It is 7 a.m. when Wladek’s truck enters the huge parking lot of LSDH, a European leader in packed milk and juices. After 10 hours of night driving to this Loire Valley warehouse, he is tired, hoping to load his shipment quickly and leave.
At most warehouses around the world, what Wladek would do next is entirely predictable: Wait for your turn, adapt to the supply chain constraints, and hope to be able to maintain your human dignity — not an abstraction in this case. For truckers, that means to take a shower, eat a snack, and, possibly, to rest. Usually, they are deprived of these opportunities, but not at LSDH.
After signing in, Wladek can settle down in a lodge on the property called the Trucker’s House. There he can wash himself, have food, watch TV in a lounge, and even take a nap in one of the bedrooms — all at no cost. This facility is certainly nice, but is investing in such creature comforts for your drivers economically rational? LSDH is a 2,250-strong business with more than $1 billion in annual revenue. If caring for hundreds of anonymous truckers for free had proven profitable, it would have been copied by all of LSDH’s competitors. At first glance, it seems more like a folly than sound business.
But LSDH’s case, along with the many others you will discover in this book, is significant, and it speaks to the heart of the predicament currently facing our economic system. Once, the free-market economy was widely praised. Today, it is under scrutiny, even attack. And one of the most frequent angles of attack concerns the treatment of workers under capitalism.
Modern capitalism, to be sure, has worked economic wonders. From 1820 to 2001, per capita income increased 20-fold in the free-market West, while it rose only sixfold in the rest of the world. Historically, the free-markets in Europe, by allowing masses to engage in direct trade relationships, have been a major catalyst for the emancipation of the lower classes from the dominance of nobility and clergy, as well as for wives from their husbands’ economic control. More recently, through initiatives like microcredit, this economic system has proven to be a powerful tool in the fight against extreme poverty.
At the same time, critics are right that this unparalleled growth of prosperity and many social conquests have come at a significant cost and has not benefited everyone equally, either within a given country or across the globe. From the deplorable working conditions of the Industrial Revolution to the plundering of resources from countries in the Global South and to the present environmental damages, corporations are accused. They are viewed as making profits thanks to the collective efforts of communities while shifting social and environmental costs onto society at large.