Category: corporate hijinks

View posts about consumer culture and the corporate giants who rule it.

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In Defense of Netflix

I sometimes hear Netflix lumped in with “Big Tech” or explicitly likened to Facebook, Google and Amazon, which is understandable in terms of newness, internet reliance and reach, but also can be unfair, in the context of data tracking and privacy violations.

While Netflix does track some data (primarily, the device identifier, connection and media watched while on the service), it’s not a data tracking company like Google* and Facebook* are. Those two companies provide ostensibly “free” services, which make money via 2 primary methods: the display of advertisements (from anyone who will pay, including disinformation/lies from both domestic and foreign sources) AND the collection and sale of personal information which was directly provided or can be inferred about their users (based on usage). In the case of Amazon, they also collect significant user data, although they tend to use it internally to increase their product sales, so it’s not commensurate with Facebook or Google, in that regard (although Amazon has other problems, including speed-running their warehouse workers*).

Continue reading “In Defense of Netflix”
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Don’t Feed the Greed

Capitalism is the premier greed-based economic system, which takes no heed of consequences in the pyramid-game of asset accumulation (profits, products/goods, wealth, etc.).

Industry members, news media & critics alike often talk about the corporate side of things: predictions or goals for ever-increasing profits, share price valuation/manipulation, workforce reduction (& other methods of pushing down the price of “human capital”), material costs, supply chain innovation, etc.

However, it’s not just the magical “persons” known as corporations who are driving the race to the bottom, but also the real people who buy things. Yes, the consumer side is also greed-driven; we are trained from childhood to want as many things as we can get, and at the cheapest prices. Continue reading “Don’t Feed the Greed”

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The Future is Contraction

For centuries, much of human culture has been about expansion – expanding our territory, our populations, our access to resources, our communication, our economy, our influence.  One might argue that the 20th century was the epitome of bigger and better expansionism: two “world” wars among many international conflicts, extreme improvements in transportation (air travel, automobiles everywhere, better boats, trains and public transportation), and the ability to communicate instantaneously and broadly (enhancements to or invention of: radio, telephone, electronic amplification, television, various telecommunication networks, television).

The 20th century ideals of expansion were wildly successful – the world is more connected than ever before; resources, communications and people can and do regularly cross the globe. Our world has become interdependent, such that the well-being of a country like Greece can drastically affect other economies across the world, and vice versa.  And vast numbers of people, not just the super-rich, can purchase and use items manufactured and transported from afar, using fuel and craftsmanship from around the world. Advertisements, the threads of the 20th century economy, literally blanket the world, on billboards and vehicles, sports stadiums and events, flickering across every manner of electronic device, including those small items some of us carry with us everywhere as if they were our lifelines. Continue reading “The Future is Contraction”

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Let Banksters Go Bust – Move Yr Money

As the Occupy movement highlighted last year, and recent scandals have confirmed, the financial industry has been overrun by greed and risk.  This is especially true of giant consumer/investment banks and the banksters who run them.  In 2012, there was another set of huge losses by JP Morgan Chase based on more gambling, sorry, “trading”.  Note: Chase was one of those banks “too big to fail” who got government TARP bailout money back in 2008, while struggling homeowners got nothing.  Then there was Barclay’s caught rigging the interest rates in Europe (among other suspected participants).  And then there was HSBC enabling money-laundering in Mexico.

Need more?  See August 22 BBC “Global Banking Scandals: Who is under scrutiny?”  The largest and most profitable banks are gambling with derivatives and doing other unsavory things to grow their fortunes, while thousands of families are losing their homes due to unfair mortgages that the big banks won’t even consider renegotiating (and some don’t even bother reviewing the paper-work, preferring to robo-sign the foreclosures).

What’s a conscientious consumer to do?   Withdraw.  Yes, it’s possible to withdraw your money from the financial giants and stay on the grid with finances and all.  There is a marvelous invention called the Credit Union.  Credit Unions are local, member-owned, not-for-profit financial cooperatives.   Continue reading “Let Banksters Go Bust – Move Yr Money”

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Pre-Occupied

The recent Occupy Wall Street (and accompanying “Occupy” movements in various cities, such as Occupy Boston) are amazing.  Protests are ephemeral – an afternoon, maybe a few days, just a blip (if even mentioned) on  the news radar.  But the Occupy movement has been able to persist, not unlike the protests in Egypt and other areas of the Middle East.

