Heroes they’re not. But when profits and progressive policies align… POW!

Tech companies come out against restrictive immigration laws. Disappointed CEOs abandon their seats on a national business council as the government walks away from climate accords. The normally corrupt NCAA moves a basketball tournament from a state looking to impose discriminatory bathroom laws.

More recently, large retailers have decided — of their own accord, without any law imposed upon them — to raise age minimums and stop selling military-style assault rifles. Even on a micro scale, after incidents like Charlottesville, employers have fired people after being notified of those employees’ hateful online speech.

To be fair, it’s not all rosy. Some businesses have fought for their right not to provide birth control as part of employee health insurance, or their right not to serve LGBT customers. And of course, there’s Citizens United.

But the trend does seem to be toward (most) companies coming down on the side of (mostly) progressive issues. In part, as this article reminds us, because:

Politics is competitive, but the competition is constrained—by time (e.g., elections only happen every two, four, or six years), by geography (e.g., the gerrymandering of districts), and by partisanship, in which every issue often boils down to “the other side is worse.” Many companies cannot rely on time, geography, or negative advertising to save them. Every week is a primary for a consumer brand; the global nature of business exposes companies to more rivals; and no company can thrive by making nothing and investing exclusively in hostile marketing. “Politicians assume they can wait out the outrage, but national companies have to respond to the immediacy of demand.”

So what role can corporations play in creating social change? Should they be doing this more, or less?

What issues are they best suited to affect? What issues do we want them to stay out of completely?

What pressures can people put on them to be better “citizens”?

Badass women, barred from work, found alternate ways to f’ing take care of business.

Plenty of writers have tackled the classic “Can Working Women Have It All?” premise (yaaaaawn), but this Atlantic piece came at the question from a different, historic angle I appreciated. Instead of looking at how hard it is to be a parent and a spouse and a successful professional, it asks who has time to run civic organizations (historically done by non-working women), when everyone’s so focused and busy running their own careers and households in tandem?

That’s not to indulge in nostalgia for a period of American history when women primarily led clubs rather than companies. Women frequently organized to fight for rights they had been denied by men, and they often aspired to lead charitable organizations because they were prevented from pursuing other paths. But ironically, in winning fuller equality with men, some women lost a share of the meaning and purpose that comes from life outside of productive labor. This is not a story about women’s failures, or a polemic against their advancement. It’s a cautionary tale for men and women alike. The corner office isn’t always the pinnacle of leadership. Often, the most important leadership happens in local communities.

So if we’re all busy working 40+ hours a week and trying to squeeze in family and friends in the time that’s left, what’s left to devote to causes or groups that move society forward?

Have we squeezed out time to be citizens of our communities in chasing the perfect work/life balance for both men and women?

How might we carve out more space for public life among personal ambitions?

If we don’t, who does the work that needs to be done in society?

So as long as I go childless, I can commute via stretch Hummer, guilt-free.

My wife, further proving that we are 100% on the same page regarding certain issues, shared this NPR story about the environmental impact of childbearing. Apparently all the things you do to be greener pale in comparison to just not adding another human to the world:

Oregon State University researchers have calculated the savings from all kinds of conservation measures: driving a hybrid, driving less, recycling, using energy-efficient appliances, windows and light bulbs.

For an American, the total metric tons of carbon dioxide saved by all of those measures over an entire lifetime of 80 years: 488. By contrast, the metric tons saved when a person chooses to have one fewer child: 9,441.

But when it comes time to “what do we do about it”, the topic gets even hotter (get it?):

Rieder proposes that richer nations do away with tax breaks for having children and actually penalize new parents. He says the penalty should be progressive, based on income, and could increase with each additional child.

Think of it like a carbon tax, on kids. He knows that sounds crazy.

No big deal, right?

Is it ethically right to try to persuade people not to have kids?

Is it fair to use financial incentives to accomplish this?

Could this ever possibly work in the real world we live in?

[Chart heading this post from original Oregon State University report.]

At least constant headphone wearers can still look down on constant walk-and-texters.

I wear headphones constantly. At work, to tune out office noise. Almost 100% of public transportation or commute time. While running errands. I’m an avid podcast listener so it has to be done, only so many hours in the day.

Amanda Petrusich in The New Yorker asks if our personal audio bubbles are making us more antisocial:

Certainly, headphones are an obvious method of exercising autonomy, control—choosing what you’ll hear and when, rather than gamely enduring whatever the environment might inflict upon you. In that way, they are defensive; users insist upon privacy (you can’t hear what I hear, and I can’t hear you) in otherwise lawless and unpredictable spaces. Should we think of headphones, then, as just another emblem of catastrophic social decline, a tool that edges us even deeper into narcissism, solipsism, vast unsociability?

And then goes on to ask if the way we’re listening to music — mostly through headphones — is affecting the kind of music that’s made, or the way it’s made, but that question is way harder to address with evidence, and way less interesting on a personal level. So:

Are headphones making you more antisocial? How much or how often?

Is that a net positive or negative for society? What are the benefits or drawbacks?

More and more, the emoji form of this gesture is being interpreted as a high five.

New surveys say that religion is on the decline. According to Pew data reported on NPR, both America as a whole is trending away from devotion:

Among the findings:

• The share of Americans who say they are “absolutely certain” that God exists has dropped 8 percentage points, from 71 percent to 63 percent, since 2007, when the last comparable study was made.
• The percentage of adults who describe themselves as “religiously affiliated” has shrunk 6 points since 2007, from 83 percent to 77 percent
• The shares of the U.S. adult population who consider religion “very important” to them, pray daily and attend services at least once a month have declined between 3 and 4 percentage points over the past eight years.

But more dramatically, young people in particular are practicing at a much lower rate:

Skepticism about religion is especially evident among young people. The Pew study found that barely a quarter of “millennials” (born between 1981 and 1996) attend church services on a weekly basis, compared with more than half of U.S. adults born before 1946. Only about 4 in 10 millennials say religion is important in their lives, compared with more than half of those who are older, including two-thirds of those born before 1946.

While we can debate all kinds of fun things around this topic, like what’s causing it, if the trend is permanent or reversible, the juiciest might be what it means for the country.

How will a less-religious citizenry affect life in America, both for good and bad reasons?

Does that mean a net positive or negative for society as a whole?

Is this a trend worth encouraging or preventing?

If religion is personal, should it even matter?