Decision Making At Scale

Ever since I was a kid, I’ve held pretty libertarian beliefs.

I hated being told what to do. And I never had much interest in convincing other humans to do my bidding.

Maybe it stems from a lack of faith in large corporate entities, governing bodies, or ‘grown-ups’. Or maybe I’m just a…rugged individualist. 🙇

However, something recently shook this long-held belief. Or rather, it took a shit on this pretty little libertarian paradise I’d fabricated in my head where humans behave nicely to themselves and each other, act responsibly, ethically, morally — and don’t trash the world.

Let’s construct a thought experiment together.

Company X has a decision to make, with two options available. The decision will directly impact some task that employees will often do. It could be washing hands or coffee preparation and consumption. Both options have the same economic feasibility and the same implementation cost, but they differ in that employees might have to do a little bit more work when performing that task. This could mean the difference between providing coffee capsules, or some other means of caffeinating your staff.

However, capsules have a higher environmental cost. This opens us up to the following question:

Personally, I think so.

Let’s look at a few rationalizations for this position.

1. Scale

This is the main factor that’s been bugging me. When a company makes a decision that affects the coffee consumption of 2000 people, some simple arithmetic can make things seem quite concerning.

This is ludicrous! A mid-sized company of 2000 people changes something about their coffee facilities, and they’re affecting almost a million cups of coffee per year.

If Company X decides to switch to say, Nespresso capsules, this means they’re making a decision that instantly means 920,000 capsules will be used.

The alternatives — an automatic coffee machine which grinds the beans for you, a separate grinder and espresso machine, or even a drip filter machine. None of these options call for more raw materials than just coffee and potentially some biodegradable filter paper.

Whinge. Whinge whinge. Whinge whinge. Go make yourself a damn coffee. Spend the two minutes it takes to prepare it. You can’t possibly be that busy. And if you are — I assure you, you’re not productive. There are enough studies that suggest that taking a break or doing a habitual task could help you solve whatever problems you’re working on.

2. Most people just don’t care enough.

I’m fortunate enough to have crossed paths with many smart people. Brilliant problem solvers, hotshot programmers, or socially switched on geniuses.

So many of them have the brain power to understand why something is bad for the world, and what extra little task they could do to reduce their impact.

But they don’t do it. Good luck convincing them otherwise.

The average human being, scrupulous or otherwise, doesn’t actually care about the environment. They won’t go out of their way to do the right thing. I’m vaguely switched on and I care about these things, but I’m still not a perfectly upstanding participant.

In its own right, this is enough of an argument for why these kinds of decisions have to be made en masse. You can’t give people a choice — they will, like water down a slope, just take the path of least resistance.

Related posts:

There is a relationship between business’ drive to maximise profit and the health of the people as well as the ecosystem. No business exists in vacuum, rather, long term existence of businesses depend

A brief expedition into one of Bellingham, Washington’s dumpsters yields a cornucopia of items — chicken, bacon, havarti cheese, milk, cereal, bell peppers, tomatoes, parsley and more: all unopened…

You may be costing your company over $20,000 without even knowing it. That’s how much the average small business pays to resolve cybersecurity attacks and data breaches. It only takes one infected…