it as socializing the economy from the inside out. If enterprises are not public or socially focused they should face and address principled scrutiny. If they do not adopt socially supportive values and methods public attention and alerts are important for guiding their paths to the better. A charter for social economics is a step we think that will raise the bar for enterprise. The day when stores accept social mandates as a business norm, just as they have learned to do over time with health and safety standards, will be the moment when the social economy is a fact rather than an aspiration.
At a time when people are dying as a result of territorial aggression and children are being denied education because of their gender is it too much to ask for more commercial attention to public health and health and other social value? We think not, and encourage complainers about ethical complaints to reserve their criticism for failure to complain when values of health and community are ignored.
