Mass production has many negative effects on the pursuit of a more sustainable way of living. Aside from effects of everything being the same these corporations are big, bureaucractic, and slow. They are hard to regulate. Their decisions, to hire and fire, pollute the environment, cut corners, put bad things in our food, dodge taxes, and/or trade unfairly (to name a few) are made by faceless and unaccountable management teams and their focus on short term profit at any cost.
As employees the frustration of these diseconomies of scale are bad enough (70% do not like their job – Inc magazine). As consumers we also suffer from the failures of big companies: inability to provide what they promise, bad quality, automated answering machines, and poor customer service.
Feel free to share articles, observations, feelings, links, and data here.