Is convenience always a good thing?

Of course it is! Who doesn’t want life to be more convenient? We measure much of human progress in convenience. Easier travel, more access to food, easier communication, and more are the hallmarks of progress.

Right?

We live in a world where most everything is convenient. What we find inconvenient would probably make our ancestors shake their heads in shame. My Grandfather trekked across Oklahoma in a covered wagon as a child, and yet I am annoyed because it took me over six hours to go from Texas to Kansas by car often doing 75 miles per hour!  In an episode of the animated show The Simpsons, Homer whines about how long the microwave takes and we laugh because we can relate to his plight.

In western countries, food is just a short drive away, or in many cases, as close as your computer. Simply order food from any of a number of delivery services and a short while later it is at your door.

When we need to know something, the answers are at our fingertips. Type it into your favorite search engine and moments later you have your answer. With phone apps, you can just speak your question, saving all of the hassle of typing. Do you need someone to actually show you how to change a tire or install a sink? Search the free video sites, and you will find many videos to teach you what you need to know.

Convenience can even go to extremes, such as ready-made frozen peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with the crusts removed. If there is a demand for even the most absurd level of convenience, someone fills that demand if there is profit to be made.

Cost of convenience:

So, why would anyone question convenience when it makes our lives so much easier by definition?

Too often, we see convenience from a narrow-sighted, selfish viewpoint. By widening our view and by considering other viewpoints, we find hidden, and sometimes not so hidden, costs for convenience, but we can also find opportunities for agorists to combat the system and practice counter-economics.

My father used to tell a story about a kid that took his car into a speed shop to turn it into a hotrod. The owner told him that there were three elements of the process to consider. The work can be done fast, it can be done well, and it can be done cheap. The owner then told the kid to pick two. This is much like the choice we have with convenience. We can get it cheaply, but it likely won’t be good. We can get it done fast, but it will likely be expensive.  So maybe our choices should sometimes be to get it done slowly but done well, though this isn’t convenient.

Perhaps this analogy isn’t quite perfect, especially since there are many forms of convenience, but it can serve to remind us that no matter what we are trading something for that convenience, and those to whom we may market our products or services are also willing to trade something for their own convenience.

Every convenience has a price, but not every convenience has the same price. That price may be literal in the sense of a greater price paid at the register. It may be a price paid in health, quality, or quantity. The price may come in any number of forms, but in each case there is a price being paid.

Food convenience:
Ready-made food is most often more expensive than homemade. In almost all if not all cases, these convenience foods are less healthy as well. Part of the reason populations in western countries are largely obese is convenience. We get convenient food in the form of fast food and highly processed food that is easy to eat. We open a bag of chips because fixing a healthy meal is too much trouble. Highly processed foods tend to have higher levels of salt and may incorporate questionable practices such as meat glue or enhancers, such as monosodium glutamate. It is not uncommon for such processed foods to have ingredients that the average person cannot even pronounce, yet they consume without knowing any potential problems. Even simple ingredients like sugar are often added to products that need no sugar but help the product to sell. Europeans visiting the United States often complain about the sweetness of products in the US. This heavy use of sugar has also contributed to the rise in obesity and diabetes.

Obviously these are serious prices to pay for food convenience.

There is an environmental cost as well. Mass produced vegetables are huge monocultures that destroy the varied ecosystems needed to support various insect and soil life. On top of this, because the soil has largely been depleted by the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, ever more fertilizers are added. These fertilizers are created using fossil fuels which in turn decrease supplies of fossil fuels, thus increasing the cost of fossil fuels.

Speaking of fossil fuels, there is a cost in those when we purchase out-of-season or out-of-area foods. That ripe banana may taste good, but a great amount of fuel has been used to deliver it to your local grocery store.

Genetic engineering is also a concern, particularly as governments grant intellectual property rights to those who are genetically modifying plants. Those privileges are being used to destroy smaller farms, thus increasing the power of the huge agribusiness corporations. There are obvious political ramifications from increased power going to corporations that are ever increasing in size.

These are some of the prices we pay for crustless ready-made sandwiches and easy microwave meals. The costs of food convenience are many and far too common.

Transportation:

Given the technological innovations of the last century, we can now get almost anywhere in the world in a day or less. A flight from DFW airport to Japan takes 13 hours or less. Half way around the world in half a day! That is certainly convenient for the business traveler or those who wish to spend their vacation at their destination instead of spending it traveling.

The ease with which we can get in our car and drive to the store or across a continent cannot be overstated. Why walk when we can get in a car and be where we need to be, usually in minutes?

