The Ecology Of Commerce - William McDonough Ted Talk

Within the Ted talk from William McDonough and the reading we had from the book, “The Ecology Of Commerce”, there were three points that I would really like to focus on. I will talk about the selfishness of corporations, sustainability, and a connection to the movie “ Thank You For Smoking.”

Like I have said many times from when we learned about corporations, I feel corporations are really selfish. In William McDonough’s talk, he mentioned that mother culture adapts using tragedy for strategy. I feel that since mother culture had been created and shaped by the people in society, it is simply telling us that humans think they are the best and want to be at the top. Corporations are the number one example of this. Corporations are always competing to be the best and to earn the most money. There are companies that are starting to work against mother culture humming in their ears. Yet, there are sill corporations that are selfish and still work in their own ways. I feel it is improving though, I’ve talked to my dad and he did say some companies that he knows have been working towards being eco friendly, with no cheap labor and whatsoever.

The second point that I would like to talk about is the topic sustainability. Last year in our Global Environmental Issues Class, we had the chance to discus and touch a bit on this topic. Yet I really agree with their golden rule of the restorative economy: “Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.” This is exactly the same as what we are learning except the golden rule is the simple version.

The last point I would like to make is connected to a movie that we recently watched in English class, “Thank You For Smoking”. In the reading, there was an example given: “ For example, the government subsidizes farmers who grow tobacco, despite the fact that cigarettes kill more people per year than AIDS, automobile accidents, suicide, homicide, fires, heroin, alcohol, and cocaine together, but certainly no subsidy exists for a truck farmer who grows vegetables for local markets.” In the movie “ Thank You For Smoking”, it was just the opposite. People were against the farmers who were planting tobacco because it hurt people’s health. Does the government care about people’s health more or money? How could they do this to people?

Although the reading and the Ted Talk were hard for me to understand, I could get the outline even without understanding the details so I made overall connections to everything, to previous classes, to other classes and to Ishmael.