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Technology And The Fast Food Nation
Technology, as futurists like George Orwell and Arthur Clarke have been predicting for decades, will be the battleground on which the fight against corporatism is played out.
The United States has become a corporate republic, with the takeover of cyberspace one of that republic's primary goals. Corporate domination of the real world no longer seems possible unless companies like Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner bring the virtual one under control. From sweetheart regulatory legislation for media companies and telcoms to the Children's Internet Protection Act to Carnivore and the DMCA, they're working on it. Small entrepeneurs are falling like flies, just as little diners, family eateries, and small farms and meatpackers have fallen before McDonald's and Burger King.
In fact, technology and fast food, profoundly intertwined, serve as useful metaphors for the unintended consequences that accompany scientific advances.
Fast food is, in many ways, the story of contemporary America -- its work and health, its homogenization. Fast food is central to urban and suburban sprawl and to the rise of malls as retailing forces. Fast food has created a generation of new, mostly lousy jobs, cemented the divisions between rich and poor, triggered an epidemic of obesity, and sparked resentment of America's so-called cultural imperialism abroad. It's the stepchild of post-war progress in farming, slaughtering and packing, refrigeration and transportation.
For a preview of the unintended ways in which technology shapes the new world -- ways nobody wants to think or talk much about -- the fast food industry is a good (and sobering) case study. Fast food practices are already shaping tech industries, too, from computing to software to bio-tech.
A case study is exactly what Eric Schlosser provides in his new book Fast Food Nation. In the 1970s, he reminds us, political activists were already warning about the McDonaldization of America in much the same way that hackers, programmers and open source advocates are sounding the alarm about the Microsoft-ing of the Net. Those activists sensed that the emerging fast food business threatened independent companies and presaged a food economy dominated by giant corporations.
Beyond that, fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United States. The appeal of fast food -- that people would know just what to expect no matter where they bought their Whoppers or Taco Bell burritos -- was also one of its most devastating consequences.
And there were plenty of others. The industry was one of the first to use technology -- especially advances in genetics -- to set the ground rules for the corporate republic, whose media, culture and economy are increasingly dominated by McDonaldesque notions about uniformity, scale and work. The fast food biz re-conceived the high-tech, manual-labor factory; it has always relied on poorly-paid workers doing regimented, robot-like work.
It has, naturally, attracted a disproportionate number of immigrant, poor and minority workers who have little real chance of advancement, and whose work is so rote and mechanized they have no need for high wages, further training or the opportunities to acquire meaningful new skills. This corporatized industry has, with the help of an equally corporatized media, portrayed itself as a great boon to the underclass, hiring people nobody else would employ.
The fast food industry also perfected, even nationalized, the notion of false courtesy -- those forced mumbled greetings and thanks delivered with all of the sincerity of a telemarketer -- that echoes to this day throughout the tech support and customer service universe.
The burger, pizza and burrito chains' vast purchasing power, writes Schlosser, and their demand for an uncompromisingly uniform product, have triggered fundamental changes in farming and how cattle are raised, slaughtered and processed into burgers. These changes have made meatpacking -- once a highly skilled, well-paid trade -- into the most dangerous job in the U.S., performed by legions of poor, transient immigrants whose rapidly rising rate of injuries attract little publicity or government attention. The same meat industry practices, reports Schlosser, have facilitated the introduction of deadly pathogens, such as E. col 0157:H7, into America's hamburgers, one of the foods most aggressively marketed to kids.
Schlosser describes how the "natural flavor" of most fast foods -- what consumers crave when they order their burgers and fries -- are liquids manufactured in flavor companies along the New Jersey Turnpike and in the Rust Belt.
The American "flavor industry" now has annual revenues of about $1.4 billion, reports Schlosser. Until the l950s, flavor additives were used mainly in baked goods, candies and sodas. But the invention of gas chromatographs and mass spectrometers -- technologies that could detect volatile gases at low levels -- radically increased the number of flavors that could be synthesized. Within a decade, the American flavor industry was creating the taste of products from Hamburger Helper to Pop Tarts.
The evolution of the fast food industry shows us not only how powerful and ill-considered technology is as a force in American life, but offers some chilling previews of where the Net, the Web, the computing industry and tech culture may be headed. The lessons of fast food have been learned all too well, and deployed enthusiastically in the so-called new global economy (computer chips are also made in far-away factories. These jobs pay more than average wages in some countries, but are still lousy jobs generally making pennies. Assembly and packaging jobs pay even less.)
Like the people who established burger chains, the Net's founders arose from a ferociously individualistic culture, advances in technology generally provided by diverse and idiosyncratic subcultures from hackers and geeks to researchers and entrepeneurs.
But an industry launched by iconoclasts with bad haircuts in garages and basements has become a global one based on rooting out individual creativity and promoting uniformity.
The Net is already being overwhelmed by mass-marketed sex, entertainment and retailing entities. And the tech industry is already notorious for creating thousands of low-paying, unrewarding dead-end jobs. It's promoting American notions of culture all over the world -- just wait until the ethos that brought you natural flavor and McDonald's gets hold of AI research and the Human Genome project and starts marketing perfect, sweet-tempered babies to an unsuspecting world.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein warned about the unthinking application of technology all the way back in 1803. Technology made the fast food industry possible, and without any real national discussion and consideration, retailing, health, work and the ability of individuals to operate farms or small businesses was altered for good. As Eric Schlosser thoughtfully points out in his book, there was nothing pre-ordained about the corporatization of food and culture.
From the airline industry to computer companies, American corporations have always worked to survive under the Darwinian laws of the marketplace by eliminating or absorbing their rivals -- the heart of the Microsoft strategy, in fact.
Some tend to see this corporatization as something apart from civics or public policy, but it isn't. These companies ought to be accountable -- taxpayers helped create them. Some of the strongest growth areas of the American economy -- the computer, software, aerospace and satellite industries -- have been inspired by or subsidized by the federal government. The Net, the heart of the so-called new economy, began of course as the ARPANET, the military communications network funded by Congress in the late l970s.
Free markets are good for economies, and in many cases, for the people who work in them. They can promote creativity, innovation, prosperity, choice and individualism, more than other political and economic systems. But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market -- a balance already tilting off center in almost the entire range of tech industries, and on the Net and Web.
The relentless corporatization of retailing, farming, publishing and entertainment, to name only a few, have swung the balance much too far, at least in the United States. Corporations are now the primary contributors to the American election system. They fund the overwhelming majority of lobbyists who prey on Washington. They block regulation that would promote competition, offer the public more choices in areas like Internet access, and fend off governmental and other supervision. They promote conformity and uniformity. Since corporations have acquired virtually all of the popular media, they are rarely criticized or challenged.
Writes Schlosser: "An economic system promising freedom has too often become a means of denying it, and the narrow dictates of the market gain precedence over more important democratic values."
This ought to sound familiar. This same economic system -- promising security, morality, freedom, protection for artists and the owners of intellectual property -- is using technology to transform the Net with the same zeal that hamburger chains used to decimate family restaurants. The story of fast food is turning out to be our story too.
In my little country in Asia, Mcdonalds hires almost exclusively low-income, middle-aged, housewives.
This is a stroke of corporate genius - the housewives work hard (they've known nothing but hard work all their lives), are genuinely courteous to customers, don't expect to be paid much, and customers demand less from them (since Asians are trained to respect their seniors).
Truly a masterpiece of exploitation.
You've missed the point...read the book. We don't need protection from MacD's. I feel pretty confident that I can make my own educated choices. The people who do need more protection are the groups who are targeted the most: 3-10 year olds, and teenagers. Schlosser brings up some very scary examples of marketing tactics used in the fast food industry to create lifetime brand awareness. Advertising in public schools sucks. Providing educational materials with skewed corporate views to school districts who could otherwise not afford them is bordering on Brave New World. Don't take Katz's word...just read the book.
That's the great thing about lefties; the "masses" are wonderful when they're democrats voting for the causes that the lefties support, but evil when they choose to freely spend their money on products like hamburgers which the lefties oppose.
Here's a more rational version: "A political system promising freedom has too often become a means of denying it, and the narrow dictates of democratic vote-buying gain precedence over more important free market values."
"Katz sezs" ???
no, Katz did not say, he was quoting from Eric Schlosser's book.
"grandiose generalizations with no backup" ???
so you've read Schlosser's book and found it lacking in this regard? maybe you should check the references before you claim that there aren't any.
"how about [providing] us with a link or two?"
i guess a book reference isn't good enough nowadays. everything has to be instant gratification, much like fast food.
The McDonald's City Improvement. Increases your relationships with all other civilizations who've built this improvement in at least one of their cities by 100%.
The Real Problem... from L on Sun Jan 28 11:44:38 2001 Now, let's not kid ourselves here. I work at McDonald's, and yes, it is not a career choice. I'm still in high school, and (surprise surprise) McD's is the only place around that accepts part-time young people in my small town. I'm a shift manager there. I will NOT be working there past high school. McDonald's does NOT care about people, their health, the environment, or their workers. They care about making money. Our franchise supervisor is proof to that. The only thing that comes out of her mouth is any and everything about profit. "We need more... Why aren't sales up... Why aren't you cutting hours..." etc. Yeah, sometimes she'll feed in a line of crap about making the customer have a good experience, but it all relates back to money. The more money the restaurant makes, the higher her paycheck is. But what the hell, right? That's her job. She's doing what she needs to make money. Just like I do, and just like the workers do. McDonald's is a bad presence... health wise, environmentally, ethically, and for the fact that it crushes smaller food industries with its huge corporate assets. Now the real problem here in the good old U.S. of A is how stupid Americans are. It's to be expected that in a capitalist society that corporations try to grow, to dominate the market place, and to make money at virtually any cost. So how is this fixed? It should be fixed through the public. Though, in this fat-loving society, I doubt it will happen. My personal experiences at our restaurant speak for themselves. Now you have to understand that if a McDonald's (even in a small town) is near a major highway, it is always busy, there are always customers, etc. On a good lunch hour (12-1) you can pull in $1500 or more. That may not seem like a lot, but when you're operating on minimal staff and with average transactions amounting about $6 per, it's a lot. The point I'm driving at is that Americans are DISGUSTING. The obviousness of it comes in the customer complaints. A customer will complain about sitting in a drive-thru line for three minutes.... 3 MINUTES! Now think about how short three minutes really is. I've had people scream and yell about waiting that long. And the kicker is, they don't even realize why they're waiting. Now, logically, if you see a line of cars through a drive-thru line, numbering about 10 cars, and another 5 before the speaker, you should probably realize that you're not getting "fast food" You're waiting for the 15 people ahead of you (half of which are vans full of screaming kids) to get their five value meals and six happy meals super-sized. Do customers realize this? No. And then, expecting to get superfast service from overworked, underpaid, underappreciated employees, they want a flawless meal. Now when you're pushing 200 transactions an hour with only three people taking orders and three in the kitchen, you're not getting a five star meal, no matter which way you slice it. Expect to get a cheeseburger where there is grease on the wrapper, the cheese isn't exactly on the bun, and the meat is saturated with fat because the employee doesn't have the time to clean off the grill between cooking because as soo n as you make the fat families 12 99 cent doublecheeseburgers, you have to put cook more meat to make the impatient lawyer's double quarter pounder with cheese. One thing McDonald's is good for is letting its employees see the true nature of America today. I've come, through my employment at McDonald's, to see people in general as a big line of cows nudging their way to the trough. "Mooo..." is what I here when lunch hits and overweight, heart attack risk, slobbering patrons herd to our restaurant. McDonald's only succeeds (and especially in the U.S.) because of the publics willingness and revolting eagerness to stuff their faces with red meat and processed french fries... throw in anything that's on sale because they don't want to pass up some extra fat for a lower price. Strangly enough, it was after I got a job at McD's, that I decided to never eat the food again... not because our food is stored wrong, undercooked, old, etc. (If I wanted something fresh, I could just make it myself), but because the astronomical business that McDonald's gets is a testament to the huge health flaw in the United States... Americans need to revert to old times when it comes to eating habits. For God's sake people... go home, cook a meal for your kids, eat a balanced dinner, bring a damn lunch from home with a piece of fruit, and have some milk instead of a 42 ounce Coke. WHO NEEDS THAT MUCH SODA?!?! I'm not supporting McDonald's, far from it. One thing I can say for the corporation, though, is that it is smarter than the public as a whole. At least they're making money from the population's junkfood craze... the public is wasting it... and their health as well.
At least, that's the conclusion one could draw from your logic. McDonalds leads to world peace? Horseshit.
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Just lurking, thanks!
I don't either. But I think that about sums it up: the truth is, capitalism is exploitative, cold, heartless, emotionless, unhuman, selfish, greedy, uncaring, often harmful, all of the above! Unfortunately it's also a damn sight better than anything else anyone's come up with.
People want to control other people. Capitalists do this by giving people what they want. Evil capitalists do this by telling people what they want and then giving it to them. Bad capitalists find out what people want and then suggest their product has that when it actually doesn't.
But very few capitalists force people to accept exactly what they don't want (at least in terms of products and services).
I suggest we prosecute the bad capitalists and let the evil capitalists go. Because the most evil of evil capitalists is a walk in the park compared to the most evil of evil politicians.
No no- a representative republic is NOT majority rule. It tries to force a synthesis of ideas and is especially crafted to resist the evils of faction. Read Federalist Paper #10, okay? Democracy is a nice word but it's not what we in the USA do, in theory or in practice: that's because it's been done throughout history and it always crashes- 'bread and circuses', get it?
Watch out for network effects. Network effects means, "In the absense of any outside influence, the biggest options will squish the smallest options and make the total situation blatantly sub-optimal." Applies to a lot of things, but it sure as hell applies to Wal-Mart and McDonalds. It's necessary to hobble the giants a bit, they can well afford it- and otherwise you're just intentionally settling for an inferior competitive situation. And who wants to settle for an inferior competitive situation? Do you not _like_ competition?
Troll is a fairly strong term for it- I guess someone was having a bad day and got more annoyed than usual at the foolishness :) really, in 2001 that's a very odd opinion to hold. Maybe if we get rid of Congress too and let the RIAA and MPAA write laws directly, and get rid of the police and let the RIAA and MPAA furnish their own cops, our liberties will be improved ;) ya think?
Why don't you tell us?
A friend and I just brewed a batch of Scottish Ale, and I don't recall wasting a great deal of water.
I'd go so far as to say that water not used for making beer is a waste.
Since when has being an advocate of democracy gone hand-in-hand with sitting quietly on the sidelines whenever nonsense is legistlated? I think it's quite the opposite: it would be negligent for such an advocate to quiet.
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Exactly what do you think the Nato countries were doing with all their bombers and attack choppers and ground troops?
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Change is inevitable.
Change is inevitable.
Progress is not.
For more background, see The Unconscious Civilisation by Jon Ralston Saul, Anansi Press. It traces the common ideological heritage of corporatism and that other -ism.
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Change is inevitable.
Change is inevitable.
Progress is not.
Corporations aren't people -- the "out of control" bit is that we've given them the same rights, without the attendant responsiblity and obligation. Individual rights != corporate rights, as much as the hard-line capitalists would like us to believe they are.
