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  • From: "Thomas C. Meggs" <tom AT plik.net>
  • To: internetworkers AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [internetworkers] citizen apathy
  • Date: Wed, 09 Oct 2002 21:25:03 -0400

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Sil Greene wrote:
| No offense intended, but you can't stop me from bitching. I don't vote
| for idiots, and I don't respect political processes that reward imaginary
| constructs (read: corporations) over real, flesh-and-blood humans. I
vote
| the only place I'll be heard: at the cash register, with my wallet.

Is that really true though? Are you heard through your wallet? Does it
change the way things are done? Can you really be sure that you aren't
supporting something you don't like through your purchasing power?

There is a high degree of cross ownership between our large
corporations. They also play a lot of dirty tricks to make you think you
aren't giving them money when you really are. It's all marketing, it's
all exploiting how people feel in a certain area. It doesn't neccesarily
change how they do things. Take restaurants in urban areas such as San
Francisco or New York. A lot of the higher profit margin restaurants are
owned by the same companies, but they put different faces on all of them
to make you think there is something unique about them. They are
essentially franchises, but they put a happy, "look at how unique my
neighborhood is" kind of feel on them, since that's often something that
people in larger cities care about. (With so many people in your
immediate field of view I guess feeling unique is a struggle.) Then take
most of the sprawl growth south, where the opposite is true. Most people
around here like the same brands. For example, RDU is pulling out its
existing food service stuff, and putting in big name restaurant chains
to sooth the consciousness of people that travel through RDU.

All I'm really trying to say is, that with our economy with the way its
setup, the big guys have the game. They have the power. It's
unavoidable. It's economies of scale. They own our markets. The little
merchant can exist by living day to day with razor thin profit margins.
He can also get knocked out like a zapped mosquito when he angries one
of the powers that be.

The bottom line is its a power structure. A very small percentage of
people own the wealth. They have their hands in more then enough places
to preserve the wealth. Simply voting with your pocket book only ends up
helping them out in the end.

Regards,
Tom

- --
$Id: .sig,v 1.17 2002/08/21 13:12:32 tom Exp $

pub 1024D/87F1C20F 2001-11-15 Thomas C. Meggs <tom AT plik.net>
Key fingerprint = 5E9A D535 B9DA A889 984B 9654 2025 409B 87F1 C20F

"It was funny with coffee. Sometimes it did nothing for
him, and actually made him weak. But sometimes it really
made him feel like God."
- from "Miguel", short story by Dan Bern

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