I love Allagash, and I think Rob Tod is a great leader.

But when we see an owner who avoided layoffs, it’s not always (just) about morals - it’s also about wealth. https://twitter.com/beerbabe/status/1278333403067285506

Journalists rarely ask: How did they avoid layoffs when their peers couldn’t?

They just report it like it’s a moral decision the owner made.

That’s how wealth and morals become conflated in capitalistic structures.

Anyone who loses 70% of their sales and survives has access to wealth that most people do not. Maybe earned, maybe multi-generational, maybe relationships...point is, many people don’t have that. And when they lay people off, they’re seen as less moral than those who don’t.

If you’re an owner of a small brewer, saddled in debt without family start-up money and access to capital is limited, laying people off might be the only way you can save the company and your own family.

Is that less moral?

When we hold people up for things like this, without identifying the underlying capacity for making the decision, we risk misplacing morality. And we likewise misplace immorality.

It creates an expectation that all small business owners are wealthy (most aren’t) and that making hard decisions about employment are avoidable or rooted in exploitation rather than in the multiplicity of economic and social factors playing out right now.

So I’m thrilled that Allagash is doing what they can to avoid layoffs. I also think it’s a deeply moral company. But it’s also enabled by other factors that come with our society’s preference for wealth.

Don’t unwittingly demonize people with less.