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When we vote with our wallets, the decisions we make can create change.
Having spent longer than the average life sentence working in the media, I believe in the power of protest and public pressure. Politicians as well as private firms and other organisations are more responsive to public opinion than is commonly thought. However, some rogue behaviours are hard to influence, and one of them is the salaries attached to certain jobs, which are almost always decided by men and almost always filled by men.
Brazilian soccer star Neymar springs to mind. Sometimes when I watch the game on TV, I’m amazed at the skill of professional players for whom the ball is like an extension of their feet. However, too often the match is ruined by the Oscar-worthy performances of those players who cry foul rather than be fouled against.
But worse even than the acting-up are the salaries that cross a line between accepting that clubs are entitled to make their own choices with their own money and a sense of moral indignation. French club Paris Saint-Germain paying a £198 million fee to release Neymar from FC Barcelona, for example, comprehensively flicks my dial to the other side of what I find acceptable.
Apple’s third-quarter revenue of US$45 billion does similarly. In the banking world, chief executive salaries of about $5 million are “normal”, but I ask myself, “Could the bank find no one talented who would do the job for, say, $4.5 million? And could Apple not have knocked $1 off each iPhone it sold in the last quarter?
I don’t quibble with the right of private companies to pay whatever salaries they like to whomever they choose or to charge whatever the market will bear. And I don’t think it would be better to have all salaries set by the Government or a “board of salaries”. But just as it is a firm’s right to spend its money how it chooses, so is it a consumer’s right to do the same.
Although it doesn’t feel like it, the decisions we each make daily, without setting fire to anything or screaming obscenities at anyone, create change. It is the choices we make with our money that ultimately provide the salaries or profits that others earn or accumulate. When my iPhone dies, I may not replace it with another iPhone – not because I expect my action to bring Apple to its knees but as my lone bleat in the dark.
Meanwhile, I will not watch soccer. But since I watched so little anyway, I expect the power of my remote control won’t interrupt Neymar’s transfer – not this time, anyway.
Like many others, my family and I are about to escape Washington DC to avoid the worst of the summer heat and humidity. We are going to England and France, so in preparation I have bought a small French phrase book. Under the section called Romance, it includes such essentials as Je suis bisexuelle (which, ironically, also has a masculine form, “bisexual”) as well as a phonetic guide, beesehk-sewehl. My favourite is oh-moh-sehk-sewehl (homosexual).
In most scenes I can think of where some of these phrases would be useful, reaching for a phrase book may not be necessary. Then again, it may be better than Google Translate. The phrase book seemed contemporary until I found the translation for “Can I send a fax here?” and “I have lost my traveller’s cheques”.
Could Apple not have knocked $1 off each iPhone it sold in the last quarter?