If you think the loss of rainforest land to cattlefarming is "fear-mongering" rather than reality, you have a much better imagination than any "eco-profiteer" I've read.
The bottom line is that concentration of power is potentially bad, whether it's corporate or governmental. I'd like to see as little concentration of power as possible. Given a choice between assigning power to an elected, representative government that can be held accountable by its citizens and assigning power to an unelected corporation with no accountability beyond its shareholders and no obligation to consider the interests of those its actions may effect, the government is clearly the lesser of two evils.
At least, that's clear to me--but I'm a crazy bleeding-heart liberal, I guess.
"The future is dynamic" is great on a bumper sticker, but you're effectively claiming that what we do in our present doesn't affect the future. Tonight's homework assignment: "The Dust Bowl." Extra credit points: why is the Southwestern United States chiefly desert? (Hint: buffalo and cattle graze differently, something European settlers didn't know in their present.)
From an engineering standpoint, this is simple: what happens if we listen to "the crazy greens" and they're wrong? A lot of industries lose money in the short term, while countries and corporations are forced to learn better farming and conservation practices. If we listen to the sane, rational corporations and they're wrong, the world gets a lot less livable.
Maybe convenience is worth both the risk and the lack of long-term progress in your eyes, but not in mine.
And last but not least, if I represent "the orthodoxy," I guess that explains why there are so many more Honda Insights on the road than SUVs, and why our new proposed national energy plan focuses so much on alternative energy sources and wildlife preservation. :-)
It may be what _people_ want, but it's definitely not what _I_ want.
Of course, thanks to the wonders of capitalism, what _I_ want isn't important if it goes against what _people_ want.
It doesn't matter that _I_ still frequent that mom & pop grocer with the great meat. It doesn't matter that _I_ buy quality tools that will last a lifetime. If _people_ don't do these things, _I_ lose out.
Things swing towards mediocrity. Because it's good enough for your neighbors, it's good enough for you. That's the lesson here. It doesn't matter what the individual wants or desires - it's what the MASSES want that wins.
A person can be smart, polite, and well informed. People are dumb, rude, and pretty much stupid.
Since _people_ are the driving force here, not the individual, we get what dumb, rude, stupid people want.
And it's harder and harder to find alternatives. Money isn't given out to start business that are doomed to fail. Businesses that cater to a minority have a higher chance of failure than those that cater to the majority. Want to start a business similar to the mom & pop grocer's with the great meat? Good luck finding capital. Good luck attracting customers. Good luck keeping a profit when you're forced to charge higher prices because your margins aren't as large as those of the national supermarket down the street.
::sigh::
Are things different outside of the US? How about Europe?
Around 25% would use the "not enough" arguement which normally centers around a idea that some how there is not enough "stuff" (time, resources ect..) with which everyone can have a high quality of life.
Another 25% would use the survival of the fittest arguement, which is normally presented in the form of who has the bigger penis, but in my opinion is just the fear that there is "not enough" wrapped up in kid games.
Another 25% would use the arguement that its "other people" who cause the world to suck.
The last 25% would spend their time telling me how bad my spelling/grammer is, or how my numbers are wrong, or how its whinners like me who make the world suck.
What almost no one would do is agree that yes.. the world sucks.. and yes we made it suck.. and that yes.. we should first agree to make it not suck.. then figure out how to engineer a world where we all at least can agree it sucks less.
But thats not going to happen, because I never posted this... I took the blue pill and realized that we must like this world, if not why are we all actively creating it?
-- You can be a geeklord too
I think it stems slightly less from the food we eat and slightly more from the fact that we're so spread out and sub-urbanized that no one walks or rides a bike any more. We sit and drive EVERYWHERE because we have to. I'll wager there's less obeisity in cities then there is in the 'burbs, but that's unsubstantiated spec'lation at this point.
**>>BELCH
There are a number of us who would rather not have these kind of military interventions either. The amount we spend on policing the world is only matched by the amount we spend bribing it with 'relief'. Both are at taxpayer expense.
If we could have friendly trade with our neighbors, but largely kept our noses out of other countries' business, things would be much better.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
I don't know why more people don't get annoyed at that kind of paternalistic garbage.
This kind of attitude 'keeps people down' far more than offering minimum wage jobs ever has. If you keep telling someone that they have no chance to advance, to succeed, and that they'll never get anywhere without handouts, they'll start believing it.
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
Turn-time of employees in fastfood and other entry-level positions is something that Katz needs to look into. Sure, it's mindless, repetitive work, but anyone with the least motivation will be in and out of a crap job like that inside a year.
And, again, you fret and bite your nails about these "evil corporations", when what enables them to do all of the things you rail against is the growth of the total Nanny State. Without the dubious laws that get grafted (both bribed and sutured in) onto our original, just laws, the corporate behaviour that gets bitched about would not even be possible.
Gah. I should just recycle my post from the last "oh, no, here comes the Corporate Republic!" scarefest.
gigantino.tv - Heavy but weighs nothing.
The Falklands War almost broke the observation,
but McDonalds didn't come to Argentina until
shortly after the war.
Serbia, however, did have a McD's in Belgrade.
It was looted on day 2 of the US air campaign.
how dare you confuse the issue with some common sense. where's the romance in that?!?
Have you seen Ironstayn vs Supergovernment yet?
Two bucks for a Big Mac, Fries and Coke? I don't believe it.
'round here (BC, Canada), I'm pretty sure you'd be looking more at six bucks. I'm guessing, because I haven't actually eaten McDonald's hamburgers since I got past the kiddy stage of life.
Anyway, six bucks seems to be the going rate for a Wendy's chicken thing with fries and soft drink.
Which means I could also:
* get a couple slices of Uncle Dave's pizza. Real cheese, real meat, real dough. Good stuff.
* get a pasta meal at a pub, beer would be extra.
* get a good sushi meal.
* buy a TV dinner that's surely better than fast food. (I don't think I've ever eaten a TV dinner!)
* buy a salad-in-a-bag, some roasted chicken, and a bottle of water at the local Safeway.
All of which are better than McDonalds, by a very long shot...
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Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
I don't think he's completely hypocritical. There's never suggestion that the government should do things about this (other than take control of things the government pays for). Imagine what would happen if the world decided they didn't like he McDonaldization of the world. People can make this decision and make a differance. People just seem to think they are powerless by themselves.
The more we are told to:
Not talk to strangers.
Be afraid of strange thoughts.
Not explore differant beliefs.
Be afraid of the government. (news flash... people ARE the government)
They more they can get the public to fear each other, the more control they have.
People can choose to make a differance without legislation.
While you make some good points, I don't believe that the tension between capitalism's ideal and implementation is of the same nature as the dissonance between communism's ideal and its implementation.
Bear in mind, Communism as Marx conceived it was a utopia by concensus, where everyone agrees a priori to play by the rule of "from each according to ability, to each according to need". As long as those who play the game are willing to cheat that rule (or take advantage of it), Marxism is unrealizable, and must be replaced with some sort of imposed rationing and distribution scheme.
Capitalism, on the other hand, is by its nature adaptable to what rules the players are and are not willing to abide by. Greed and selfishness are allowed to be part of the equation only to the extent that they are compatible with profitability - if the consumer side will not tolerate a supplier that does not act with goodwill towards community and customer, and this distaste is strong enough for said consumer to either seek alternatives or forego a product entirely (deferred or vetoed gratification is essential to making a capitalist system work, thus a "consumerist" mentality may be its achilles heel), then there is no viable position for the greedy supplier, and likewise for a supplier doing business with greedy consumers (the net includes some good examples of this - "how much stuff do we need to give away to keep a customer coming back?")
An argument could be made that regulations placed upon suppliers (or consumers) according to the will of the people (or the consent of the people in the case of a Republic) is totally consistent with this model - provided people understand that by enshrining certain requirements in law, they may destroy the ability of providers or consumers to function profitably, and they must then be willing to abide by the consequences (see, for example, the California power crisis).
The "free" market of capitalism is perhaps the most sustainable component of of a "liberal" (liberty) society, precisely because it includes at least the potential for a self-corrective force; free speech isn't truly free unless it allows for trolls, but to succeed in the marketplace you need to find people willing to pay for the wares you're peddling. (Freedom of the press falls somewhere in between; the 1st amendment does not, for example, guarantee affordable access to a printing press!)
Just in case you haven't noticed, you can almost exactly correlate countries that start wars with countries that are poor and desperate. Iraq is an excellent example; they saw easy pickings in Kuwait and figured invading would solve their economic problems in one stroke. North Korea is always threatening the South with similar things. Being interested in war nowadays is a sign of weakness, not strength.
The question to ask about McDonald's is what they replaced: Often something much worse, such as the restaurant selling Mystery Food where they don't clean the grill. McDonald's created minimum standards more effective than any government fiat.
With so many better options available nowadays, even in fast food, I'm really not sure why McDonald's is still in business. My ex girlfriend offers a clue: She hates the company, loves their fries - and insisted I pick some up when she had fry cravings.
So I guess there is some merit to the place, despite its status as a cultural whipping boy.
Of course I can't stand the food personally, but, well, that's why we have a free market.
D
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Curious; let me know your results.
Oddly enough, the ex is a vegetarian, gets faintly nauseous when any form of meat is mentioned, but still goes gaga over the fries - even though she knows about the beef essence part.
D
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Because servers are not desktop PCs with the likes of Joe Schmoe as their users are they?
We all know Linux is a better server than a windows machine. The fact is though, if the consumers only have Windows machines to use, the internet AS IT APPEARS TO CONSUMERS becomes increasingly influenced by Microsoft.
It's not hard to figure out.
PS: Noone said anything about Linux being 'oppressed'.
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Delphis
Delphis
All McDonald's cash registers are hooked into a central computer -- one in the store, and one (unless I'm misremembering?) in McDonald's headquarters. It keeps track of trends in purchases by consumers. Cashiers are exhorted to sell more of one item or another based on the register records.
Based on this information, managers are given bar graphs telling them how much business they will (not should, *will*) be doing over the next week. They are told to staff their store accordingly.
I'm sure by now everyone's pretty aware that there is no need whatsoever for cashiers to have the basic math skills to make change. All the prices are entered into the store's central computer and can be changed any time. All the cashiers have to do is press pictograph buttons on the register.
Every machine in the kitchen is automated. Workers get to use no judgement whatsoever in deciding when food is cooked to perfection -- a beeper goes off, and that's it. (There's regulations about how many pickles or onion bits they can put on a burger.)
Garson notes that about 8 million Americans, or 7 percent of the American labor force, has worked for McDonald's at one point.
I don't know about you, but the way McDonald's uses technology to dumb workers down and uses information collected from its registers to market more insidiously unnerves me.
man, i couldn't even read past the 2nd page. i gotta go down to the local processed food outlet and purchase some refried, homogenized, pasteurized, enriched food before i starve.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
OK, so I followed your link and I see that "corporatism" is politics made and enforced by business. Isn't that what we're seeing, though? Take the DMCA. Who enacted this crap? Business. They caried it through our political system, so it's not a *direct* corporatism, but the law was still enacted by businesses for the benefit of businesses the way that I see it. If it sounds like a duck...
Seriously, I think Katz is correct to use the term "corporatism".
Mr Katz, you remind me of the unabomber more and MORE by the day.
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Nazi Germany has never been a world power : they have been at war with the rest of the world. World powers can impose their point of view without fighting. This happens sometimes as a result of winning a war, but has never happened to nazi germany.
farms went corporate in Russia as well 80 years ago ... they called that sovkhozs ...
I think there are better things we could be doing this century, other than ridding America of McDonalds and dethroning the Burger King.
I'm not a vegetarian because I love animals. I just really hate vegetables.
cpeterso
I am so turned off when I think of steak and hamburgers now, that I can barely order and wolf down a Big Mac or prime rib any more.
Then why don't you become a vegetarian? It's easier than you think and it gets easier every day. And vegetarians do eat more than just salads. You can find veggie-friendly food at practically any restaurant. VegSource.com is a good resource for beginning vegetarians.
cpeterso
No, he's just a hypocrite and a bigoted columnist who rambles on endlessly in a forum that frankly cares nothing for him.
BilldaCat
Fast food answers to the desires of the consumer. You want fries that taste fresh? No problem - get in a focus group, give 'em some fries, see what happens.
Some software (commonly used applications and operating systems, shrinkware) answers to this same group of people.
However, a LOT of software is written to satisfy the corporation, who focus on the bottom line. If there are advances in technology or software development best practices that truly save time and money, they will be implemented by the industry leaders so they can increase their profit margin.
In just about every market I can think of (fast food, cars, even technology), there is a wide range of quality available. Since software (and high technology in general) is still a growing market, it seems that the amount of low-quality/mass-produced stuff out there is growing. It is, but it's growing in proportion to the market as a whole. The amount of high-quality stuff is growing as well.
IMHO, this is just a sign that technology is becoming a large, stable market.
Here's more information on Fast Food Nation.
I beg to differ...
Hitler was elected. Milosevic was Elected. All US presidents have been elected. Democracies do go to was, at least the sham political systems that we call democracies.
In the last election I votes in, the party I voted for got 12% of the popular vote and 0% of the elected officials. The next party got 30% of the popular vote and 4% of the elected officials, the remaining party got 55% of the popular vote and 96% of the elected officials.
Even if you fixed that, it's still a party system where you can't get an independant into power, and if you did, they wouldn't have any responsibilities or power.
And then, it's a "representative democracy", meaning that I have to hope someone runs who represents my views. If not, I could end up completely unrepresented even if the person I voted for got in.
Then top this off with the fact that in a vote to declare war, it's not just the politicians who actually risk being sent off to fight who get to vote.
Democracies are anything but, and a populace intolerant of war doesn't stop any politician from voting for the draft and sending the completely unprepresented classes off to war.
If we say that 'democracies don't go to war' it's because we conveniently only look at rich countries, without realizing that the real reason they didn't go to war is because they don't think anyone else has anything worth taking. (When they do, like the US going to protect the oil supply) they're more than willing to spend low-class soldiers securing their financial future.
of course teens are getting greedy. How else can they pay for the DVDs, CDs, Cell phones, everquest, and dammit, all that McDonald's they eat!?!
JonKatz gets a lot of criticism for his articles, but I think this is a very good one.
However, I see one difference in the metaphor between the restaurant industry and the Internet. In the restaurant world, it takes a lot of money and an incredible amount of hard work to start and maintain a restaurant, and even then, most restaurants fail. With the advent of megacorporations, individual stores could even operate at a loss in order to more effectively shut out competition. I don't know if this actually happens, but I wouldn't be surprised.
In any event, on the Internet, I still think there is more of any opportunity for the little guy to succeed. Maybe you won't see a couple of college kids becoming overnight billionaires anymore, but unlike the restaurant world, where real estate and customers are finite, on the Internet, real estate is essentially infinite and "customers" can come from literally all over the world. Now I won't minimize the homogenization of online content, much like what's happened to commercial radio in the last 20 years, but it's still easy to create an online community dedicated to anything you could possibly want, and freed from geographic restrictions, any interest, no matter how obscure, can attract a community of like-minded individuals to share their common interest. I don't think the Walmart-ization of the Internet will ever squeeze those communities out, even if they are never exposed to vast masses who are force-fed a diet of ads for britneyspears.com or whatever.
