Why does everything have to follow a business model today?
By Lethbridge Herald on October 10, 2025.
Editor,
Business analysts insist we must move to the digital economy. They always insist we move to what is new, the latest gadget, toy, idea, etc. Handwriting and drawing has thousands of years of history.
What is needed is for business analysts to get out of their little boxes about what is good for an economy, and try to understand the real needs of people.
It is not just about more money. Can we think creatively about our post office in daring new versions of old ideas? Post Office banking, selling envelopes and packaging materials, increasing the cost of business flyers, etc.
How about asking for new ideas from customers – people who want to use the post office other than as a profit tally or loss exercise, or worse, to define it as a “government entity” and therefore, “competition for business.”
Business has a big lobby but its focus is too narrow. The original post office was to send ideas from one place to another, often far away. Maybe it should be part of our education system, goodness knows we could use creative ideas in education. Business and education – both lead down the rabbit hole, captured by the all-inclusive concept of competition.
We inject competition into everything these days, to the exclusion of the far more useful concepts of co-operation and self-discipline. Two old ideas shot into space and carried away by an astral. Conservation of energy, who does that? People even talk at high speed these days, no time for mulling over before spouting half-baked ideas.
Don Ryane
Lethbridge
10-9
Curious? Are you lumping all “elites” , who you don’t understand into an undefinable shadow group you call ” business analysts”?
Sure , we can all get behind thinking of new ways to do things and admittedly, revisiting old ways may be a good start.
But the obvious straw man argument you set up by attacking an undefinable group for all the problems combined with your obvious lack of understanding of business and education really doesn’t help your argument.
This is particularly true as we listen to candidates in the upcoming municipal election: as they jockey for preeminence as ‘business leaders’.
Small business is important – my family are small business people – but they understand that robust business works best in a stable and equal society, and this requires a healthy natural environment.
Like Mr. Ryane is saying, it would be nice to hear more about care and cooperation, and a better understanding of what an economy is for.
Quentin Carlson is the only answer on the ballot for mayor. That or Blaine the Grifter or Ryan the Runaway
sorry, any mayoral candidate not a part of the pocket lining and kickback loop will only serve the public, and hardly enough the incrowd benefactors. i suspect we would never have gotten that amazing and breezy bus depot, with all those parking spaces, with such an outsider type mayor. moreover, we would have to also re-imagine our amazing money pit of an exhibition – and what an exhibition it is – were we ever to have a mayor not committed to pocket lining.
mind you, waste, nepotism, and graft is not just overseen (or overlooked) by our mayors, it takes a team of like-minded types that care oh so much more about the incrowd than the masses whose pockets get picked with regularity.
it is reasonable to understand that d.r. references our business analysts as those most focused upon the bottom line numbers that prioritise wealth accumulation, profit, gdp and the like. it is also reasonable to understand that his issue is with mega-corps and the financial elite that do not account for their footprint, whether it be the displacement of wealth from the masses to the benefit of those best at being greedy, self serving sociopaths, or, their massive negative impact upon the health and sustainability of the planet. indeed, liabilities stemming from poverty and the systemic degradation of the planet’s life forms and systems – euphemistically termed “development” – are hardly accounted for by the bean counters.
OK Don. Just trying to determine what doesn’t have a business case. Oh yeah, that’s Trudeaus line.
I disagree, buckwheat has actual usefulness.
Quentin Carlson may be young, but he’s also not bought by the UCP and he understands that public services, while they have budgets, are not businesses. He’s the only answer for mayor!
VOTE Quentin Carlson for Mayor!!!