corporatism sucks (IE transformers 2, IE Crunch)

[Strangelet]

This is a 10 minute video discussing the main points of Rushkoff's book Life Inc. Essentially boiling down to "corporate america sucks." Interestingly enough, you'd think he was libertarian. Not only is he no less against the federal reserve than Ron Paul, he sees the causes of our current crisis in the same light as many a guest on the glenn beck freak show. And yet his perspective is sometimes progressive enough to make moveon.org blush. Recommended read.

[Strangelet]

speaking of the federal reserve, I'm not sure if you guys have been following the Federal Reserve Audit bill, but its gaining a lot of traction with both democrats and republicans.



This is Democrat Alan Grayson at work.

[cacophony]

i don't find a lot of truth in what he says, and i'm totally open to the "the american system is fucked" argument.

his idea that our current system developed because "they" needed to develop consumers back in ye olden days attributes a mastermind-like genius to the people of the time. "they" didn't decide they needed consumers to depend on them and "they" didn't decide to divorce people from their sense of selves. that's ridiculous. people didn't set up a style of doing business in the hopes that in 200 years or 300 years or 400 years everyone would be a corporatized consumer. rather, people did what they've always done and always will do: find ways to make money and accrue power. our present situation isn't the result of diabolical forethought that deliberately and carefully turned us into the ipod-consuming cattle we are. we turned ourselves into that. and by "we" i mean even "they."

and my god, his description of the backyard barbecue phenomenon. "we moved to our own house and suddenly we had to compete to barbecue the best cut of meats and the joy of the barbecue was gone!" yeah, don't you hate that when you're grilling a piece of meat and your neighbor shouts over the fence that his meat is more expensive than yours? anyone ever had that happen? anyone? anyone? crickets chirping? it doesn't happen.

it's a depiction of the other "they." the downtrodden masses that you're sort of a part of, except for the fact that you're smarter than that. "they" don't get that they're unhappily, grimly turning a steak on a grill, furious that the neighbor might have a better cut of meat. you, on the other hand, you get the corruption of the system so you're not as downtrodden as "they" are.

it's a remarkably effective way to spin a conspiracy theory to an unhappy population that's just hoping to see itself as victimized. the republicans bank on that kind of thing. "they" don't want you to have faith. "they" don't want you to have family values. "they" want to shut down your church and force your daughter to have an abortion. the invention of the mythical "they" wins a lot of hearts and minds.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by cacophony

his idea that our current system developed because "they" needed to develop consumers back in ye olden days attributes a mastermind-like genius to the people of the time. "they" didn't decide they needed consumers to depend on them and "they" didn't decide to divorce people from their sense of selves. that's ridiculous. people didn't set up a style of doing business in the hopes that in 200 years or 300 years or 400 years everyone would be a corporatized consumer. rather, people did what they've always done and always will do: find ways to make money and accrue power. our present situation isn't the result of diabolical forethought that deliberately and carefully turned us into the ipod-consuming cattle we are. we turned ourselves into that. and by "we" i mean even "they."

You're basically saying he's another Kevin Trudeau, which I guess is a reasonable conclusion based on 10 minutes of clips. In the book its pretty clear from the history of corporations he's laid out that there's no shadowy "they." The american revolution was based largely on economic opression, not oppression of social liberties. The economic oppression came in the form of having to ship cotton raised on american soil back to England only to have it shipped back in the form of clothing because a company chartered by the crown had monopoly on all textile production, to use a single example. Spinning cotton in the colonies could land you in prison. In other words, we weren't so much fighting the crown, but the chartered monopolies that were given the crown's blessings, including the central bank of england.

Fast forward that to now, we are enmeshed in the no-escape system of our own designs. There are computer programs that have been designed that proves mathematically, outside of any shadowy oligarchy, through the continuous process of exchanging money in a certain environment, in the end, the money ends up on a single bucket. That's math, not conspiracy. Read about it here. So really its a combination of people who are out to fuck us, and the system itself.

As far as alienation, that's a omnipresent marxist criticism of capitalism. One of the main beefs the left has with what they consider a "free market" is that it alienates people from their own means of existence. Rushkoff uses, what I think, is an airtight example of how far this process has noticibly gone. The very act of "flipping houses" means you treat the very place you live as a commodity. How fucked up is that?

But he goes further to show its not the free market, its corporate strongholds. Did you know that marketing theory has largely stopped strategizing ways of marketing to a group? As far as "they" are concerned, human groups don't even exist anymore. Everything is marketed to an isolated individual, now intentionally isolated because they are better consumers. Think about that the next time you see a commercial for jeans with a hunky guy and a hot babe with your spouse. Its clearly not something you're meant to share together. Unless you're swingers.

Originally Posted by cacophony

it's a remarkably effective way to spin a conspiracy theory to an unhappy population that's just hoping to see itself as victimized. the republicans bank on that kind of thing. "they" don't want you to have faith. "they" don't want you to have family values. "they" want to shut down your church and force your daughter to have an abortion. the invention of the mythical "they" wins a lot of hearts and minds.

Its no conspiracy that

1. Americans are the fattest people in the world.
2. Spend the most on health care, the majority on big pharma medication
3. Are the furthest in debt by a vaast margin
4. work the longest hours and have the less amount of free time

[cacophony]

no, none of those things are a conspiracy. but i guess i don't see how it's relevant to that 10 minute clip.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by cacophony

no, none of those things are a conspiracy. but i guess i don't see how it's relevant to that 10 minute clip.

hmmm. i'm sorry to hear that. I guess reading the book makes it a lot more interesting than otherwise. anyway, cracking read. don't agree with all of it, but its something that I've been thinking about for a while now, so I just wanted to share.