So, while there are many parallels between the brick-and-mortar world and the online-world, we need to remember that the parallels are never perfect and I still think the 'net will adapt and grow in ways we haven't even thought of yet.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
The book shows capitalism at its best--with the rise of individuals with revolutionary ideas on food service--and corporate culture at its worst--with the companies formed by these individuals growing into huge conglomerates which care little for their customers or employees and disregard regulation and legislation by essentially buying government access.
It's not all bad news, and some of it is a bit alarmist, but the overall impact of the book shouldn't be forgotten. The investigation could easily have been of technology industries, clothing and apparal, the health industry, or a number of other industries. (There are parallels between the fast food industry and the Tobacco industry of The Insider)
Fast Food Nation is highly recommended for anybody interested in turn-of-the century corporate America, and anybody who is concerned with what they are eating.
Katz' commentary is essentially a book review, but doesn't do the book justice. (If this is a review, why does he bury first mention of the book in the seventh graph? Note to Katz: work with an editor.)
If you're going to mention China and capitalism, perhaps you should have remembered how long Chinese merchants have been active. You may have heard of someone named Marco Polo, who went to China with his merchant father. He was hardly the first nor the only user of the trade routes. And, of course, they were doing business within the existing marketplaces of China. The Emperors weren't merely collecting birds from farmers for taxes, there have been wealthy merchants around for a while.
I've heard a few times about this corporate domination subject... here's a summary of some of the issues. Oh, yeah, that's from 1881; there have been some more recent events.
I don't think that's necessarily true -- for example, I'm doing three things in parallel: full-time school, 20 hrs of part-time work, and about 15 hours of fencing training a week. Then I go home and start homework, projects, etc.
Which means that I'm driving a heck of a lot.
I'm well aware of the money I can save (or at least, quality I can get for the same money) by cooking, but my time is a much more important commodity than the money I would save -- since going home and preparing food would mean that I am late to [practice|work|class].
Whereas the fast food is on my path and can be greedily consumed en route. I bet that logic applies to many people....
darius
How was this national discussion to take place? Who would participate? How would anyone participating know what the hell they were talking about until after it happened? Who gets to decide what the discussion results were? If it was decided that fast food was a bad thing, how precisely could the industry be discouraged without violating basic economic and political freedoms?
What is so holy about the small farms and businesses that could not compete, that I should miss them? I don't hang out at malls exclusively, in urban areas there are plenty of small businesses and restaurants.
The whole idea of a national discussion as posited by Katz is inherently collectivist. The only appropriate national discussion is the one fomented by the book length critiques of the anti-fastfood industry authors. The only result should be individuals decided on their own to continue to patronize fast food or not.
Katz can keep his communist nannny state locked away in his private fantasy, I'll have no part of it and will vote against it at every opportunity.
Growler"To excuse such an atrocity by blaming U.S. government policies is to deny the basic idea of all morality: that individu
If he were british, he'd boil them. They boil EVERYTHING there.
And don't you get me started on their concept of "pudding!"
You forgot about his $.50 can of Coke. And a steak prepared in a toaster oven can be quite tasty indeed - it's really not so different from an oven.
You're wrong !!b us iness.html
here's a link proving mcDonald's exists in pakistan
http://www.tradeport.org/ts/countries/pakistan/
here's one on india
http://www.mcdonaldsindia.com/
These countries went to war two years back
http://www.armyinkashmir.org/kargil/
The morality of the market? I assume that's Morality According to Katz. Because, of course, WE are only the masses. Who are WE to freely decide on anything? Katz knows best, just ask him.
This is EXACTLY the same as when the evil supervillian Jesse Helms says something is immoral and needs to be stopped. You're either free or you're a subject. Only the tyrant changes.
(Of course, the supervilliany of Jesse Helms is largely an invention of the press, but that's beside the point.)
I wonder if Jon Katz ever gets tired of himself?
Here's the problem with this: The short term benefits are real. The long-term effects you mention are largely imaginary and based on a fear-mongering campaign by the eco-profiteers.
And BTW, I don't really like McDonalds or big corporations. But they're being falsely used as bogeymen by people who want you to sign away your freedom in exchange for "protection".
If they opened the perfect restaurant -- not too big, but not too small either -- quirky enough, but not too quirky -- and the food was all cheap, but expensive enough so you know you're getting good food -- and if they were convient everywhere I travel, but not _everywhere_ -- and if everything else was just right, I'd eat there.
But, see, this is a fantasy. No restaurant will ever meet the standard. McDonalds is the _compromise_ we ended up with. It is a reality, with all the normal daily disappointment. Sad, but not tragic. And not evil.
I can't believe this got modded up to a five.
Neither can I :)
Hey, I know it's part of the orthodoxy to believe this stuff. But there are 2 sides to the story.
I know the loss of rainforest land is real. But is it a real problem? From whose perspective?
What if I don't believe in the orthodox-green notion of a fragile world teetering on the edge of destruction? Then what's the problem?
What if I don't believe in the estimates that the rain forest will all be gone in 6 months (or 2 years, or 5 years, or 18 years, or whatever the newest scare is supposed to be)? Those estimates are wrong, and fundamentally silly because the future is dynamic.
What if I don't believe in the supposed silver-bullet cure-for-all diseases drug that's about to be trampled by a nasty bulldozer (driven by an evil man who wants to feed his family)?
What if the real situation is that some (a lot, but not too much) forested land is being cut to produce food for people? What's the problem then? Isn't this at least a little more likely than the eco-doomsday scenarios we've all heard about?
Anyway, there are too many unanswered questions for a dispassionate observer to conclude McDonalds is evil. Now if I already hated them, or if I thought I'd get into the Elite Compassion Club, or if there was money in it for me, those questions might matter a little less.
Hope you get modded up.
I don't believe there is a problem from any reasonable perspective. So the conclusion is that the deforestation concern is not a concern after all. Better?
Sorry about the format. Orthodoxy must be challenged delicately in order to be effective in persuasion.
I would rather my Bush tax cut go towards funding renewable energy sources, education, and other worthy conservation causes
You're probably getting a $300 check. Send it to them.
"The future is dynamic" is great on a bumper sticker, but you're effectively claiming that what we do in our present doesn't affect the future.
Actually, I was saying exactly the opposite. The future can't be projected on a linear curve because things that happen in the future affect things that happen later in the future.
Example: We can never "run out" of fossil fuels because, as they become more scarce, their cost increases, leading to slower and slower usage, and ultimately to near zero usage with fossil fuels still in the ground.
From an engineering standpoint, this is simple: what happens if we listen to "the crazy greens" and they're wrong?
To even start, you'd have to eliminate many, many freedoms and subject citizens to the control of an elite class. This is a harm that cannot be repaired.
And last but not least, if I represent "the orthodoxy," I guess that explains why there are so many more Honda Insights on the road than SUVs
You misunderstand. Being part of the orthodox-green movement is about thinking and believing what you're supposed to, regardless of the actual truth. You're supposed to venerate the environmental leaders, decry the environmental bogeymen, and fear the apocalyptic prophesies. Actual "actions" are rare, and tend towards the symbolic.
No one is forced to eat there, do business there, or work there, but they're somehow super oppressive and evil.
And we envy their money and we want to get the government or lawyers to steal it and give it to us.
And we envy their "power" and we want them to be hurt so they have less power.
And we want the government to be super-powerful to protect us from the corporate evil, but it'll never occur to us that the government's power might be used against us. Maybe if we give it more power, that will stop.
Gee, what a smart, happy bunch we are.
To be fair, he's quoting from *Fast Food Nation*, which *does* provide backup. Go read it.
Great Windows SFTP Server!
Technology made the fast food industry possible, and without any real national discussion and consideration, retailing, health, work and the ability of individuals to operate farms or small businesses was altered for good.
Let's veer off topic a bit here. I don't think a "national discussion" on the topic would've been realistic. As long as products are produced in a way that isn't illegal, there is no obligation for a company to consider sociological consequences.
My question is: what are the ethical responsibilities of those creating the technologies? I'd wager that a big chunk of the Slashdot population is in the business of creating technology in some sense, whether they're software developers or engineers or what have you. What responsibility do we have for the impact of the technology we create? I'm not talking about immediate health risks that exposure to radiation or things like that. I'm talking about long-term sociological effects.
I'm not blaming the guy who developed the McDonalds french fry machine for the McDonaldization of society. But I am suggesting that somebody's got to consider these consequences.
Should we technologists bear responsibility for our actions? We cannot use the scientist's excuse of "science for science's sake". Technology is purely utilitarian. What responsibilities do we have in developping technologies to ensure that we don't do harm to society by the development?
-- Will quantum computers run imaginary-time operating systems?
"Corporations can try and take our rights away, but we have the courts to fight them. "
We lost in MPAA v. Corley.
"When the government takes our rights away we can't even beat them in the courts as they have guns to back them up. "
We won in Tinker v. Des Moines.
Any questions?
Become a FSF associate member before the low #s are used
Read this, and the comments, and then look at this article and its comments. The privacy article is, in some ways, a subset of the arguments in this one.
Best Slashdot Co
Is it just me or is the irony that the Eat Locally is on a website of a publication that is wholly owned by the Disney corporation, one of McDonald's partners in crime?
Sneering at something is an admission to failure. You are claiming superior talent or insight
"is inevitably the path that every society will eventually take."
That galls me. Why are you so sure of this? Just because the west has gone down this road means that this is the direction all civilization must inevitably take? What hubris. Is this the inevitable path that farmers in South America or India, and fisherman in Southeast Asia need to take? I don't get it. Through amazing and complex coincidences and circumstances we have come to where we are...I don't see how this is necessarily the One True Way. What short collective memories we have.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
"Third World nations that have adopted Communism grossly underperform those that are capitalist"
People who don't play by the rules of the game that those in control of the game have invented don't do as well. What is your definition of "underperform"? If USSR won the cold war, we might just be saying that "capitalist economies grossly underperform those that are communist".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Or how about a geeky analogy: Microsoft claims that Linux isn't ready for the desktop, it doesn't have the applications or compatibility with Microsoft formats, and Slashdotters complain that that is because Microsoft has a monopoly and network effect which it can use to put the burden of compatibility on the underdog. What if Linux came out before Windows? We might all be saying "Microsoft isn't ready for the desktop".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Um, so. Didn't your mother tell you that too much of *anything* is a bad thing? VA Linux is hardly even a blip on the radar or corporate significance. What matters are the giant media conglomerations that decide what information is the most marketable. What matters are giant biotechnology, chemical, agribusiness corporations whose every move shows up in the food we eat, and the environment around us. What matters is giant pharmaceutical companies who hold patents on the genomes of entire ethnicities, and can control whether millions of people live or die each day. Perhaps you are comfortable living in a world where everything you see, eat, touch, and think is colored or even dictated by a handful of extremely powerful faceless corporations, but I'm not. Corporate power (like any other power) needs to be in check. Just because you can cite "good" examples of corporations doesn't mitigate this fact, and just because it turns out people have to *work* for corporations to put bread on their table doesn't make them hypocrites.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
So then, you're defining performance as human rights? That is somewhat ironic seeing as we just got kicked off the UN human rights commission and we're fuming like a petulant little boy. We too have a bit of dirty history that we don't talk much about in the history books.
Those who win the wars write history and define the rules of the game for others. We won, so the rules are capitalistic rules...which of course are making it very difficult for non-capitalist countries to compete in the global economy (whether or not they violate human rights). Capitalism may be the "best system yet" simply because we've economically outcompeted everything else. I'm not convinced that what makes the most wealth is necessarily equal to what's best. There have been plenty of damn fine civilizations in history based on systems other than capitalism and democracy.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
My, aren't we a bit techy?
#1) http://www.cnn.com/2001/US/05/03/us.human/
And go find whatever other links you want. There are several reasons why we were kicked off, including our position on land mines and AIDS drugs.
#2) Lessee...um, Mayan, Incan, most any indigenous American civilization (oh no, the Aztecs sacrificed people, cringe, cringe), Chinese, most indigineous civilizations accross the globe, um, Persia, some of the European civilizations like the Celts. India did have a pretty amazing civilization, but you're right, the caste system was a shame, so that probably bars it. Each had their share of bad points, but it's not as if modern countries don't also.
#3) Oops sorry, I guess all my arguments are invalid because I didn't use the jargon you wanted me too. How about: "I'm not convinced that what allows the most accumulation of wealth is necessarily equal to what's best".
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
Situationist
Adbusters
CorpWatch
AllYourBrand
etc.:
Independent Media Center
Metropolitic.net
You May Be An Anarchist And Not Even Know It (I too thought the "anarchy movement" was a load of crap from bored aggressive adolescents (they really spoil it for everybody don't they?) until reading this and realizing there really is a legitimate coherent philosophy behind it)
Mother Jones
In These Times
Poliglut
Protest.net (yes, sometimes there are actually legitimate reasons to protest)
PigDog journal
Unabomer Manifesto (he may have been labeled a wacko, but read it - he's not stupid and he does sorta have a point.)
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This is such a dumb troll, it's not even funny...
So this is what the Nationad Missile Defence is about? More hamburgers?
So McDonalds is now as important to the military as McConnel-Douglas?
Now I can sleep...
Thanks for backing me up - I figured a lot of grilling purists would rake me over the coals for that - hell, I felt a little queasy (as in "this is wrong, God will smite me for my heresy") when I first tried it, but I was in an apartment, which made grilling not-an-option.
Take yer steak, and spend another minute rubbing it down with pepper, salt, and some sage. The layer of spices on the outside of the steak seems to help hold the moisture. You can also brush lightly with olive oil before applying the rub. (An investment of $10.00 in a hand-operated pepper grinder can really pay off here - IMHO the generic stuff in your pepper shaker is pretty flavorless compared to any equally-generic "look at the pretty colors" multi-peppercorn blend).
All that said, I still prefer steak grilled the way God intended. But the toaster-oven method (broil, yes, but don't overcook it!) works well enough in a pinch. Then again, I like my steaks medium-rare to medium, so I'm not sure if it would work as well if you like it brown-all-the-way-through. And I'm lucky in that I can get a nice thick (1.5" to 2") cut of steak, so drying-out isn't really a problem.
On to the more interesting (and in many cases, valid) objections:
Soneone else said:
> That said both McDonalds and Microsoft make a product that works as advertised and actually is capable of fulfilling most of peoples expectations. The product just does the job and so people will buy it because they don't want to deal with it on thier own. I don't think McDonalds breeds stupid and uncaring people, I think that stupid and uncaring people bread McDonalds and they are free to do that.
I think this poster put it better than I did. There's nothing wrong with McD's, it's just that there are alternatives if you look around. If it weren't for people willing to forego these potentially-superior alternatives for the sake of perceived convenience (which applies just as well for MSFT vs. Linux), neither organization would stay in business.
But my mind still boggles when I hear people say that they go to McDonald's because they can't afford a steak dinner...
