NASJA DAY 1: Capitalism, Continued

Today I had two more experiences that relate capitalism (commerce, business, free enterprise, if you will) and winter sports.

First, I had several conversations about the development of Snowmass, which is perhaps my favorite mountain to ski or ride at. Snowmass is one of four mountains owned and run by the Aspen Ski Company. The SkiCo is, as far as I know, an enterprise that hopes to make a profit. And it’s their profits that enable them to continually upgrade lifts and facilities on and off the mountain.

Earlier this morning, however, we heard a talk from a gentleman who conducted a workshop for some people who came early to the NASJA convention. They learned how to make old-fashioned skis. As in skis made out of birch, shaped by hand tools. They replicated designs of hundreds or even thousands of years ago.

Good for them. I’m sure the two or three-day workshop was an enjoyable experience.

But the speaker struck me as being anti-business, anti-profit, anti-market, and in favor of both personal and micro-community self-sufficiency.

I believe he said he lives in a hut (or something like that) he constructed by hand. Good for him.

Most people, however, don’t want to live like that. I certainly don’t. If my housing was limited to what I could do by my own ingenuity, design, and skill with respect to building construction, I would be consigned to living just a few steps above poverty.

If we observed the ethic of the speaker, we would, I fear, be stuck with experiencing the alpine environment with skis that are more experience or less equality (or both) than what is available today. For example, if you’re skiing on ice or hardpack, metal edges are essential. Steel, or whatever is used for ski edges, isn’t something that people can create in their back yard. The same for p-tex, the stuff on the base of skis and snowboards that makes them glide. Meanwhile, modern, synthetic wax is better for assuring a smooth glide than anything farmers of yore could make.

In short, pursuing self-sufficiency, or even getting everything within your county of 5,000 people (the population, roughly, of the county in which I am sitting) is a prescription for poverty, limited variety of goods, and stagnation of product design.

It’s easy to decry the involvement “big business” in designing skis, snowboards, clothing, and all sorts of things involved in skiing. You can mourn the fact that the “soul” of skiing and riding is violated by the involvement of corporate America in the sport.

Only the human activity of business, with division of labor, profit-seeking corporations, overseas manufacturing, business plans and dull corporate meetings, focus groups, accountants and revenue projections, can provide us what we expect today: A variety of goods; an evolution of product design; improvements in product quality over time; and reasonable costs.

So this snowboarder says … Long live capitalism.