Everything is someone else’s problem

“How many of you believe the government doesn’t do enough to address environmental issues — air pollution, water pollution, saving the rain forests?”

Even in 1978, every student in my college economics class raised a hand.

“How many of you recycle at home, sorting your paper and cans, and putting them out to the curb?”

Only the professor’s hand went up. The professor was Murray Wiedenbaum, served as Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Richard Nixon and was chair of Reagan’s Council of Economic Advisors. Safe to say, he was a pretty conservative guy.

His point was that even though we were all the liberal tree-huggers berating the government for not doing more to save the environment, he was the only one who was taking those small personal steps to make a difference.

While I still don’t agree with much of Dr. Wiedenbaum’s political views, I do recycle everything I can in our household, from paper and cans, to taking used items to the Goodwill for re-sale. On the other hand, my even more liberal husband does not.

I see this same pattern everywhere.

Dr. Umair Haque, a Harvard Business School professor tweets and blogs a lot about the problems of a society where the highest value is buying as much stuff as possible for the lowest possible price. If that means we buy stuff made in China instead of by our neighbor, well, as my husband says, that’s just the global economy and nothing we do will…