And that's the depressing part. Because if you really look at it, fast food is neither convenient nor cheap.
Big Mac, Fries, and a Coke. About $2.00. Plus maybe a 10-minute drive each way - call it $1.00 for gas and time. And the joy of standing in line waiting for your order, sitting in an annoying fast-food-restaurant seat, etc.
Potato: $0.25, and that's a huge potato. New York Strip: $7.00 a pound at my local butcher. Take one and cut it in half. Coke: $0.50/can, bought in bulk.
Total cost: $4.00 for an 8-oz NY Strip loin, baked potato, and Coke.
Total time: 5 minutes to defrost the steak in the microwave, then 15 minutes on the baking/grill-rack in a toaster oven at 350-400F, while the potato gets nuked in parallel for 10 minutes.
For fifty cents more, you can have a goddamn steak in the same time it takes to go to McDonald's.
McDonald's stays in business for the same reason Microsoft does: Market presence and a[n ad campaign designed to ensure the continued existence of a] customer base that's wholly-ignorant of the existence of alternatives.
More recently there have been fewer democracies. So it was less likely that they'd fight with each other. But Hitler and Milosevic, were both democratically elected. (And led their nations against other democracies.)
And you believe that has anything to do with the actual US record on human rights? Good grief, Sudan is on the human rights commission. A lot of UN members just don't like the US, sometimes for understandable reasons.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
Exactly the point. The USSR lost because their inferior economic system couldn't both support their huge military and feed their people.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
French Sociologist Ellul made similar points in 1954! He called it "la technic", or technique. Roughly meaning efficiency, this is exactly what McDonald's, Wal-Mart and Microsoft do to the nth degree!
I think Katz is on to something.
Monopolies seem to fail only when (a)they get broken by the government (Standard Oil) or (b)they miss out on something that fundamentally changes the world (IBM didn't understand PCs). Linux and much of the Open Source movement is an interesting experiment where a bunch of geeks attempt to overcome one of MS's (and other companies before MS) barriers to entry by donating code. I don't think Linus had this in mind when he started, but Stallman might have. Whether they can overcome the other barriers and recreate a competitive OS industry remains to be seen.
Fast food as an industry arose as society changed--two-worker families have less time for household chores, cooking at home is time-consuming, and fast food is an "answer" to the situation. So are TV dinners and all those other frozen entrees. Once there's an industry, the natural processes mentioned above would eventually yield a monopoly/trust set of companies.
Why does this remind me so strongly of my job in tech support?
Wonderful example of why the media are so useless. Not a clue about systems, no comprehension of opportunity costs.
8% growth compounded for 20 years solves a lot of social problems.
The power given to gov to solve problems such as Katz discusses has mostly lead to 2% growth rates. The number of deaths these cause, mainly among the poor, children, women, and mainly in the 3rd world that Katz and fellow liberals pretend to champion, is huge.
World War I's effects still kill more people every year than at the height of the war: the war killed a generation of business, scientific and technical brains --> less medicine, technology and economic growth.
The AIDS epidemic around the world is likely due to opportunity costs of WWI.
Gov is the killer, both directly and indirectly, not corporations that provide fast food to voluntary consumers.
Lew Glendenning
"The Constitution, the WHOLE Constitution, and nothing but the CONSTITUTION."
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets [...]
Indeed. It's a sad state of affairs when a company's success hinges not on providing a better product or service, but on whether the company is effective at influencing lawmakers and regulators to tilt the playing field in their favor. Realistically though, many companies would be foolish to not have a lobbying presence, given the power that politicians and regulators have to make or break entire industries.
My opinion is that all this makes a strong case for reducing the power that politicians have over the economy. If they don't have the ability to hand out favors that give one industry an advantage over another, there won't be companies and industry groups lining up at the feeding trough.
--
JonKatz's latest collectivist essay brings up the usual plethora of half-truths, hidden assumptions and pleasant sounding nonsense.
... will be the battleground on which the fight against corporatism is played out.
Some questions for Mr. Katz per his latest dissertation:
1. You write: Technology, as futurists like George Orwell
Where did Orwell write of the evils of corporatism? Much of his work associated the primary evil with the state, which is your proposed savior your writings. Doesn't Orwell instead argue the opposite perspective?
2. The United States has become a corporate republic...
Really? With a federal government that is at the largest percentage of GNP ever? Or did you mean to write that the US was founded to support individuals and corporate entities but is no longer?
with the takeover of cyberspace one of that republic's primary goals
As defined and substantiated where? By the former liberal administration (who is the doer of no wrong in your writings) giving the green light to NSI and Verisign dominance? Ever look at whose Senate re-elections and presidential runs SAIC significantly funded?
3. Fast food is central to urban and suburban sprawl and to the rise of malls as retailing forces...
Cart before the horse problem. Your model would indicate that McDonalds and other fast food entities moved to empty fields, and by their presence, created housing developments around them per this inaccurate sprawl model.
Better (and significantly substantiated) models show sprawl directly corrolated with white urban flight and a perceived ethic system clash between work ethic-focused european whites and welfare-system nonwhites (e.g. fleeing crime and perceived value difference with a counter ethic model propped up by liberal dependency programs).
Interestingly, McDonalds and other fast food entities have numerous outlets in urban locations. Shouldn't this encourage sprawl too? The theory sounds nice, but is fundamentally flawed.
4. Fast food has created a generation of new, mostly lousy jobs
Fast food has created a generation of ENTRY LEVEL jobs, employing large amounts of unskilled labor. While it'd be nice to pretend that every unskilled high school kid could be paid $150,000 a year at Katz's law firm, I'd seriously doubt the firm would hire them.
Katz, where do you wish unskilled kids to be employed in your imaginary system? Will you hire them at attorney living wages? Why not?
5. cemented the divisions between rich and poor
How? Absent substantiation (typical), where is this found? I visit a suburban McDonalds and see rich and poor alike. Same with small town McDonalds. Same with urban McDonalds. What it has cemented is a collection of consumers who wish to find consistant food of known experiential quanties.
Look at the explosion of catagory killers - essentially the "Super Sizing" of the McDonalds model. Why has Walmart, Best Buy, Chilis, Barnes & Nobel, Lowes, Home Depots, etc, dominated? Because consumers can identify the brand regardless of location and associate it with a certain expection of quality and performance.
This obviously works both ways - have a crummy experience at one Kmart and you'll probably avoid all Kmarts.
6. It's the stepchild of post-war progress in farming, slaughtering and packing, refrigeration and transportation.
There's the comment of a preppy snot who's never been to the country. Want to know why family farms have died and everything from hogs to soybeans have scaled to such large extremes? Look at commodity prices. The only way you can survive now is on scale. Your government created this monster through subsidies, combined with the unnatural centralization of economic power in cities (again, due in many parts to collectivist redistribution of money from the taxpayer base to the wards of the welfare state).
(Side note: There's a reason what you people call flyover space is now known as "red space" - i.e. voting in many cases over 80-90% for Bush. People who grow crops know that all the wishes and intents in the world don't make the crop grow. Hard work, actions, and man's reason puts food on the table.)
Granted, centralization of production in urban areas during the industrial era had its toll too.
7. political activists were already warning about the McDonaldization of America in much the same way that hackers, programmers and open source advocates are sounding the alarm about the Microsoft-ing of the Net. Those activists sensed that the emerging fast food business threatened independent companies and presaged a food economy dominated by giant corporations
And all of this was accomplished through the choices made by individual consumers. Unless you can point to a federal directive ordering consumers to buy Microsoft products and ban competitors, there's no conspiracy other than individual preference.
The same goes for McDonalds and any other chain or category killer.
The fundamental assumption you make but fail to explain is that your solution must require removing this individual choice.
In order to deny people from choosing McDonalds, someone (i.e. the government) must prevent individual determination. How do you wish to go about this in a democratic society, Mr. Katz? (Obviously, you don't, but somehow can't find the courage to clearly explain your support of tyranny).
8. The industry was one of the first to use technology -- especially advances in genetics --
I'll strongly agree that GMO experimentation is troublesome and worrisome. Interestingly, much of this experimentation was initiated under federal research funding (e.g. USDA). Absent standards for what is and isn't acceptable (i.e. the normal role of government), and with tacit government support for GMO, are you surprised that individual interest has evolved along these lines?
9. attracted a disproportionate number of immigrant, poor and minority workers...
Spoken like a true class warrior, who'd rather see unemployed and starving immigrants rather than working and upward bound ones. After all, who's handing out the goods to the unemployed, vs. who's working and discovering how much social security, taxes and such steal from their paycheck?
who have little real chance of advancement
Why is it an employer's job to advance a worker absent a change in qualifications? If I've hired you to flip burgers because you have the qualifications (have pulse, bathe, show up for work on time, follow instructions), then why should I make you a manager absent any other changes in your qualifications?
Again, Katz, you're slopping over some serious assumptions. If promotion is independent of a worker's qualification for the position, let's quit wasting time and hire everyone as six-figure trial attorneys. (Actually, most uneducated immigrants would probably do better than your run of the mill trial attorney, due to their possession of morals and ethics).
10. The fast food industry also perfected, even nationalized, the notion of false courtesy --
And the alternative is.... ?
"Yea, this is Burger King. What the hell did you expect, asshole. You gonna order today? No, you can't have it your way!"
Let's see that operation last a week. Katz, as odd as it seems that you'd be surprised by this (and be hunting for corporate conspiracies as to why McDonalds is nice to its customers), what else to you suggest?
OVERALL
- You don't want individuals to have the freedom to choose McDonalds. WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
- You don't want McDonalds being nice to its patrons. WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
- You don't want product innovation, consistant and identifiable quality. WHAT IS THE ALTERNATIVE?
Why is it I see a line at an unnamed Soviet store where rude government workers yell at me to take what they're selling today or leave?
Thankfully, the success of fast food, category killers and such are living proof that people like you are parasites living on borrowed time. The net and the rise of intelligent individualism marks the end of your kind.
*scoove*
Produce or die.
Exactly what do you think the Nato countries were doing with all their bombers and attack choppers and ground troops?
:-)
That wasn't a war. It was a peace action, brought to you in part by the fine folks at NATO.
Anyway, wars aren't cool anymore (unless they've been filmed by Disney). Korea, Viet Nam, Iraq, etc.
Maybe that's why the "no warring nations with McDonalds" model holds true?
*scoove*
Nice points, except you missed two:
/like/ cooking (as I do), that's an entirerly different matter.
- labor: how much do you cost an hour? Take your average IT professional in the midwest making $40K to $60K annually. Factor a half hour of cooking and post-eating cleanup (not including the time you walked thru the grocery, drove there and back, etc. to get the stuff - I'll figure you did that with the other groceries and have no cost additional), and you've added anywhere between $10 and $15 to your cost.
Now, if you
- convenience: Do you run home to the kitchen for lunch, or swing by the McDonalds near the office? More time savings and the food is ready within the one-hour lunch break timeframe most of us have. Plus, how many friends want to go to your house and eat stuff out of your fridge? Mine trust McDonalds more:-)
I agree tho that if you don't mind the hassel, eating home is a much better deal.
*scoove*
Fair criticism.
Salon and other publications have talked about the rise in libertarianism in recent years. In spite of the Limbaugh complaints about rotten schools (yea, he's interesting sometimes but he's of a definite different branch in the tree), literacy in the US continues to improve, college attendence, though possibly dropping off a bit right now, is much higher than ever before.
You can argue that any and all of these have no corrolation with intelligence or individualism. But looking at individual expression as a barometer - regardless of the accuracy or 'correctness' of that expression - would indicate that we're in a stage of self-expression and individualism never before seen.
Acceptance of broader sexual preferences, body art, etc. all seem to corrolate with increased individualism. Increased intelligence...? Hard to match, other than referencing literacy and other factors.
In fact, there may be an argument that individualism is slightly out of whack due to a near total disregard in the urban areas for community ethics. Ask someone in my neighborhood to turn down a house-shaking subwoofer-to-the-max car stereo and you'll be taking your life into your own hands (from personal experience).
Fair call - hope that might provide some substance!
*scoove*
how about using some of that new-fangled hypertext
Sounds fair! Here are some solutions that would work, unlike the destruction of individual choice approach Katz advocates:
- Eat Locally - Make a goal for yourself. 10%? 25%? more? Try it for a month and see if you can hack it. It's not easy, but certainly worthwhile.
- Promote natural genetic diversity and redundancy in your garden - Centralized buying from major wholesalers like Lamb-Weston promotes at most two or three genetic varieties in potatos, one in soybeans, etc. Garden with the varieties that have been forgotten.
- Buy local foods - visit the local weekly farmer's market. Find area local foods organizations. Get better produce, picked ripe by family farms in your area.
- Consume simplier, healthier beverages - Know how much waste water and byproduct is created through double-stage fermentation (i.e. making beer)? Drink a better beverage - locally produced hard cider! (An added advantage is that most locally produced cider uses a major variety of apples - mostly kinds you'd never find at the supermarket - and promotes additional natural genetic diversity).
Unlike Katz's Soviet vision, the above can and does work, as long as you're not too stupid or lazy.
*scoove*
FWIW, McDonald's has gone quite a ways to avoid using GE food. They have been pushing to go GE-free, which has somewhat thrown the farmers who grow genetically-engineered crops. Look here for a good article on this.
This is a lot like that old story that McDonald's uses worm meat instead of beef in their burgers. In reality, McD has more ties to the beef industry than Bush has to the oil industry, and it's probably cheaper for them to use cows instead of worms.
-JSorry to be pedantic, but Communism actually is a western philosophy. Communism (more specifically Bolshevism, which is what the bulk of current "Communist" countries actually operate under) was an economic and social philosophy put forward by Vladimir Ilyich Lenin (white European) and Leon Trotsky (another white European). Communism itself is based on Socialism, an economic and social philosophy put forth by Karl Marx (yet another white European).
So, how is Communism not a western philosophy?
-NOC Monkey (OOK!) Experience is what allows you to recognize a mistake the second time you make it.
Hypocrite is understatement in this case.
1. Katz is an employee of Slashdot (for some unknown reason), a division of Andovernet.
2. Andovernet is a subsidiary of VA Linux.
3. VA Linux is a publically trading corporation, incorporated as a Class C Corporation.
Slashdot would not fucking exist if not for the Captial Markets of the United States and our influence in expanding those markets to the rest of the world.
Those markets work. Thankfully, they work so well, that VA Linux is about to tank, as the consumer has decided not to divert world resources to VA Linux's products which include Slashdot. Soon, VA Linux will be forced to perform even more cutbacks, and we can all hope that in light of his idiotic comments, Katz will be the first one to be sacked.
"...excessive corporate power that grips the United States." - is just a childish excuse for why this idiot is about to be fired.
Someone you trust is one of us.