[cacophony]

and by the way, i'm totally not disagreeing that there's a fucked up corporatism that rules our lives now. i just think he sort of shot himself in the foot with his ridiculous argument in that clip.

i mean, the next time you go grocery shopping really really pay attention to the products you see. like, take the produce section. say you want lettuce. you're going to be able to get iceberg and romane. and if you're lucky there might be a small section with a few heads of bibb and red leaf. if you want a tomato you're going to be able to get globe, roma, and..... well you used to be able to get plum tomatoes but i haven't seen those since romas showed up. maybe some specialty types like heirloom and grape tomatoes but you're going to pay a premium for those. now go look for mushrooms. white button mushrooms. maybe portobello. want anything else and you're going to pay through the nose for a teeny couple of ounces.

now look for things like butternut squash and poblano peppers and turnips and parsnips. the sections dedicated to these items are getting smaller and smaller until in many cases they're just aren't even carried anymore. i went to our local kroger a couple of weeks ago because i make all of my own babyfood (yeah, THAT kind of hippie bullshit) and i was looking for lentils. this great big store and guess what? no lentils. i asked them why and they said "well... we have split peas." i asked them to show me the split peas. you know where they were stocked? the one-case wide micro section labeled "kosher foods."

every producer is trying to get us to be happy with less variety so they can simplify their production lines and lower their per-unit price and maximize profit. which means after a while if you want cheese your options are going to be cheddar and mozzarella and THAT'S FUCKIN' IT. if you want canned stewed tomatoes your options are diced or whole. FUCK YOU IF YOU WANT CRUSHED. making a cream-of type soup and want to use light cream? good luck. it's heavy whipping cream, half and half or NOTHING.

it's been a slow evolution but if you're paying attention you can see this ledge we're teetering on where basic food staples are starting to disappear because they're not profitable. wait, that's not exactly it. it's not that they're not profitable, it's that there's greater profit to be made if we're slowly convinced that no one eats turnips anymore. and if we're convinced no one eats turnips anymore then there's no reason to buy them and if there's no reason to buy them, then no one has to grow them, and that means that much more farmland for the same 5 fucking vegetables they're pushing on us: lettuce, green peppers, potatoes, carrots and corn.

the only true "variety" at this point is in the fabricated foods, where they take a truckload of oats and put it through a press and make flake cereal, and then pump it through a jet puffer and make puffed cereal, and put it through a grinder and make hot cereal. if you want lentils, buy the preservative laden, oversalted prepackaged "taste of india" stuff in your grocery store's "ethnic" section. but don't actually look for a bag of jasmine rice. fuck that, your options are white, brown, or wild.

so i'm not saying i disagree with the concept. we're totally being herded like cattle into a chute where the inevitable outcome is about 3 different food staples made available to us, processed into a "variety" of a thousand different prepackaged health disasters. and we're willingly going along with it, never thinking about the fact that we haven't seen fresh kale in the produce section in longer than we can remember.

rant done.

[jOHN rODRIGUEZ]

You're right, there is no such thing as "they". It's them.

[Strangelet]

Originally Posted by cacophony

rant done.

Quality rant. And yes that is exactly the type of shit I'm talking about. Let me jump on that one. If you haven't already, see . Its awesome and was done by the same guy who wrote fast food nation. I mean no its not awesome, because now that I've seen it, i'm a disgruntled vegetarian. Now that I know a typical big mac comprises parts from 3,000 different cows, along with an amonia mixed paste to curb e coli poisoning.

It makes the exact arguments you made about oats, but with corn. Corn is a subsidized crop, which means the government comes in and pays farmers to plant largely over other crops, because you don't have the real cost of production with corn. The subsidies come from corporate government collusion, which takes the corn and puts through a lab where things like high fructose corn syrup comes out and gives us all diabetes. Ever drink a coke in Europe? they still use real sugar. It tastes awesome.

The corn is also pushed out to feed the cattle industry, which isn't their natural diet and is the reason why new pathogens like e coli are now killing us even from things like spinach. Which goes back to the amonia paste.

So in comes organics, right? Small farms to save the day. Not. The new food safety bill will basically kill any chance small farms and orchards will be able to afford getting the fda to get its kellogs inc. staffed ass down and approve their organic label.

The wife sometimes writes for food magazines and one article she did was on small businesses that deliver local food. The point was that somebody actually has to work full time to figure out what food is actually organic and local, because the current system allows loop hole after loop hole. For instance, a grocer can say tomatoes were grown in the USA if they were picked in argentina and then sat in a warehouse ripening in california for a few weeks.

[Strangelet]

......annnnnd back to the federal reserve.

the fuck-you-fed movement is becoming more and more mainstream. Now on msnbc

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/0..._n_244617.html

"This is a Ponzi scheme, an inside job. It is outrageous. It is time for the Congress to say 'Enough of this,'" added Spitzer.
Ratigan later added: "I feel as if the American has suffered the greatest theft and cover-up ever."

Why all this fuss about the federal reserve? Because they are a "they" if there is a "they". But its no conspiracy that the fed's monetary policy is a program of debt. The longer they control the money supply the further in debt the nation gets. The only offset is further economic expansion. This is because of one fact: the fed loans us our own money with interest. But where does the extra money from the interest come from? It doesn't exist. That means there's more money to pay back to them what was handed out. That means some people are left holding the bag. Which spurs an economy of cut throat competition.



We didn't have a federal reserve for the first 130 years. We've seen the biggest depressions and periods of inflation since its inception. Which is why *any* reasonable person should question their excuse that they exist to stabilize the economy through monopolistic control of monetary policy, IE our cash.