The Economic Legacy of Ebenezer Scrooge - Umair Haque - Harvard Business Review

Consider a contrast between two visions of the festive season — the first, a time for consumption (thoughtless, aggressive, pushy, relentless); the second, a time for what you might call cultivation (the human stuff that really matters, lasts, and multiplies). While, admittedly, business has done its bah-humbug brain-dead best to try and shamelessly commandeer Christmas in the haggard name of crass, vulgar consumerism, try as the masters of the universe might, they can't stop the holidays from being about the deeper elements of an authentically well-lived life: lasting relationships, human intimacy, animating passion, enduring ideals, higher purpose, shared values, meaning (and maybe a homemade fruitcake or two). In fact, when you stop to think about it, the stuff that makes the holidays resonant with happiness is exactly the opposite of the nakedly self-interested, hyperrational, profit-maximizing, utility-seeking behavior that's supposed to, in the gleaming vision of orthodox economics, unleash prosperity.

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