When will you guys give up? The commies will outlive the sun, I swear it. Ok Nader Boy, #1 the US was booted off the human rights commission because of the countries that are on it like Sudan (thriving slave trade), Cuba (totalitarian dictatorship), and China (have more that one kid you either pay a fine or get an abortion). These guys are sick of the UN passing human rights resolutions that interfere with their closed market regiems. #2 Nader Boy, please enlighten us with your examples of "damn fine" civilizations that were based on systems other than capitalism and democracy. Would that be Imperial Rome (1/3rd population slaves), or ancient egypt (not bad if you are pharoe), or maybe medivial India (you are born into your caste and 1/5th of the population are untouchable). #3 Nader Boy, Wealth is the moving of an asset from a lower value to a higher one. You are confusing the accumulation of wealth with weath itself. I suggest you read some economics 101 before you run off to your Green gatherings.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Don't even bother with this idiot; his personal page quotes Che Guevero and Ralph Nader for God's sake.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Captialism is going to kick my ass if I dont get some more work done today, but what the heck.
#1. Ted Turner and CNN aren't the best source for information on this matter given his ties to the UN. Anyway, if land mines, AIDS drugs and the death penalty are criteria for getting booted off, do you find it strange that a sanctioned slave trade (sudan), 20 year manditory inprisonment for cooperating with any foreign press agency (Cuba), and forced abortions (china) are are criteria for being on the commission?
#2 Are you suggesting that we model our economy after the economies of these civillizations many of whom are fuedal and hereditary.
#3. Ah Ok. I agree with you. Accumulation of wealth is not nessessarily important. The creation of wealth is paramount. Wealth is civilization. I can program because wealth makes it possible for me not to have to hunt. Wealth is specialization. The creation of wealth is not a zero-sum game.
Someone you trust is one of us.
Companies aren't responsible for the negative societal trends Katz explores in his article. Rather, we, the citizens, are to blame.
All companies have one simple goal: to make money. The way they do this is by selling goods or services to the largest audience of consumers while incurring the smallest amount of production cost. This means companies will always do what the majority of consumers (or citizens) want. In this way, a single company can be considered to behave as a direct-democratic response to the votes (purchases) of its consumers.
Someone claimed in an earlier thread here that companies are more concerned with pleasing investors than pleasing consumers. While this may be true of certain companies in the short term, those companies never survive. You have to make profits, not just gather investment funding, to survive in the marketplace--just look what happened to the dot-coms. As a result, the majority of companies MUST respond very directly to consumer desires.
Katz complains about our increasingly obese nation, and places some blame on McDonalds. Is McDonalds at fault here for overweight kids? Absolutely not! The kids and the kids' parents are the ones at fault--after all, they are the one who voted "yea" to McD's with their dollars. McD's has simply provided something that an overwhelming majority of consumers want: something that tastes good, regardless of its health value. Holding them responsible for obese kids is just as ludicrous a notion as holding a gun manufacturer responsible for murders.
Think about this: the USA would actually be LESS DEMOCRATIC if the vocal, concerned minority of people were to enact laws preventing McDonalds from selling unhealthful foods, or preventing Microsoft from selling Windows. No matter how much more "right" you think you are than the uninformed majority of people in this country, the entire idea of democracy (or representative repulics, which is what the USA actually is) is majority rule. If you don't like that, go move to a different country.
Linux users bitch about Microsoft's products' uniformaity and the companies domination of the marketplace, but the fact is that it only ended up this way because it's the way the majority of consumers want it. They voted with their dollars, and Linux users voted by withholding their dollars, and guess who the majority was in the end? Not the Linux gurus, obviously. That doesn't make the Linux gurus "wrong" or Microsoft "right"--it just reflect what the majority has chosen.
It's important to differentiate between ethics and democracy. True democracy is often highly unethical, if only because the majority of people do NOT live up to a strict code of ethics and do NOT keep themselves well informed on the issues.
Another point Katz bitches about is low-income, monotonous jobs. He blames companies for this end result, when in fact he should be blaming the work force. Companies pay the minimum that people will accept. If most people would outright refuse to accept such cruddy working conditions and low pay, then the companies would start paying more and making the jobs suck less. But there are plenty of people willing to vote "yea" to this situation by accepting such a job. These people may bitch and complain about how bad their job is, but they obviously are happy to have the job because they took it. It's all a matter of sticking by your principles instead of just mouthing off about it.
It sounds like what Katz wants is a utopian world in which he and the minority of citizens who agree with him get to dictate over the much larger disagreeing majority of the population. That sounds much more like "1984" than the picture of the technological future that Katz is trying to paint for us.
- "It's just a matter of opinion!" - PRIMUS
I want to comment on the McD's reference.
I went to two McD's and one KFC. Both were packed. I asked an employee how much she made and if working for McD's was considered a good job, and she said enthusiastically YES.
Most waitresses in China (i was in beijing) are so poor that they need to rent a room above the restaurant or a cot on the floor of the restaurant to live. Call it indentured servitude to a restaurant.
A job at McD's is hard to come by because it pays well, is clean, and the managers are well trained and won't abuse you. Suprisingly, for a waitress, a job at McD's or any other american fast food place is considered a good job.
Upfront: Serving up the McDictionary -- "McDonalds has restaurants in 120 different countries and serves a whopping 29 million people a day. But here's something you may not have known: They also own 131 different words and phrases--including such surprises as 'Black History Makers of tomorrow' and 'Healthy Growing Up.' They've trademarked them so no one else can use them."
How to Download YouTube Videos
Something that *can* be legislated (and should be, in my opinion) is the use of washable (ie normal) dishes when the customer is going to "eat in". I hear some cities have thought about that. Why package up the food when the customer is just going to up it in 20 seconds and then discard the packing
Also, I heard a McDonalds in Quebec City before the summit boarded its self up and removed signs. ... They KNOW they are hated!!
Free markets are good for economies, and in many cases, for the people who work in them. They can promote creativity, innovation, prosperity, choice and individualism, more than other political and economic systems. But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market -- a balance already tilting off center in almost the entire range of tech industries, and on the Net and Web.
I don't think there is conclusive evidence that free markets make the world better. Certainly by themselves they don't. They're just an abstract. In the current world order, they just open up poorer nations to extreme exploitation. This is what the protesters in Seattle were against.
I don't think Katz really understands that the problems with corporations are really problems with capitalism. It's cold, emotionless, unhuman nature. In thoery it should work great, just like Marxist Communism. When implemented, however, the selfishness, greed, and other human shortcomings really end up harming society.
With capitalism we take away our own destiny and put it in the hands of an abstract notion of economic growth. I don't have a solution, of course, just some ideas. There seems to be a large number of people starting to agree with me. Not on this level for most, but more like the things they don't like about their daily life. Maybe just the fact that their local ballpark was renamed MegaCorp field.
Katz also overrates the importance of the internet. It really is just a tool. MegaCorp can supress the majority of the population the way it does in every other media form: if the majority of the population doesn't know where to find "the truth", nothing will change. Sure the internet is basically impossible to censor, which gives me hope, but look at all the copyright control ideas being thrown around. It brings us closer to centralized control, which is what the government and your local MegaCorp would love.
There is a huge amount of information on the net about the increasing corporatization of America. From the WTO protests (and presidential primary demonstrations), to activism around Biotechnology, copyright extensions, trademark and trade secrets litigation, patents on software, and on DNA.
I think that this will be the predominant political issue in the coming decade or two (and I think John McCain's showing in the republican presidential primary was in large part an effect of his stance on campaign finance reform, which is closely tied to all of these issues.)
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
And what do you have against hypocrisy, pray tell? :)
Seriously though, just because you see them as incompatible doesn't mean that they are. Of course to be compatible you have to be able to make a value judgement, which I know is terribly out of vogue these days. These days we send out doctors to heal the wounded in war torn regions and end up giving aid and comfort to the militia, thereby allowing them to prolong their reign of terror... because we don't want to seem hypocritical.
Bullshit.
LibBT: BitTorrent for C - small - fast - clean (Now Versio
wow, that was MUCH better than katz's lame post. maybe this kid should be slashdot's USA topic editor... =)
Yes, there is a McDonald's in Yugoslavia, so this is no longer true.
But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market...
Sure, but all sorts of folks are trying to bring morality to the Internet, and usually Katz writes stuff ripping on them.
"This is a nice sound bite but that's all it is. Censorship of ideas is bad. Regulating the markets for material things is unrelated. The only connection is that the free market for large Telecomms has resulted in a limited number of pro-corporate ideas being presented. More regulation of large corporations could result in a freer market of ideas, completely consistent goals."
Censorship *is* a form of regulating a free market.
Are you folks so hopelessly naive that you think you can give all of this power to the state to do things like go after fast food and Wal Mart without it inevitably devolving to censorship?'
This is the problem with Katz. He sits there and thinks "I want the world to be this way, and the government should have the power to make it so." Of course it is the hallmark of all censors and control freaks that they only want to go after the "really bad" stuff. It's only [pornography, McDonald's, insert subject to be demonized here] that nice people like Katz and Focus on the Family want to contol (only our evil enemies would want to control and limit people's access to that other good stuff we like).
"mandating filters" is NOT democracy. It IS an abuse of individual rights
Mandating filter is most certanily democratic. Large numbers of democratically elected politicians voted for it. In fact a majority of politicians regularly vote for the most noxious and anti-freedom issues.
Your error is assuming that democracy=individual rights. Democracy is merely a method of choosing political leaders and has very little to do with the defense of individual rights.
All Katz wants to do is give even more power to those who want mandatory filters. In fact Katz is one of those people, he just wants them to censor and control *other* things than the Internet. Classic hypocrisy among censors. Your copy of Hustler is pornography, but my Bible is not. The government should keep its hands off of ISPs, but it should go after McDonald's.
Complete hypocrisy.
This doesn't demonstrate *my* democratic views, and I'm sure if you held it up to a national vote where both sides clearly educated the populace, these measures would go down. "Democratic" means the people speak.
We don't have national referendums in the United States, so this is a pointless aside. And what is "clearly educated"? I assume you mean little more than "until they agreed with me."
Actually, large majorities of Americans favor any number of restrictions on speech. Just look at the huge support for an amendment banning flag burning. I suspect a law mandating filters would easily survive a national referendum if one were held.
The really annoying thing about Katz is his rank hypocrisy.
On the one hand, Katz constanly whines about corporations and advocates this very communitarian-oriented "we have to subject technology to democratic control" nonsense.
But on the other hand, the second anyone actually exerts such democratic control -- say by mandating filters for public library and school access -- he's suddenly *shocked* at this blatant abuse of individual rights.
You can't have it both ways, Jon. You can't rail against an out of control market and then turn around and complain when somebody follows through on your suggestions and attempts to get the market under control.
China is poised to become the 21st century super power and they are communist, not capitalist. Communism is a third world philosophy, not a western one.
This made absolutely no sense. Nazi Germany was a non-capitalist world power as was Imperial Japan. Third World nations that have adopted Communism grossly underperform those that are capitalist (where would you want to live -- South Korea or North Korea?)
McDonalds tried to squash some Green Peace protesters in London about 10 years ago by harasing them for libel in the British courts. The only problem for McD's was despite their battery of highly paid lawyers, the protestors proved McDonalds "promote an unhealthy diet, ruin the environment, hostile to trade unions and exploited children and workers." http://archive.nandotimes.com/newsroom/ntn/world/0 61597/world1_27636.html
This is a better link, than above http://www.mcspotlight.org/case/trial/story.html It covers the whole saga. Including the unhand way McD's PI worked (sleeping with the enemy, agent provocotors, breaking and entering)
--Brett Glass
I have to take issue with this remark. While I agree that our political system has been polluted by greedy politicians (no doubt taking money from corporations), we, the citizenry, are still ultimately in control.
"How's that?" you might ask. Well, we do still have free elections, the most recent one in November 2000. I'm sure you all remember it well. :) Ultimately the voters of each state elect their representatives. Sure, the scales are tilted toward the incumbent and away from the challenger, but still, ultimately, the citizens vote their representatives into office.
Corporations can't do that. No matter what other "rights" have been recognized for companies, they still can't vote.
Yet.
If you ("you" in general, that is..."you Slashdotters") want to complain about corporations ruling your life -- "I hate having no choice in my cable provider" or "I hate Microsoft" or whatever -- start by going to your local polling place and casting your vote. You have no right to complain unless you vote...which, unless you are a convicted felon, you do have once you reach the age of 18. (Provided, of course, you are a U.S. citizen.)
Vote the establishment out of office. But be careful who you vote into office. You can vote government-control-maximizing (and thereby corporation-control-maximizing) people into office (e.g. many Socialists, Democrats, and Greens; and Republicans who have sold out). Or you can vote minimalists/federalists into office (e.g. members of the Republican Liberty Caucus or the Libertarian Party). I think it's obvious that the Founding Fathers preferred a less intrusive government.
It's your choice, America.
PS - if you think that government can solve your "corporate control" problems, you need look no further than California's power crunch to see the fallacy in that. Government intervention created the problem in California, and the only solution is a relaxing of government control. To economists, this is quite obvious.
Of course if FDR had never interfered and "guaranteed" that every home no matter how remote would have power, where would we be?
Could the market have possibly provided small independent power generation solutions for all the remote demand that existed?
could we have had viable wind or solar solutions powering homes 20-30 years ago?
But of course, with the government subsidizing the massive infrastructure costs and providing those 60 years of "working" system without making the end user pay the real costs, why on earth would we need independent power production? (until now)
We let the government take over things that should have been provided locally, and now we get upset when corporations do the same thing?
The truth is, though, a "Fast Food Society" is the path of least resistance, and is inevitably the path that every society will eventually take. We talk about innovation, invention, and utility, but then when we receive it we long for the Good Old Days when we hand to start our computers with hand-cranks.
Rubbish.
Got Rhinos?
The rise of fast food and all the things that go with it (and it works for your metaphor as well) is not the root of the problem. The problem is that Americans and most of western culture want instant gratification. The rise of fast food and the way that corporations handle media, over the Internet or radio or TV is a direct result of it. Americans don't care where their media or food comes from as long as they can have it yesterday they are satisfied. Until our culture rediscovers the value of time and doesn't try to live so quickly we will have people and corporations and fast food resturants there to give it to them.
On a side note I would like to say that America and its culture is not a badly off as the far left (jon katz) and the far right would have us all believe. I dare anyone who thinks it is to move to Africa and live with the people there (not the tourist traps, the people) and then complain about how bad America is.
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
The Anti-Blog
I think the closest thing I got was learning how to address a letter .. and I forget that sometimes!
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I think your right now that I think about it :) thanks
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
However, I own every piece of gear in that studio outright. Yeah, occassionally (sp?) I've made some purchases on credit -- when a rare synth was for sale most recently ... BUT i'm carying no CC debt, no car payments (because I drive a crappy 90 honda I bought outright:) and my monthly expenses are only housing / gasoline / food / cell phone (needed for work).
What I mean to say by all this is that, living beyond ones means is a recipe for poverty.
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
I live in a well to do part of a small town in california -- I drive past the "title 9" (goverment subsidised) housing all the time, and I see *BETTER CARS* parked outside the title 9 then I do in my own neighborhood (sp?) where the lowest household income is well over 100g/y.
I think we need to institute financial education in all 3 elementary, grade school and highschool -- and I also think theres forces out there that *DON'T WANT* consumers to understand financing (Banks, Credit Card Companies, auto-dealerships ... you can walk into best buy any day of the week and get 5000$ credit on a best buy card)
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
Hmph.