It’s like people finally had enough, enough of obstructionist politics, of government always helping corporations, letting business and profits drive government.  It’s like other people have been thinking along the lines of my “People VS Profit” post and decided to stand up. Continue reading “Pre-Occupied”

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National Public/Private Radio

Dear NPR (National “Public” Radio),

I used to enjoy our long walks on the beach, intimate conversation between us, with only a brief mention of the sponsor at the top of each hour, but lately things have changed.  The sponsor mentions have gotten longer and more numerous.  No less than 6 per each half-hour and sometimes in the middle of the program.  Each sponsor mention includes a byline which sounds suspiciously like an advertisement.  Even the website only appears ad-free at first, when delving into a specific story reveals at least one “sponsor panel” (or ad prior to playback).   It seems almost as though there’s someone else always following us around, begging for our attention (and $$).

What’s that you say?   Corporations are people too?  Private is part of Public?  The Supreme Court confirms it?

Oh.   Well, can you at least rename yourself to NP/PR so I don’t get confused?

Thanks ever so much,
The (non-Private) Public

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the faux-moral corporation

There seems to be a newish trend among big corporations (new in the last decade) – the moral value product.  The problem is that these large companies are playing both ends of the field.  Toyota brags endlessly about their high-efficiency hybrid cars (and lately other car companies have joined in) while still hocking plenty of gas-guzzling trucks and SUVs.  Morningstar Farms specializes in vegetarian foods, but is owned by Dean Foods, who is one of the largest meat-producing companies.  Dairy-free soy milks and soy yogurts are now produced by dairy farms.

Diversification is the word of the day and this time, it’s not a good thing.  What kind of a world is it, when using moral values to determine which product to purchase ends up putting money into the pockets of companies which are doing precisely the opposite of your desired moral purpose (with many/most of their other product lines)?  Which is not to say that we shouldn’t still purchase morally (on the contrary, I think we should always and only buy products whose manufacture and purpose we can stand behind), but it’s troubling that these two-faced companies really would do anything to make a buck.

The truth is, no matter how pretty they talk, if they don’t walk the walk with their whole company and all product lines, then they’re just slick-talking  salesmen with divergent marketing.  Toyota doesn’t care about helping the environment – their Land Cruiser gets 13 miles per gallon (city), but they’d really like some money from those environmental zealots too.  Dean Foods (Morningstar) doesn’t care about slaughtering animals for food.  Stonyfield Farms doesn’t care about your lactose-intolerance or veganism.   They’re just doing what it takes to maximize profit.  And maybe it’s time for those of us who really care to start making more of our own things (starting small companies if need be)…

peddling progress
amoral snakeoil salesmen
whilst dealing distress

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Radiohead unheard on radio

For those who aren’t in the know, the music group Radiohead became very popular in the mid-1990s and has remained extremely popular to this day. Thom Yorke (their lead singer) released a solo album last year which was on heavy rotation for months on the “modern rock” stations. However, when Radiohead the full group recently released their latest album, they decided to offer it for download on their website for “whatever you want to pay.” You can pay as little as nothing or as much as you want and get the full download (all songs in a zip file). They are planning to release some disc sets, but only as a custom job (and a bit pricey at 40£), but they are not doing a regular album release through the recording industry.

Now, this is a very interesting idea in and of itself, but one very interesting sidenote is that I haven’t heard any songs from it or even a mention of the new album on the ClearChannel-owned local “modern rock” station. I have heard one of the tracks on one of the college stations, but considering the group’s level of popularity and the heavy rotation of Thom Yorke’s similarly sounding solo album (called “The Eraser”), it’s a reasonable expectation that the new album would get some mainstream airplay. But it’s not – which is a good example of how mainstream radio functions (which is not to bring the listeners what they want to hear, but to actually sell the songs it is playing – if there’s no profit to be made for RIAA, then the song gets no airplay). This is counter to the common belief that commercial radio is only commercial because it has commercials (i.e. advertisements) played in between songs, when in fact the songs themselves are also advertisements.

