Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Thank you for this wonderful article.

Hopefully some American CEOs will shift their focus away from the numbers they exclusively focus on and read this article.

Speaking of CEOs, Seattle and books, the retail world’s fascist dictator Jeff Bezos will soon be opening a retail food/convenience store in Seattle that will be completely and utterly devoid of humans. Everything will be run by artificial intelligence. He promises no lines, no check out, and no human interaction. You just walk in, pull stuff off the shelf and leave and the robots charge your bank account. You never have to speak to, look at or engage a real, live human being.

We can see this as the end of human-based retail or, if we are an opportunistic retailer, we can see this as the opportunity it can be. We can invest in robots or we can invest in live human beings. As a consumer and live human being, I prefer to shop (invest) at a store where I can chat with the cashier whose grandson is in the same class as my granddaughter. I want the challenge of trying to make her smile to ease her burden and make her know that I am with her in solidarity of the human experience. I want to be able to thank her for answering my questions and making me smile. I want to be able to feel the electricity of human interaction.

When we invest in humans we uplift our species and propel it along its evolutionary course. When we invest only in numbers and machines we suck our collective species dry. While a handful of CEOs get insanely wealthy they will eventually realize that their money and their robots cannot bring them the joy and love that they truly need to realize their full human potential.

And meanwhile, retailers who invest in humans will reap the true rewards. As will their customers.