Keeping Our Masters Honest

[poliphilo]

I'm not happy about being ruled by corporations, but there's this to be said for it- that if they piss us off it's very easy to hit back at them- all we have to do is stop buying the product. Look at what happened to Tesco, for instance: they spread their stores all over our green and pleasant land, took our loyalty for granted, and now they're in crisis, shutting down stores and desperately trying to rebrand. And look what's just happened with Thomas Cook: they handled the deaths of two children with meat-headed insensitivity and now their share price has dropped and- without anyone having to organise it- people are boycotting their business.  The corporations may have governments in their pockets, but they don't have us- not if we choose otherwise. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

As I was reading in a blog post just this morning, it's more effective to attack institutions, rather than politicians, even when the governing party isn't shamelessly corporatist. Politics is about power and one way or another politicians go where power compels them. To take an example over here, it's been nearly impossible to get politicians seriously interested in higher wages, but boycotts, picketing, and other actions aimed at corporate offenders in recent years have started to get political attention. Now, even a staid centrist like Ms Clinton says there should be a higher minimum wage.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're used to talking as if the politicians were the masters- when they're not- and attacking them when we should be attacking the ones who are pulling their strings.