StageLeft
No Lifer
This is a cheery movie analysing how corporations are taking over our world. It referred to their incredible power in terms of shaping laws and policies, and even went into some of the privatization of things that shouldn't be privatized, like water. In one country some company had privatized water, and 1/4 of a very poor family's income had to go to water. In fact it was illegal to gather rain and use it.
The problem of course is that with elected government you have some say. There is at least some accountability, but with corporations there is none, except to the dollar, and that's far too indirect in many cases to mean anything. The point was driven home also about the pervasive approach of these companies to weigh lawsuit settlement costs with risk/benefits of doing something they know to be illegal/unethical. If the chances of being caught, or benefits likely to pay are low, then they'll go ahead anyway.
Also mentioned was the increased inundation of marketing in our society, starting of course with children. One marketing firm had a nice chart showing how they could significantly increase sales by upping the frequency at which kids would nag their parents for something.
I guess really by the end I just got the impression that we're all sheep to marketing, advertisements, and slaves to what others tell us we should want, which we then satisfy by buying the product.
Interestingly the CEO of interface, the largest carpet manufacturer, was sickened by the ravaging that companies do to the environment, in particular, and since 1995 their company has had 1/3 less of an environmental impact, and this guy wants to have the aim of his company being sustainable (which I take to mean recyling and not using up finite resources) by 2020.
The problem of course is that with elected government you have some say. There is at least some accountability, but with corporations there is none, except to the dollar, and that's far too indirect in many cases to mean anything. The point was driven home also about the pervasive approach of these companies to weigh lawsuit settlement costs with risk/benefits of doing something they know to be illegal/unethical. If the chances of being caught, or benefits likely to pay are low, then they'll go ahead anyway.
Also mentioned was the increased inundation of marketing in our society, starting of course with children. One marketing firm had a nice chart showing how they could significantly increase sales by upping the frequency at which kids would nag their parents for something.
I guess really by the end I just got the impression that we're all sheep to marketing, advertisements, and slaves to what others tell us we should want, which we then satisfy by buying the product.
Interestingly the CEO of interface, the largest carpet manufacturer, was sickened by the ravaging that companies do to the environment, in particular, and since 1995 their company has had 1/3 less of an environmental impact, and this guy wants to have the aim of his company being sustainable (which I take to mean recyling and not using up finite resources) by 2020.
