One more post on industrialism and then we shall leave this oft-times dark subject and move into the light. And the lighter side of Swirled All the Way to the Shrub, this engaging and thought-provoking novel that Tom Bentley and I co-authored.
What is an Externality, and why should we care to learn about them?
From this concise and excellent website:
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/externality.asp
“What Is an Externality?
An externality is an economic term referring to a cost or benefit incurred or received by a third party who has no control over how that cost or benefit was created.
An externality can be both positive or negative, and can stem from either the production or consumption of a good or service. The costs and benefits can be both private—to an individual or an organization—or social, meaning it can affect society as a whole.
[Important: An externality may not have an effect on the entity that causes it.]
Pollution emitted by a factory that muddies the surrounding environment and affects the health of nearby residents is a negative externality. The effect of a well-educated labor force on the productivity of a company is an example of a positive externality.”
Two principal industrial externalities impact our characters in Shrub. The first is the rise of leaded gasoline, a profound and totally unnecessary poisoning of our biosphere on a massive scale by General Motors, Standard Oil and Dupont.
Bill Kovarik PhD explains best:
http://www.ethyl.environmentalhistory.org/?page_id=60
The second is the utterly fascinating machinations of United Fruit Company, the giant importer of bananas which operated largely outside the reach of U.S. regulatory bodies, in Central and South America.
Peter Chapman’s Bananas delves into how UFCo was a law unto itself in many lands:
https://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/02/books/review/Kurtz-Phelan-t.html
We employ a light touch in our novel with these powerful forces, though. They drive and impact and motivate our principals, but ours is a novel about a human story, not a business tome.
Our lively character Unctual Natchez is actually a banana messenger for United Fruit.
Banana Messengers were agents who rode the rails on the unit trains of refrigerated banana cars (“reefers,” in railroad parlance). Banana messengers took care of every aspect of the transport of this perishable fruit. They saw to it that the reefers were iced correctly. Temperature was a classic Goldilocks Problem: not so warm that the fruit ripened early, but not so cold that it froze. They protected their bananas from theft. And they worked with the sales agents to ensure that each reefer arrived at its proper point of sale on time.
Here are two banana messenger passes from those days:
The itinerant, unfettered lifestyle of a banana messenger suited our character Unctual Natchez perfectly.
If you’re interested in a deep exploration through fiction of negative externalities, then my first novel is for you.
In some ways, The Man Who Wore Mismatched Socks is a 240,000-word depiction of an existential battle between one business that is concerned with minimizing its negative externalities, and another business that strives to maximize theirs in the interest of minimizing expenses and maximizing profits, regardless of the societal costs incurred.
Next up: lighter fare, as we turn from the corporate wing of capitalism to the localite, bespoke one.