These are incredible conveniences, but as with our convenient food they come with a price. The days of flying anonymously ended in the 1990s. To fly today, you must essentially register with one or more country. You have to have official governmental identification, perhaps also permission to travel from your home and destination country. You must willingly put yourself wholly into the system. Given the very real privacy and liberty concerns, this is quite a high price to pay for the convenience of speedy and direct travel.

Furthermore, you must consent to be searched, perhaps even in the most intimate ways. You essentially have to deny your rights and allow the state (or states) to do almost anything that they wish to do to you. You risk your property being stolen by these security agents on top of all other indignities. In the US, the Transportation Security Agency has had X of its agents arrested for theft. How many have not been caught? How many have not been charged with sexual assault?

To drive your car, you must register yourself and your car with the state. The fuel you must use is taxed by the state. You have to give up time and money to maintain the permissions to travel as well, with annual auto tag registration and driver’s license renewals. For those who just wish to travel peacefully, freely, and privately, these are high costs to pay.

Social Media:

Think of the convenience that social media provides to connect to friends and family, to meet new people, even to find new romantic relationships. The ease of communication has connected the world in ways that were never possible, or at least not at all convenient before.

But as we know, that has come at a terrible price. Privacy on most social media simply does not exist. You are the product. You are providing the data that Facebook and others sell to advertisers, or worse yet, give freely to the state. If the claims by Facebook are true, they have failed to keep your information secure from hackers as well. Of course, this is not just about Facebook. Google and other social media platforms record your information for sale or to give to the state. The wild west days of a freewheeling anonymous internet are largely gone for the average user.

Power:

The convenience of on-grid power is great, but what happens when they deliberately turn it off, as happened in much of Texas during the arctic blast earlier this year, or has happened so often in California?

We as agorists, as people who wish to promote individual liberty, need to think deliberately about our choices with regard to convenience paying particular attention to the prices we pay for that convenience.

Convenience as a tool:

Despite all of the above, convenience isn’t all negative. Often, we will decide that the price we pay is not high enough to overcome the benefits of convenience, but there is another side to convenience; that is, the opportunity side.

We all understand the drive of convenience. We naturally want life to be more convenient and that is true of virtually everyone. So, the aspiring agorist should seek out ways to make life more convenient for others as a means to spread ideas of voluntary association, while perhaps practicing counter-economics. Selling useful or desirable goods is the first thought for most of us, however manufacturing is largely a commodity industry. Labor is one of the commodity inputs, which is evidenced by manufacturers moving facilities to ever lower labor cost locations. Furthermore, labor is increasingly being replaced by robotic and automated systems. These factors make manufacturing, in general, a poor opportunity for the agorist.

There is an exception, that of high value artisanal production. This can range from cottage food production, such as local jams, jellies, or candies, to homemade soaps and other specialty products. By focusing on high quality unique products, the perceived value is greater allowing for greater income. Some such as t-shirt and sticker production may offer opportunities to spread ideas of agorism directly in the messages that appear on the products. Payments online could include crypto-currencies, allowing for another layer of counter-economic activity.

Services are also a great opportunity for a counter-economy business. Mowing lawns and general landscaping has boomed. Gone are the days of paying the kid down the street $5 or $10 to mow your lawn. In my area, I know of one modest yard that the owner is paying $100 to have mowed! Handyman work is always in demand, so if you have the basic skills, this might be a good side hustle or even primary income. Finally, many of these businesses are often already cash businesses providing counter-economic opportunities.

One more opportunity may be less obvious, but still quite helpful to agorists and promoting agorists: mutual support. Use one another’s services. Buy products from other agorists. In this way, we can have both convenience and promote agorism. Helping ourselves and others who seek liberty itself improves our lives and gives support to the ongoing struggle for liberty.

Regardless, to take advantage of these opportunities, we need to look for ways to make the life of others easier. Do something that they don’t want to do, or simply cannot do. Find where that overlaps with our own abilities, tools, and knowledge and that provides the list of potential opportunities.  People are willing to pay, sometimes premium rates, for convenience. Time is scarce, so if you can help others save time, there is indeed an opportunity for profit. Look, too, to areas where you can save effort of others, or perhaps take on distasteful tasks. Each of these create opportunities to promote agorism and the goals of agorism.

Look around you. What can you do more easily than someone else? What tools, knowledge, and skills do you have that could make the lives of others easier? Therein lay your opportunities for creating an agorist business.

Convenience comes with benefits and possible dangers. We must keep the costs of convenience in mind when making our choices, and while looking for opportunities to grow the ideas of freedom and counter-economics.