Thing is about the mom-n-pop butchers is that if it goes out of business because everyone in the community wants cheap and shitty over not-quite-as-cheap but damn good, then that's what the community wants. If they wanted good food at the premium it was costing them, they'd have bought it.
Obviously they don't want it at the price its selling, and prefer homogenised crap at the price that _that_'s selling.
It's not some huge conspiracy that you're all being told "this is better, you will like it." and people do. If they didn't like what they were getting for their money, they'd go back to the mom-n-pop store, and McD's et. al. wouldn't get a fat lot of business.
It's what people _want_. I may not like what they choose, but I sure as hell aren't going to ask the government to mess with any part of the chain that allows them to get exactly what they want.
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
The net and the rise of intelligent individualism marks the end of your kind.
:-)
_What_ rise of intelligent individualism?
I don't have any evidence on this either way, but it seems to me like every day that goes by, the lower the 'western' IQ seems to get, and the more content most sheeple are to be fed AOL and McDs.
(really like/agree with the post, but you can't just call Katz on not supplying any facts to back up his statements, question his motivations and then tag _that_ on the end of your post without being similarly called
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
I suppose the fact that macdonalds originated in the worlds most belicose country is of no importance. Oh, Im sorry, the US doesnt go to war, it executes 'military interventions'. They are such a peaceful lot.
(Katz)Beyond that, fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United StatesThe appeal of fast food -- that people would know just what to expect no matter where they bought their Whoppers or Taco Bell burritos -- was also one of its most devastating consequences.
(NearlyHeadless)This is a devastating consequence? The fact that you can get McDonald's everywhere? Shudder! The blood's running in the street. What exactly does this have to do with "corporatism," anyway? I can get Chinese food everywhere, despite the notable absence of any national Chinese food chains.
You know, I can see your frustation with Katz on this point, but maybe that's because he didn't expound on his point very well at all. Have you ever been to a McDs in a country other than your own? Other than a few minor differences (e.g. French McDs serve alcohol, US ones don't.), the food tastes exactly the same. I was amazed (shocked?) when I went to one in Honduras and the BigMac I had was nearly identical to one in the US. Some people may see that as a "feature" ("Awesome, I can get the same food in central america as I do in the US!!!"), but I think it can also be easily seen as a "bug". What happens when fast food chains all but replace the local flavor restaurants? Everyone feels warm and secure in their local McDonlads, while experiencing the Universal Taste(tm)...
gak......
--------
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"Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief."
"No one is forced to eat there, do business there, or work there, but they're somehow super oppressive and evil."
Where are the alternatives? Certainly not on the same drag as your McStarbucks and Taco Hut. Of course you can find smaller, non-viral-corporate-homogeneous restaurants, but not at the same level of convenience, which is all the American public seems to care about at this point. You could always brown bag your lunch each day, but where are you getting the food to put in your Brown Bag(TM)? Meijer? Dominicks? Safeway? While the business practices of these grocery stores probably isn't as questionable as McDonalds and Co., don't doubt for a second that the owners of these more regional chains look up to the business practicies of the "Big Boys" of the ubiquitous fast food companies. This alone is cause for concern despite the "unoriginal"-ness of Katz's post.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not arguing for Katz, I'm just arguing against you. Katz obviously just read Fast Food Nation and decided to write a book report about it in a way that he thought the geeks at Slashdot might relate to. Katz isn't breaking new ground here, but neither are you with your simplistic and smug reply.
I can't believe this got modded up to a five.
"Give me convenience, or give me death!" - The Dead Kennedys
So most Americans who read Slashdot can understand Katz's theme that corporations now dominate most US institutions and appear to be on their way to extending this dominance for the forseeable future. Many, if not most, American Slashdotters also agree with this theme.
Unfortunately, in the grand scheme of things, Slashdot's readership is not a very big portion of the American public. A few hundred thousand readers (I don't know the actual figures, this is a seat-of-my-pants guess) out of 281 million Americans is, by itself, not enough to change the way the US works. Continuing to bitch and moan amongst ourselves isn't going to dent the "Corporate Republic." What we need to do is find some way of educating the public at-large about our concerns. Until we can get "soccer moms," AOL users, and other larger segments of the American public to understand our concerns, the Corporate Republic will continue to grow since thats the way most Americans want things to be. They don't mind driving 20 miles to a 250,000 sq. ft. Wal-Mart since Wal-Mart offers prices that no one on Main Street can dream of offering. If people didn't like companies like Wal-Mart, then there would be no way that Wal-Mart could have taken in $200 billion last year. If the mainstream public were convinced of the dangers of having a few huge corporations running around unchecked by the federal goverment, then maybe people would think twice about supporting them.
All the time new articles appear about privacy breaches, new "features" Microsoft is including in Windows XP to extract every possible penny from the American public, and other such horror stories. Most of them are pointless because they are directed at an audience already aware of the situation. I think there needs to be some discussion about how can we make other people aware of these problems. When I talk to many people about Microsoft's antitrust problems, the uneducated ones often say "What's wrong with that? I've never had any problem with Windows." I really don't know how to convince my family and non-geek friends that issues like the "Corporate Republic" need to be taken seriously by the entire population. Once they are understood by the public at-large, Congress will take notice. Finally the issue of privacy seems to be taken seriously on Capitol Hill, as many Americans have started to understand the issues involved in restricting the spread of information about themselves. Whether useful legislation will result is unclear, but at least it's a start in regards to understanding privacy. If the majority of people stood up to Congress and said "We want competition in the telecom sector" and "Here's where you can stick UCITA", Congress will at least strongly consider these issues if not passing legislation to address them.
Until we can get the public to say these things to Congress and to stop giving money to the corporations that we geeks don't like, then we're out of luck. There aren't going to be any easy solutions to this problem, but I think it's time we started discussing it.
Mr. Katz has described the issues, but completely missed their significance.
The world is now in a transition from the nation state to the ??? state. Will it be the corporate state, with free trade pacts replacing phenomea like the cold war blocs? Will it be the super regional umbrella over many new micro countries (like Europe is becoming)? Will it be completely decentralized with the Internet providing the means for smaller and smaller political units?
The outcome of the present transition is far from clear. It will take another hundred years at least before the matter is settled. The last transformation as fundamental as this occured at the end of the Middle Ages with the transition from the fuedal state to the nation state.
Personally, I really think the corporate state would be a bad result. But there would be pluses and minuses to each. The corporate state would offer great rewards to many and lead to fast development in the third world. The regional state might devolve into tribal warfare.
However, like the Bolshovik state, some of the alternatives might have a downside so negative that any pluses are entirely irrelevant. It depends on how the contest plays out and how many bodies pile up on the way.
What is really interesting is that we are alive to see such an important change. This is the first change of fundamental political structure to occur on a global basis, and it the first where individuals have the means to influence the outcome.
For better or worse, we live in interesting times.
After this, and that previous unsubstantiated story about the Matrox cards I'm wondering if the next version of Slashcode should include the ability to moderate topics as well as posts.
N.B. I'm not a Katz-hater, but this is far from his best work. Go ahead, mod me down if you must.
Examples:
This is a devastating consequence? The fact that you can get McDonald's everywhere? Shudder! The blood's running in the street. What exactly does this have to do with "corporatism," anyway? I can get Chinese food everywhere, despite the notable absence of any national Chinese food chains.Seriously, Katz, are you saying we need laws to preserve regional cuisine? Is that what you want?
Ummm...no. Katz seems to have skipped all those history classes. McDonald's was the first to try to do this in the service industry, but manufacturing and agriculture had been doing this for more than a century before McDonald's. So people who work for McDonald's do so for life? Sorry, not in my experience. Again, Katz, what exactly is the problem you're trying to identify, and what solution do you propose? Do you want to ban the timers on the fry machines so workers will need more skill? Gee, meat packing is dangerous. Let's see, we learned that back in 1906, when Upton Sinclair published "The Jungle." Has it become more dangerous lately? No. Are there more germs in meat now? No, it's safer than ever. Which is the safest place to eat: (1) a random home kitchen, (2) a small mom-and-pop restaurant, or (3) a restaraunt run by a large corporation? Which has the lowest incidence of food poisoning, Katz? Do you dare tell the truth?You don't -- you let evolution take care of that. Stupid and selfish people on the whole are less likely to survive, though they may have other dominant traits that help them. For example, if you are smart and selfish, you may still get by quite well. We may not like selfishness, but it is one of those things that helps individuals survive. Selfishness doesn't help the species as a whole survive, and most of us tend to dislike selfish people, while realizing that selfishness is universal, only that some people exhibit it more so than others (or it could be argued that smart people who are selfish don't appear selfish - that's why they are smart)
What's the solution? Awareness and activism, I'd say. If you are more aware of things like those mentioned in the book (an excellent book, by the way, and there's a short article that was based on the book at the Atlantic Monthly which can give you a good idea about the book).
Which is to say, at the very least, we are doing the right thing by having discussions here, and Jon Katz, for all the overreaching arguments he make, is actually providing public service by bringing up topics such as these for debate.
Some of the people do have some point, and as it is with everything, it's always a double-edged sword. What is often the best thing about something is also probably the worst. Expecting the homogeneity that McDonald's offers worldwide to bring familiarity and feeling of "home" for Americans is great for Americans who want that - and to some degree, I do find comfort in that. However, it is also scary how far and deep McDonald's reach is. Nothing against the McDonald's people - I'm sure they all mean well - but in the quest to increase the bottom-line for shareholder value, McDonald's must do everything it can to maintain it's popularity and stranglehold on the fast food consumerism - and they do it at the same level that Disney does - they start with the kids. It's at the same time comforting and insidious. They do everything they could to make their image kid-friendly. But they have also raised generation after generation of loyal McDonald's and Disney adherents, who expect to see their corporate iconic parent's influence everywhere. The corporations become the "security blanket" of generation after generation of kids. If not for the wake-up calls of people who challenge the popular view, we'd be, as one of the +5 posters say, in the age of the puppet kings.
This is not to say that McDonald's people or Disney's people are evil - the corporate entity is the one in question - and the corporate entity's consciouness is driven by an economic ego (or was that superego? Damn! I could never remember) to fulfill its economic desires that is expressed by the shareholder collective.
I think that the book merely brings up a good manifestation of corporatism and the reactions of many of the Slashdot reader shows that to a large degree, they have succeeded in their mass brain-washing of generations of kids.
That said, I still like going to McDonalds, even if I know that their foods are completely flavored by chemical factories in New Jersey and their french fries contain beef tallow extracts - sometimes, you just can't help it - their fries ARE good.
Just to answer your question, Yes. That big screen TV does make me happy.
I enjoy it. I enjoy watching DVD's on it while snuggled up with my wife. I enjoy watching my local dysfunctional sports franchise on it.
Maybe, if my life sucked it wouldn't make me happy, but it does add some happiness, or maybe pleasure is the correct term.
What's wrong with this picture?
Thanks for the interesting link--I especially like the part near the end, with the writer indignant that the Czechs themselves have the unmitigated gall to not rise up in arms against what he doesn't like, so that he can have his "right" to live without seeing Golden Arches.
Farming went coorporate in the states like 60 years ago or something and got totally out competed by small family farmers. I really don't see coorporations trying in that industry again.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
The first and probably the key factor is that when you look at the same food 6hours a day 7days a week you do not want to eat it. It makes you shudder in horror because you really hate the work, not the food. You associate all the stress and bad stuff at the job with the food and bam you don't want to eat it. (No fast food is not particularily stressful, no more so than any other job I'd say, but people that work there tend to be the ones that couldn't, and didn't want, to work anywhere else and so have a low opinion of work in the first place).
The number two reason is the people that work in fast food places couldn't care less about the people that eat the food and so they take very little care in preparation. "Oops I dropped that burger on the floor, oh well if I wipe it off noone will notice." As far as things go, in the US you can be nearly certain that food from a coorporate source is as safe as you can get because they are the groups that are most likely going to get hammered if they don't live up to regulations.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
#1 increase the human capitol of the society. This just means making people smarter and healthier a task that was accomplished by better healthcare, health insurance, public education, and popularization of post-secondary education.
#2 increase material capital. This means building more machines and making sure those machines are working at maximum capacity. This is one area that coorporations shine. If you had a Buger King Style burger cooker in your house it would be a huge waste because you only need 4 or maybe 6 burgers (if you are a family). In burger king however it allows them to make hundreds of burgers an hour with next to no effort. This allows the world to have more hamburgers for the same price thus giving more wealth.
The final way that wealth grows is through creation of better technology. Coorporations also contribute in this area. There is always a push by coorporations to find a new way of doing things so they can cut costs.
In the end its evident that without coorporations we would not be the most wealthy society in history. Right now you and I have more real wealth than any of our ancestors. This isn't just in number of dollars but instead in real buying power. We are able to have more than twice as much real stuff than people 100 years ago. You may hate coorporations but without them its likely that you would be too busy working in the fields to write articles about how bad it would be if there was a coorporation.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Feel free to accuse me of having my facts wrong but know that I had substance to back what I wrote.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
McDonalds (and to a lesser extent Microsoft) preys on peoples dislike of certain tasks. This is a dislike that was already there before the existance of McDonalds as an alternative. Just ask most people in a fast food place why they are eating there and a fairly regular answer is that they could not be bothered to cook. (I think thats a more common answer at a pizza place but still) I don't blame the coorporation for using this weakness in people to make money, but the solution has to come from the people not the coorporation, if we want our country to be free anyways.
That said both McDonalds and Microsoft make a product that works as advertised and actually is capable of fulfilling most of peoples expectations. The product just does the job and so people will buy it because they don't want to deal with it on thier own. I don't think McDonalds breeds stupid and uncaring people, I think that stupid and uncaring people bread McDonalds and they are free to do that.
"You can now flame me, I am full of love,"
Putting aside deep suspicions that this is a troll, I've decided to deflate the argument somewhat.
> capitalism is a white European invention
Questionable as to whether it was an 'invention' - if so, who invented it and where precisely? Furthermore, what about the very advanced trading systems which had developed seperately in a great deal of varieties of themselves? Check out the economics of old Imperial China, & the Silk Road for example.
> and it is poised to disappear as non-European nations become dominant
The rise in the power, economic and otherwise of non-European nations is very much linked to their adoption of capitalism. Hence the rise of Japan after WW2 (abandoned militarist expansion - shrank military & built up the national industries etc - country boomed).
> China is poised to become the 21st century super power
This has the potential to happen, certainly, but it's hardly guarenteed as yet. And more importantly:
> and they are communist, not capitalist. Communism is a third world philosophy, not a western one.
The rise of China's strength has been directly linked to their adoption of capitalist systems. Which industries perform better in China, private or state? Private.
> Also the European nations themselves become less European as immigration continues and 75% of the population will originate from outside of Europe in 2075.
The changing ethnicity of Europe should not necessarily change its fundamentally capitalist nature - the urge to earn money & so status & comfort is not confined to white folks. Also, I'm interested in how you can claim to know what 'will' happen in 2075, but surely that's a little far to be making projections with any accuracy. Personally, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the 75% figure is reached long before then, but only time will tell.
