Mergers

Pet peeve Friday. A first world problem is too many choices, and distinctions without a difference. I'm talking Coke and Pepsi, products that consumers may have passionate preference for, but who cannot distinguish in a taste test. There are corporate and discipline mergers I would dearly love to happen, simply because the distinction barely matters, and the duplication of effort is a waste in itself. Why do they remain separated? History, biases, tradition. Corporations build an identity of their very own, perhaps our first non-human creation, and by themselves they will fight for individuality.

Here's some mergers I would dearly love to see:

Google and Apple. I want their cool apps to blend seamlessly, not fight each other for supremacy.

Meditation, Hypnotism, and brain mapping. There's something going on here, but the "disciplines" are wrapped up in too much woo. They use different terminology and imagery. But I'll bet you dollars to doughnuts they are doing the same thing.

Physiotherapy and Chiropracty. Again, time to kill the woo.

Victorian Order of Nursing and Nurses. Nail trimming? Really? Wrap up this venerable organisation and get on with it.

There's another reason I'm keen on merging and productivity. Our society is going to undertake a major shift in the next twenty to twenty-five years. Economics will be turned on it's head. We will reach peak population growth. And climate change, an amorphous impersonal threat, will demand collaborative world-wide effort to stabilize. The old ways of competition won't stand up and all of us have to start thinking about getting along in new ways.