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feminism & fat: philia vs phobia

I’m wading my svelte self into some very murky waters here, but I’ve never been one to shy away from controversy so here goes. The subject of weight, especially the “ideal” weight for women (seemingly to be mandated by everyone and anyone) is fraught with controversy. On the one hand, you have a very fat-phobic “beauty culture,” especially in terms of fashion magazines (anorexic models might be a stereotype, but sadly, they’re also reality) and celebrity worship, which condemn even the slightest hint of a non-taut tummy and even middle-ground healthy weights are frowned upon. Although pieces of this beauty culture are starting to target the male demographic, for the vast majority, the target, or rather, the object, is women. This leads to an understandable amount of tension among women, who feel pressured to meet these extreme ideals.

On the other hand, you have the broader “consumer culture” (of which the beauty culture is but a two-faced member) demanding that we consume as much as possible, mostly in terms of food, entertainment and labor-saving/luxury devices and services. Altogether, these items encourage extreme indulgence/indolence (which has led to a drastic rise in Type 2 Diabetes), both in terms of reduced bodily movement (due to labor-saving devices) and maximization of “empty calories” consumption (i.e. foods with little or no nutritional value which are borderline addictive due to sweeteners and other flavor enhancing additives [MSG, etc.]). Thus we Americans are told to enjoy all these comforts to excess and if the inevitable consequence of this rampant consumerism is a burgeoning waistline, then we should start buying plus-sized clothes and diet pills/books, different kinds of empty calorie foods, plus a gym membership to be used irregularly, but nothing should stop us from buying things.

Thus we have the implicit encouragement to get fat slamming us from ad spaces everywhere and the converse encouragement [for women] to get skinny [& to a lesser extent for men to get to a muscular medium size] hitting us from a subset of the same ad spaces.

What I get frustrated about with feminism at times is that it seems to clearly see the beauty culture aspect, but mostly disregards the underlying consumer culture aspect. That is, it contains an understandable backlash against the “women must be thin and beautiful” imperative of the beauty culture, but it can also end up supporting the consumer culture imperative with messages like “fat is beautiful” (an equivalent, if oppositional, generalization to “skinny is beautiful”). I would argue that feminism should subtract “beauty” altogether from the equation. On multiple exchanges, I’ve witnessed snipes exchanged between otherwise reasonable women when one is on the larger side and the other is on the skinny side (snipes originating from either side) and it disturbs me that people can be so shallow and mean. However, there is an elephant in the room, which is that, notions of beauty aside, in some ways, obesity has more negative health consequences than being moderate or skinny sized (although being skinny and indolent can have negative health consequences also). Lean and active human beings tend to live longest, although to be fair, active larger-sized folks also tend to have good health and longevity. 

[Some portions of original post were cut in 2020 as, in retrospect, they seemed a bit fatphobic, which does not match with my current thinking/undsteranding. Italicized portions are added/updated. ]

p.s. This should go without saying, but the hot focus of the magnifying glass should absolutely not single out women (i.e., men and women and others should all get regular exercise, eat nutritional diets and aim for fit and healthy – this should be compassionately encouraged by medical professionals, friends and families, not caustically demanded by the advertisement/entertainment industry [for women only] as it is now).

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Intellectual Property and the pursuit of profit

We live in a rapidly changing world, the information era, and, most assuredly, we need to equip ourselves to handle protections for people who create easily copyable digital media. However, the maximizing of profit (aka “greed”) is promoting the very “piracy” that they purport to oppose, in much the same way that US foreign policy promotes terrorism while aggressively denouncing it.

What is going on here? Last year, I got excited about some new digital book technology which could save a lot of environmental costs (trees, transportation, etc.), only to find out that the prices for the books were equivalent to hardcover book prices – even for older books, that you could easily find on paperback or used (even though the reader itself had a reading surface about the size of a single paperback page). And let’s face it, it’ s a lot easier to read a printed book, than to read from some kind of computer monitor. And easier to transport and doesn’t require batteries and you get the picture and blurbs on the cover. Not only is the physical book superior in many ways from a consumer standpoint, but it costs a lot more to produce (cost of materials, cost of printing, cover design/printing and transportation costs), so why couldn’t they pass along some of those significant savings onto the consumers? Greed: They think the technophiles will give them an easy boost for even higher profits than for paper books.

These companies could easily push the envelope by lowering prices and encouraging individuals to go digital, thereby increasing environmental benefits, pushing further technological innovation (due to increased market) and all the while earning a much higher profit percentage than results from the much less efficient physical media production/sales. Continue reading “Intellectual Property and the pursuit of profit”