> So this capitalist/globalist thing is just the dying roar of an old white ugly beast.
In that case, it's a pretty large roar, & a growing one. I'd be interested to know how you think it could be stopped. People have been predicting the end of capitalism for a v. long time now, & it hasn't happened yet - much like the end of the world.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
> They know exactly what is on a hamburger
Certainly they do, excepting perhaps the contents of the 'special sauce'. But do they know what goes _into_ the burger?
Curiously enough, everyone I've met who ever worked in a fast food joint has resolved never, ever to eat in one. (Whoops, slight surfeit of 'ever's.) I've heard that the same is true for people who make prepacked sandwiches.
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
This is, of course, dependent upon personal morality - do you believe in freedom of speech first, or the suppression of x, y, & z because they disagree with you? To loosely quote Voltaire - "I disagree with what you are saying but would defend to the death your right to say it".
"What is freedom of expression? Without the freedom to offend, it ceases to exist." Salman Rushdie
in short - yes
though only as Serbia & Macedionia (sp?) most of the rest of the Yugoslav federation split off years ago.
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Physicists are said to stand on one another's shoulders while programmers stand on one another's toes.
Typo, but anyway...
:-)
So it they're that important, how about they merge? I can just see "McDonalds-Douglas" in operation now - Big Mac meal with a side-order of F15 Fries.
Grab.
A political system in which economic and social policy is made through agreements between business associations, trade unions, and government.
That sounds a lot like how Katz is using it...
-Erf C.
-Erf C.
Cthulu always calls collect...
Katz sezs: These changes have made meatpacking -- once a highly skilled, well-paid trade -- into the most dangerous job in the U.S. ...
Ever heard of a little book called The Jungle?
You know, I don't want to jump on any anti-Katz bandwagon, but this illustrates his worst propensities: grandiose generalizations with no backup. Look, if your column is only available on the web, dammit, how about using some of that new-fangled hypertext to provide us with a link or two? There are two differences between journalism and unsupported opinion: the first relies on facts, and the second is worthless.
question: is control controlled by its need to control?
answer: yes
This isn't as much "normalization" as it is "don't take so many drugs when you're designing tables."
I sometimes wonder if some type of regulation could "force" corporations to consider the customer before the shareholders.
That's the worst of corporate America -- putting the needs of the shareholders ahead of the customer. This naturally leads to poor quality for the end user.
Contrast this with the mom-n-pop outfits...in a community, if a company treats a customer poorly, that customer tells friends and business falters. The shop owner must serve the customers and keep them happy.
Corporations are remote entities...difficult to sue. The internet is a huge problem for them, a musician can look on the web for something like "Rambozo Inc. Sucks" and find all the people who got screwed by Rambozo. Now they can gang together and possibly do some damage?
That's the ideal side. Reality will probably end up being something much more hideous...I do believe the world is entering a severe dystopian cycle, courtesy of the US corporations.
The vegans are probably the only glimmer of hope? They reject McDonalds and riot at globalization meetings. Tear it up people, somehow we've got to get some sanity back into the world.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
OK. You see it in your friends that make less money. But can you see it in yourself, too? It's clear your want-disguised-as-a-need isn't cars, but maybe it's Playstations, computers, home theater, etc. I doubt that the original poster was limiting his observations to the economic underclass.
If Chaos Theory has taught us anything, it's that we must kill all the butterflies.
The commentary says the fast food industry widens the distance between poor and rich. It says that the jobs created prevent people from advancing. Come on. The people who work at McDonalds are lucky to have a job. They either speak little English, or just got parole release. They are being rehabilitated into society and working hard for a living. This would be no different if we did not have fast food. There will ALWAYS be low wage jobs - construction, most manufacturing, agriculture, mining etc. In other words, as long as people are living and consuming there will be jobs that teach little portable skill with little hope for rapid advancement.
One thing I've never understood about the anti-corporate movement is their belief that greater oversight by government is the solution to the power of corporations. Yet in the next breath they state that corporations control the political process through the power of their campaign contributions. If corporations control government, isn't increasing the power of government the last thing you want to do?
For example, Microsoft is often cited as an example of the unhealthy power of corporations when the case for greater government involvement is made. However, no one is forced to use Microsoft's products (thank god). My computers at home are all linux machines with Star Office and my computers at work are all Macs. On the other hand, due to government regulation I am forced to buy power from the polluting coal burning plants of my assigned power company. If I had a choice I would buy power from cleaner sources. However, the power companies have used their influence (campaign contributions) to prevent me from having this choice.
The answer is for government to remain neutral. To provide a level playing field for commercial enterprises but to resist direct interference. Large corporations have many advantages, but one big disadvantage is their inertia. If smaller companies are allowed to compete directly with corporations without the chilling effect of government regulations, they will provide an effective check on corporate power.
Physics, Cosmology and
Amazon, BN or FatBrain
I may even be doing a book review on it.
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Ascii artist &
Does anyone have examples of industries that have not tended towards large companies. The only ones (in the UK) that I can think of are Farming and Fishing, and they are being pressured by the economic powers of the large retailers
Special Relativity: The person in the other queue thinks yours is moving faster.
Technology, as futurists like George Orwell and Arthur Clarke have been predicting for decades, will be the battleground on which the fight against corporatism is played out.
1. Orwell was not a 'futurist.' He wrote exactly one science-fictiony novel, which seems to be the only thing of his anyone has ever read.
2. I dare anyone to show how technology is a theme in Orwell's works, particularly with regards to "corporatism."
3. Orwell hasn't been doing anything for decades. He died of tuberculosis in 1950, at the age of forty-six.
Sigh. I suppose I shouldn't expect anything from someone who can't even look up when Frankenstein was written.
And by the way, if you've read and enjoyed 1984 and Animal Farm, I recommend "Down and Out in Paris and London," which chronicles Orwell's life as a pauper in said cities in the '20s. If you just have time for a quickie, read his short stories, "A Hanging," or "Shooting an Elephant." (available on line, consult your local search engine.) For all the allusions to "Orwell's prophetic visions of socialist dystopias," we would do well to remember two things, that Orwell was an avowed socialist who wrote about the evils of dogmatic thinking and totalitarian governments, and that he was a master of the English language, someone from whom Katz could learn a lot.
--
share and enjoy
crazy, an article you wrote that I actually didn't hate. although you're still way too heavy on the thesaurus (iconoclast? i have to use a dictionary to read your articles sometimes, chill with the large vocabulary, it's annoying)
anyhow, i hope now you see why so many view America as all that is evil and wrong. true, the USofA was founded primarily on the belief that every man should be free, but we have long since moved far away from the original priniciples. humans flock toward consistency and uniformity and routine for some reason. order vs chaos, right? there's quite a difference between order and turning the world's population into mindless zombies.
corporations suck. the corporate world sucks. and the US government is much worse than these corporations because the US is a world power. you have your policies and your orders and your laws. everything has to be clean cut, by the book, like the rules say. that's a load of crap. uniformity will be the human race's downfall. you will be assimilated. resistance is futile.
i'm really not quite sure if technology is to blame for the massive corporatization of just about everything. technology is capable of replacing manual labor and this is where we start having problems. human lives are now competing with machines and machines really don't care how you treat them. it seems corporations believe humans don't care either. it's really rather sad when you look back and see how greed is destroying the human race. greed is a horrible, horrible thing, especially when money is involved. money is a horrible thing as well.
anyhow, i've gone on and on about the dangers of conformity. i have so much i'd love to talk and write about, but i don't want to be downright boring. i do hope that my country will not fall to its own mistakes, but instead learn from them and become the great nation it once was. i still stand for the principles this nation was originally founded on.
i sincerely doubt that the population will take the corporate cockshafting from american corporatism or the US government much longer. you say you want a revolution?
"I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer."
Beyond that, fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United States. The appeal of fast food -- that people would know just what to expect no matter where they bought their Whoppers or Taco Bell burritos -- was also one of its most devastating consequences.
So what's the problem with that? It's obvious more people want it this way than the old way, so get off your academic high horse.
Joe average consumer doesn't give a damn about your local cultural differences when he's passing through. He wants to eat, and he'd prefer to have something he knows he likes and doesn't accidentally eat something made out of worms or dog.
NO CARRIER
When the Columbine Fiasco happened, he put into words what a lot of us geeks who had it rough were feeling at the time, I think everyone would agree on that.
But it's crap like this that just pisses me off. You're preaching to the converted, Jon. Instead of telling us what we already know in the most long winded fashion possible, get your stuff put in a magazine that EVERYONE reads, like, 'Time', 'NewsWeek', etc. Because at this point, you are annoying the s**t outta everyone on here, by not having a point about the same stuff you've been ranting about for 2 years. Reading your writing at this point is like watching a boring Nascar race. Where everyone is watching, but only to see the big 58-car pileup that we know should be coming. But it never does.
Don't get me wrong, Katz is a good writer, and has the ability to string things together very well, which I'll attest can be difficult sometimes. But I think it's time to take some constructive criticism from the readers you are trying to impress.
Flame away, boys!
"See, we plan ahead! That way, we never have to do anything now."
--The whole world loves McDonald's
--Home Depot, Costco (nee Price Club,) Super K Mart are all putting Mom & Pop stores out of business
--MicroSoft sells a gagillion copies of anything they put out and a good many of us buy it.
There is a term in Radio (& TV) called LOF: Least Objectionable Fare. What it means is that people will listen to a station even if they don't like the music all that much b/c it is playing LOF.
McD's, BK, Wendy's et al are LOF for food.
Costco, Home Depot are the same. You go there b/c they are there and they have decent stuff at a percieved good price. You could probably go to the Maple Street Grocer and get string beans at a better price per pound but Costco also has that 5 gallon drum of Mayo you need for the 4h of July. You buy your string beans at Costco and probably everything else you can while your there. Further next time your out you go there anyway, even though you need milk and eggs.
An industry has been created in the computer field thanks in LARGE part to MS's fairly bad software. The average office worker cannot/will not deal with a crashed server. "Hire someone to deal with that damn server Doris!" And an industry of MCSEs are churned out and working making decent money. God Bless 'em! A lot of those people are responsible and go on to become guru's in their field.
But even when they figure out that *nix, Sndmail, Apache, whatever is better they are not going to convert. MS is LOF.
McD's doesn't make the best hamburger and the best hamburger maker doesn't work there. Who is going to pay a guy 80K a year to flip burgers? Maybe the Best Hamburger Place does. Since these jobs are transient why would there be any advancement?
MS based techs aren't working on the best OS ever and a lot of them aren't the best techs either. Why should they have "advncement" opprotunities? What would they advance to anyway (Level 3 tech?)
Needless to say this whole article is flawed.
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This
fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United States
In NY from Manhattan to Montauk there is no mustard on hamburgers served by the fast food chains.
Why?
We don't like it (well actually I like it, but I lived in Arizon for a while,) so for this region they don't serve it. This is a substantia change for a major chain to undertake.
I'm sure there are other travellers of the US who know of differences; what are they?
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This
1) I'm an American expatriate living in Israel, and here we also have many American fast food chains here - Sbarro's, McDonalds, KFC, Wendy's, Burger King, Nathan's Franks, etc. I actually never ate in these places in the states because there they are not kosher, but that is another story. Anyway, they have a completely different character than in America - they are an exotic foreign food, something people pay a lot of money for relative to local fast-food like falafel or whatever. Tourist pay for the "like home" quality of the food, locals pay for the "foreign" quality.
2) Fast Food and MS definitely have a common success factor. Most people would rather get something which does *most* of what they want *more or less* the way they like it, as long as someone else will do everything for them and endorse the food/software as "valid". A few people (hackers/home cooks) realize that it is more worthwhile to take the time and learn how to hack/cook because that way you can get EVERYTHING you want EXACTLY the way you like it. They also have enough confidence in their own skills and judgement to assess whether what they are making is as good as the "store-bought" product.
3) The distinction between home cooked food and fast food is always changing. Again, I live in Israel, where standards are a little different. You don't carve the NY strip steak, do you? If you bought a side of beef and cut it up yourself, you could save even more $$$, and cut the steak as thick as you want. I happen to buy large hunks of beef and cut them up into steaks for these very reasons. So "fast food" is relative, although I can't see how we could make it much faster except burger vending machines.
'Most men would sooner die than think, and most men do.'
Personally, I've always found Katz's articles interesting. I don't often find myself agreeing, but that's hardly his point. His articles are written to provoke discussion. (Other than the rampant Katz-bashing that always ensues... ;-)
More to the point though, I find his vocabulary a refreshing change from the simplified-for-public-consumption verbosity that has become the online norm. (Yes, I include myself and the well-read and educated /. readers in this.)
Unless one is a toady, an Eliza-esque reactionary, or a trend-lemming; I would think that stretching one's mind and vocabulary would be a welcome exercise. /. to think and be informed, don't we?
After all, we read
Mary Shelley could not have written Frankenstein in 1803, I doubt she wrote anything back then - since she was only six years old in 1803. She was born in 1797 and wrote Frankenstein around 1816. It was published in 1818. You can read more about her life at http://www.kimwoodbridge.com/maryshel/life.shtml. The full text of the book can be found here.
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You said it.
I'm not into this anti-corporate nonsense like a lot of the crowd here, but maybe we're all very lucky that not all of the corporations are lobbying for the same stuff. I mean, there are still opposing interests among the corporate world, right? Be thankful those corporate nasties aren't all fighting for the same thing!
-bluebomber
The Daily Build
The McDonald's in Saudi Arabia is taking $1 from each sale to support the Palestinian terrorists. I wouldn't exactly call that "peaceful"... consider how you would feel about it if a McDonald's in Nebraska were setting aside a portion of its income to fund a Timothy McVeigh Support Fund, or if the McDonald's in France were funding the IRA.
Seems pretty reasonable, but think about it this way. How long after a McDonald's went into the USSR did the communist regime crumble? To me, Corporate America is like the fifth-column of WWII ... infiltrating countries to their core, making the people believe they should _want_ to be like Americans. Why would the US want to invade countries when they can have McDonald's take care of it for them?! :-)
How are Corporations any different than religion of the past? Think about it ... corps decided what you see, who you like ... they decide what is cool, objectionable, etc. The only difference is that they are more palattable to a larger audience. 29 million AOL users can't be wrong .... (*sarcasm*)
I am thinking of that old cartoon, maybe it was a Popeye cartoon, in which there was a steer's skull next to a waterhole in the desert (presumably in a desert in the USA) and Popeye wondered aloud whether it the water was potable... he decided aloud that it was and the steer's skull then spoke the words, "yoooooouuuuu'll beeeeee soooooorrrry!" As so shall we all, when what Orwell predicted (and Katz reflects on) becomes a concrete and all-encompassing reality. Hope your kids have a nice life! Doubt they will, unless you are very wealthy and manage to hold onto that wealth and pass it on to them, the odds are stacked against your progeny. Let us not forget that 90% of the wealth of the USA is in the hands of 2% of the population of the USA, which leaves the other 98% of the population scrabbling for an ever-diminishing piece of the pie, and that is incontrovertible hard and cold fact.
