One of the refreshing things about traveling to other places around the world is that you see how other cultures operate and the value they place on different things. Last year, I went back to Japan, and it was great to immerse myself again in a place that has long been known for its attention to detail and general lack of entitlement.
This year, it was Italy.
Like Japan, it’s a place that’s steeped in history and tradition. But beyond its famous ruins that go back thousands of years, the part that perhaps struck me most – the way people live.
It’s a very “human” approach.
Many Italians enjoy a drink in the afternoon (or two or three). They sit and linger at cafes. Meals are slow. They don’t rush you to leave a table so someone else can take it. In the smaller cities, cafes don’t even open that early.
And small businesses exist everywhere. In major cities. On major thoroughfares. And many of them still follow the old traditions of the way to make things or do things. They don’t desire to “expand” and conquer the world. They don’t streamline things to death to operate at maximum “efficiency.”
There is this concept of enough.
It’s enough to make a living, to enjoy what you do. And be good at it.
It’s also pretty amazing to watch a culture that isn’t motivated solely by money or trying to figure out ways to extract the maximum from someone else.
On the train to Venice, we sat next to an American couple from Jacksonville. They were talking about how they had stopped at a bakery in Naples to get a few things for the ride. They got to talking with the bakery owner, who liked them so much she gave them 4 or 5 extra croissants for the trip.
I’m not saying that doesn’t happen in America. Of course it does. But, if you think about it, the bakery owner in Naples, Italy, can be a lot more generous. She isn’t paying some exorbitant rent to run her shop. Her flour isn’t outrageously costly, nor are her other ingredients. And culturally, she’s of the mind of providing more joy to people who visit than she is about making money off everyone who comes into her shop.
She’s not a chain. She’s not seeking to save money or costs for a corporation. And no one is forcing her to do so.
The moral: Sometimes, it’s not about money. It’s about humanity.
Italian Cities Are Remarkably ‘Underdeveloped’ Compared to the U.S. – And That’s Good
One of the other things that strikes you as you go around the different cities in Italy, like Rome, Florence (pictured above in a shot I took), Venice, and even the coastal towns: real estate isn’t taken up by a chain, a major bank, or some other large entity. The cities are filled with smaller businesses, shops, restaurants, and small cafes. Indeed, even the prime real estate next to major landmarks or tourist destinations is still reserved for businesses that have been there for likely decades.
That used to be the way it was in the U.S., but certainly wouldn’t happen today, where big money drives up the price of real estate and subsequently the rent. It’s one of the reasons why small or even mid-sized businesses can’t afford a spot along major thoroughfares of many U.S. cities. After all, a single shop owner can’t compete with a larger company that scales. He or she has to make a living for themselves as well as employees through that one spot. A big company, by contrast, with its multiple locations throughout the city and perhaps the world, only needs to earn a particular profit margin for each location.
We End Up Paying the Price for Our Homage to ‘Big’
It’s perhaps a cliché to say that Italians really know how to “live.” But the fact is, they prize something we don’t: the idea that not everything has to be developed and not every business has to get bigger. That in pursuing scale, we lose a lot of what makes the things that we enjoy in life really good. That personal, human touch. The extra croissants. The creativity in producing something by hand or watching someone else make something by hand.
At one of the stops near Venice, we went to Murano, which is famous for its glassmaking. We watched a master glassmaker literally make two glass pieces (a vase and a glass horse) in less than ten minutes (picture below). Literally, it was like watching a magic show.
According to the guide we had on the tour, there is no school to learn this type of skill. It’s just a practice handed down generation to generation.
And those types of things still have value in places like Italy and other parts of the world (even if all you do is anecdotally look at the tourists that mobbed the gift shop).
Yet, our view in the U.S. these days seems to be that the real value isn’t in making anything by hand or even having a specific, unique knowledge or skill. It’s more about turning that original idea into something mass produced – for machines to make such goods or run such services, at less cost, so that a company can maximize profit by selling whatever it is more widely.
Don’t get me wrong. One could argue that such a formula worked to make the U.S. the most prosperous country in the world.
The question is, though, where does that process stop, if at all?
The fear I have is that we’re so focused on automation, scale, and efficiency that we are actually putting ourselves on the path to eliminating human labor and cost.
Want more proof of this? Just take a look at what CEOs are saying about the current layoffs at their companies: People can’t compete with a machine that never sleeps and increasingly doesn’t make mistakes.
Sadly, the thinking of many entrepreneurs is that an uneducated consumer won’t be able to tell the difference regardless – whether something is made by a master Murano glassblower or by a machine powered with AI, which studies all the expert glassmaking techniques. In that kind of world, where you can’t tell fake from real, and “authenticity” becomes elusive, wouldn’t most people just choose the cheaper one?
In the process of making that selection, we’re all unfortunately voting for big over small. For mass production over handmade. For quantity over quality.
Pasta-making by hand with egg and flour?
Yes, we can buy ours off the shelf easily, with crops sprayed with all kinds of chemicals to maximize the yield, and produced by a machine with all kinds of preservatives added.
It’s cheap.
But, in that process, don’t we eliminate the very things that make up the fabric of our human society? That’s where we might start taking more of a cue from countries like Italy or Japan, which have kept small traditions in place and which have managed to protect the small over the large.
And while we automate and scale ourselves out of existence in the name of money and progress, those are the places that may be the ones, ironically, left standing.
Leave a Reply
Your email is safe with us.