Where?

This is somewhat of a suboptimal time for me to be blogging. I don't have much to say, except: Why am I so shallow? That's all for now.

Moving on to a topic that I have been chewing on for the last few days, and that is wondering why the stars don't align for us often in terms of what's good for us and where the money is. The scenario that brought this up was thinking about how pharmacy chains, such as Shoppers Drug Mart, will inevitably cut pharmacist hours as much as possible if they have the new pharmacy technician program set in place, whereby these certified pharmacy technicians can take over several tasks (eg. checking, taking verbal prescriptions) that are currently pharmacist-only. Of course, to people in health care, regulating pharmacy technicians is a good thing in terms of making sure they know what they're doing, but also in terms of "freeing up" pharmacist time for cognitive services. From a business side, though, freed-up pharmacist time is going to be the first thing cut, no questions asked.

From a basic level, I tried to ask myself why. I came up with reasoning that beyond the basic sciences, one of the most important invented sciences is economics. It's classically defined as how goods and services are made and used, but more fundamentally, it can be applied from a psychological perspective to explain why things are the way they are, given our financial system.

The interesting question I posed myself is, alright, so if Shoppers Drug Mart is the bad guy, if the reason pharmacist hours are being cut and patient care being put at risk by the businesses that employ pharmacists, then the question is who owns Shoppers? And the answer is, we do. From my understanding, Shoppers is a staple of many pension funds, and generally, we can argue that us investors own the same corporate businesses that employ many of us.

There are of course pitfalls in this argument, but I'm not going to go down the road of companies who only sell minority stock, etc., and to be honest I don't even know that much about business or finance. My point is that as investors (so when we take off the employee hat and sit down with our bank advisor), we demand accounts, mutual funds, and stock funds that pay dividends, that pay interest so that our savings "grow." And where is that money (and all the money paying the banks) coming from? It's coming from the ridiculous amount of profit that Shoppers, and other corporations, make by cutting costs, increasing revenue, and trying to perform as a strong business to feed this cycle.

In general, I am upset with big business. I have tried to convey my frustration with the economy the way it is set up, with limited success as I don't know the mechanics very well. But generally, I think that while investing is great, it has to be done ethically. We should not be demanding the businesses and corporations that we invest in to earn significant profits (as counterintuitive as that seems). We should be demanding a reasonable profit, financial transparency, business efficiency, and above all, an ethical and fair approach by which businesses treat their customers and employees. Otherwise, when we demand a return on our investments but then get treated poorly by our employers due to similar financial pressures, we are only hurting ourselves. And only then will Shoppers start paying again for pharmacists to work "clinical hours," which are probably unlikely to bring them any profit whatsoever, but promote patient care and community health.