Our youngest son recently registered his summer landscaping business as a Limited Liability Corporation. The process is simple and, dare I say, convenient — a couple of clicks, electronically pay a fee of $125 with your credit card, done.
It took us about 20 minutes on Sunday at 7:30 am.
Then we tried to register an EIN number. Stymied. One can only submit the internet EIN application on a weekday during normal business hours.
The travesty! How inconvenient!
Isn’t the internet 24x7x365?
Life today is more convenient than it was ten years ago. Life ten years ago was more convenient than life 50 years ago. And so on.
Many of the largest companies are built around convenience.
Whole industries exist to provide convenience.
Some of the biggest technological advances are fundamentally about convenience.
But…
Convenience can skew perspective.
Convenience can foster entitlement.
Convenience can serve as a proxy for choice.
Convenience can disconnect us from each other.
Convenience can disconnect us from our basic human-ness.
Convenience makes life existentially better, but let’s not forget the price.