I don't know about your neck of the woods, but in Los Angeles, there seems to be more chain family diners now the ever before. Lets see, Coco's, Denney's, Carrows, Bakers Square, Norm's, etc. And in the nicer areas, there are plenty of small, mom and pop style diners. Granted, the rise of Fast Food is disturbing, but I see no shortage of family diner either.
--Don't mind me, I just spent the last 2 hours in alt.beer
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
McDonalds works for Katz position, but IMO the reach of American media is equally or more disturbing than that of our fast food culture.
When I travel abroad, I expect to experience unfamiliar, foreign things. Unfortunately, Britney Spears songs play throughout the world. And I watched Law and Order in three continents.
Food is simply a small part of the disturbing, world-wide drift to an American center.
The NY Times had an excellent article on the subject a few months ago as part of thier 'Race In America' series but i couldn't find it.
Here are some other articles on the subject:
- Packinghouse workers returned to the jungle
- The Heartland's Raw Deal
PS: i am vegan.fear is the mind killer
"...there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market..."
What is the whole point of capitalism, and why did communism not work?
The point of capitalism is to use greed for public good. In the rare case that standard business doesn't satisfy the majority of people, the government modifies market conditions so a corporation willing to do anything to make money will have to do good deeds to break profit. There's no point in calling big corps greedy and immoral--we all know it. But it's a good thing. That's the point. By trying to make money, they make everyone happy.
Why did communism not work? Communism expected everyone to work for the good of the country, and with no more incentive than that. Workers work for the good cause, managers for the good cause, gov. owned business for the good cause.... It broke down because greed is the only effective driving force for business; and they eliminated it.
"Right in the middle of the Reagan/Tatcher era, the propaganda/public relations machine pumping more and more bullshit through the TV tubes..."
I'm sorry to say, but you could call *any* presidency a propaganda machine. The Clinton presidency, possibly the worst.
"...you no not what you speak. I'm growing weary of reading bold assertions that are groundless and incorrect. If you aren't 100% sure of what you're talking about, just be quiet and listen. You might learn something."
That's great, really. Please repeat it in the direction of Katz.
Hmm, Microsoft is successful, therefore it's bad.
McDonald's is Successful, therefore it's bad.
Is Success, no, Uber Success a bad thing?
I don't know about you, but my years working a bad job for a pittance to a corporate giant (rhymes with Cheeza Butt) taught me to save money, show up for work on time, have a little professional responsibility, and learn that not all work is fun or easy.
There needs to be plenty of different kinds of workers in a society...Having too many Chiefs and Not enough Indians is not economically possible. In small words: There are a few Bill Gates and a BUNCH of fry cooks. I've seen enough people to know that the successful will be successful, and the others won't. When they look back on 30 years of 'do you want fries with that', they won't find one or two decisions that followed that path. Rather, they'll find a whole series of 'em....or they'll shift the blame. After all, it's The Man that's keeping the people down!
But for all the Terrible Things(tm) that are occurring, new companies are still popping up that become VERY popular and VERY successful. Ford didn't signal the end of the automotive industry, McDonalds didn't signal the end of the food industry, and M$ won't signal the end of the software industry.
Having a homogeneous food society just makes it easier to make a good, different product. The best Mexican food I've ever had is run out of a 20 seat bar that's packed from open to close. They could branch out and make big dollars, but then they'd lose that small mom and pop guaranteed revenue.
Over the last few years, Technology has leveled it's gun sights on a bunch of different problems: Electronic publishing, data gathering, information retreival, Music propagation, telephony, etc. One thing's for sure: What comes about afterwards isn't pretty, and isn't very profitable, but it's VERY cheap and VERY efficient. Same thing happened with Fast food and food production. Same thing with Cars and assembly lines. (Notice how long the resistance to robot assembly lines lasted?)
This stuff isn't good or bad...it just is.
<hi. I'm a self-referencing .sig!>
I find this remark somewhat disgusting. The only thing the presence of a McDonalds shows, is the degree of Americanisation, not the degree of civilization. Saying that all Americans see these words as synonyms is a crude generalisation, but I do sense a ground of truth in there. Megalomania? America being the Old Rome or Greece of our era? Maybe. I must admit that the latitude of the cultural influence of America on Europe and other more or less homogenous groups provides opportunities too. But please, guys, do not forget your roots. Greetings from the Heart of Europe.
"."
By the way, if you think fast food is bad for you, then don't eat it. Is that a difficult concept?
You live in a corporate republic anyway, get over it.
~~ What's stopping you?
In a few contries I visited, the concensus was these fast food outlets were catering more to tourists than locals.
I don't see how this can be true. I seriously doubt there are that many American tourists in a city to justify building X McDonalds. I think you are in denial here.
For my money, I'll still go to the local joints where I'm actually waited on and can choose real food.
Most people I know would take an actual restaurant over a fast food place any day. I know I would as well. Congrats on your individualism.
Anyway, I don't buy your theory that American products will be purchased in foreign lands even if the locals don't want it.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Also, in my city many teenagers find their first employment at fast-food restaurants, where they learn proper work etiquette and skills. So rather than being stuck in these jobs for live, as they apparently are where you live, employees use these jobs are launching points for higher paying jobs in other industries or frequently to generate seed money for an education.
Also, the very corporations that seem so frightening where you live are actually owned by the citizens of my country. And they can choose to withdraw their funding at any time and place it in a competing business. They can even choose to purchase products made by competing companies.
Good Luck Jon. I just want you to keep your head up and know that a better world is possible. I live on one.
Welp, I can't argue against those facts about communism, but can you deny that the excesses of captialism contributed to the appeal of Marxism in the same way that, oh, I dunno, Occidental Petroleum contributed to the local appeal of Mohammar Khadafy? I don't argue the concept of capitalism or its philosophy, as you state, it is probably a good econmoic model when applied morally.
So here we have a distinction: whither moral capitalism? In light of this page, one has to wonder to just what extreme a good capitalist is willing to contort himself to keep himself deluded as to his moral certainty.
Here's a quote from the article See the USA in Your SUV:
The environmentalists respond that nature is intrinsically valuable, not for anything it does or can do but simply because it is.
...
Clean air and water benefit people. But if the moderate environmentalists really wanted people to benefit, then they would support the SUV.
That's where I get a little lost. One must have a firm foundation in logic and be themselves grounded in reality, I would think, to claim a moral basis for capitalism. I tend to think that the lure of lucre can sometimes make one wish that black is white. I simply refuse to do that, in the same way that I would think that hanging chads expressed voter intent even if I would have voted for GW, the guy who ruled that hand counting is the proper way to resolve a disputed election tally. heh, sorry... didn't mean to bring that all up agin...
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
I am sure you are not implying that McDonald's fosters peace, but it may be true that a certain degree of homogeneity among nations correlates well to both a lessening of tensions and corporate development along the same lines, i.e., toward the pinnacle of fast food, Mickey D's.
There is much to be said about the growth of a middle class who are averse to conflict, and it is not in a corporations' interest to have its motherland go to war, unless that corp is, say, Lockheed - Martin.
The plain fact of the matter is (and this has been touched on in arguments about why and why not the GPL is communist), we are experiencing continued growth of the Capitalist Manifesto, which has tendencies of which we are all only too familiar. It is my opinion, after reading Das Kapital, that it is the excesses of capitalism of the turn of the century during the early Industrial Revolution that is responsible for the proper climate for the rise of Marxism as an economic model. Concomitant to that rising in Eastern Europe, government here put strong controls on a growing national scourge; outlawing child labor, workhouses, Monopolies such as Standard Oil, and allowing for the creation of the AFL - CIO and similar Labor Unions. The result of all this is the ascendancy of the middle class, which is the one thing that Communists did not count on.
But now that the government is becoming secured for the interests of capitalists (who follow an inherently evil code, that of greed) once again, witness the ascendancy of corporations once again, to the detriment of the Human Spirit.
Capitalists are not Nationalist, nor are they Humanist. They have but one creed, and are willing to rationalize whatever behaviour they engage in to improve profits. This rationalization destroys all else. The lesson of Frankenstein was the arrogance of a man who, in the pursuit of his single-minded purpose, forgot about God as he became engrossed in his Godly powers.
But we only learn this lesson through our mistakes, apparently, since we are doomed to repeat history unless some of the greedy (i.e., the lawmakers and protectors of our Liberties) wake up. Capitalists should never be trusted to manage themselves, but that is what is happening today. And there is nothing the average citizen can trust, except perhaps God himself.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Is it just me, or are other people slightly sickened when they think about what all happens to red meat?
I am so turned off when I think of steak and hamburgers now, that I can barely order and wolf down a Big Mac or prime rib any more.
In other news, E. Coli just broke out again, this time in Old Folk's Homes. Seems that This strand is a drug-resistant strain!
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Come on. Thats like saying that programmers purposly put bugs in their software or leave out features just so they can sell you future upgrades.
You say making people believe, I say persuade people by demonstration.
Tomato (long "a"), tomato (short "a").
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
He's not writing to inform, but to persuade. Doing so requires choosing his words according to emotional impact, rather than accuracy.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
There are plenty of countries with a McDonald's that fought wars against those without one. Yet, McDonald's chose to accept the risk.
It seems more likely that there are two things going on here:
1. The formation of a "middle class", who wants to eat in a restaurant with tiled floors, clean bathrooms, and beef that is actually made out of beef... but can't afford to eat in the swanky restaurants of the ruling class.
2. A society which is open enough to international trade to allow a business franchise from another country to establish itself within their borders.
Both are indicators of a certain type of nation. To use the Russian terms, one which embraces both Glasnost and Perestroika. Countries that embrace openness and freedom tend towards similar values and prosperity levels, and are therefore less likely to want to shoot at each other, except in civil wars like we saw in former Yugoslavia.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
(The one where we got them beat is obesity... and that's only because people on the Khiber Pass can't afford enough food to get fat while travelling on foot all day carrying assault rifles. Fighting for your life is very effective exercise.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Fast food junkies salivate like Pavlovian dogs at the smell, image, or even the thought of McDonald's fries.
Come to think of it, I always have left over "beef" packets from my Ramen Noodles, because I only use half a packet per serving. I bet sprinkling some of that stuff on fries from other restaurants would provide pretty much the same fix. Hmmm...
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
In almost every city I have ever been to, I have been able to go to the "same drag" where "McStarbucks" is, and find a small, family-owned restaurant. The place usually has about 6-10 locals sitting in there, eating whatever the $3.95 special is for that particular day.
True, you need to look for it, and most people don't, but that is not the fault of the McStarbucks, is it?
Get off of the "main drag" and you will also find that almost every urban area contains at least one really good Irish pub, at least one fancy Chinese place, and least one shitty (but cheap) Chinese buffet, and a truck stop in the industrial part of town.
Also, not every small town has a McDonalds, but most of them have a Dairy Queen, at least two bars, and a mom & pop restaurant known for their breakfasts.
While the golden arches may be everywhere in the city, and scattered across the suburbs, they become fewer and far between as you get out of town.
As was pointed out in "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", if you take the path less traveled you can see more of "real America".
(By the way, the road mentioned at the beginning of that book, Hwy 212, is still there, and the landscape hasn't changed much.)
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
"Corporations are now the primary contributors to the American election system. They fund the overwhelming majority of lobbyists who prey on Washington."
Corporations do lobby for their interests in Washington (for example, insurance companies are fighting like hell to stop W from repealing the estate tax), but corporations are really small potatoes compared to many rival PAC's, such as the trial lawyers, the National Education Association, the Christian Coalition, the Rainbow Coalition, NARAL, the AFL-CIO, etc.
When a lobbyist from Ford Motors calls, a Senator will take the message, but when a lobbyist from a core PAC for that Senator's party calls, that Senator picks up the phone.
As a side note, did the tone of this particular Katz column remind anybody else of the Unibomber Manifesto?
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
Really? I would have thought it was the excesses of the Csar or Russia, and the excesses British & French Colonialism in the East.
Some capitalist systems will sometimes gravitate, slowly and incrementally, towards socialism. One need only look at US farm policy to find and example.
However, most communist states came about the same way Napoleon's short-lived empire came about, as a violent reaction to oppressive dictators.
capitalists (who follow an inherently evil code, that of greed)
As a capitalist, I should point out that capitalism is inherently moral. For several reasons:
1. It allows people to keep what they have earned. Any system which does not is essentially slavery.
2. It generates prosperity and promotes the general welfare better than any system yet conceived. By "prosperity", I mean fewer people starving, and more people providing for their families.
3. It is a system in which the only legal means of enriching yourself is by serving the needs and desires of others, either by your labor, or by investing your property.
Are there flaws in this system? Yes, many. For one thing, the system completely fails if people of means fail to embrace their civic duties of charity and compassion.
Has a more moral one been offered? Not yet. Maybe one will someday, but it will not be communism, which forces people to enjoy no reward for greater efforts and risks... nor socialism, which forces people for forfeit all the rewards of their efforts to the state in exchange for a meager subsistence.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
It has evolved over the past 60 years. The New Deal was just one small part of it.
I suppose this depends on your view of our role here on Earth. Personally, I think we're here to advance the species.
Why? What is so special about this particular species, that I should put advancing it ahead of all else? If mankind's domination of the world is someday dwarfed by AI robots or highly-evolved turtles, how would that be intrinsically bad?
I would replace "conceived" with "implemented."
Ah yes. The "real communism hasn't been tried yet" position. It comes up every time, because every single attempt at communism to date has resulted in depsotic nightmares. Pure capitalsism has not been tried either, but from what I have seen, the closer a society is to it, the better off they are. (See Hong Kong before the recent change of power, or the United States.)
The Great Depression can be traced, in large part, to government cock-ups. The free market banks prevented a similar crash in the 1890's. If you are a bank mogul, a depression is bad for business, and you will spend a lot of resources to prevent one.
The idea behind "everyone benefits equally" is that everyone benefits
That may be the idea... but the truth is different. If everyone must benifit equally, then the reward for hard labor, dramatic risk, and clever invention is the same as the reward for doing nothing. The producers of the society become slaves, like the horse in "Animal Farm", while those with less to offer share in the rewards of their efforts. What makes this particularilly shameful is that people living in such a system stop working hard, stop taking risks, and stop innovating, because there is no incentive to do so.
The result of "equal" redistribution of wealth will always be equally and fairly shared poverty and despair.
Communism is fundamentally unfair to those who produce more, and that is the evil of it.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
That does not mean that McDonald's causes peace, nor does it mean that peace causes McDonald's. If either argument was being made, your criticism would be correct.
However, the argument here is that nations which are prosperous enough to support a customer base for McDonald's tend to not go to war with one another.
If this was based on a single incident, (i.e., "we have observed one war, and McDonald's was not in both countries"), then it would indeed be a post hoc fallacy. However, when you observe a trend (i.e., "of the many wars we have observed, a disproportionate number, in fact nearly all of them, were fought between nations where one or both had no McDonald's), you can establish a thesis.
Nearly all human knowledge, including pretty much everything that Sagan taught about, came from observing trends and drawing conclusions based on those trends. It's how we learn stuff.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
An econ professor of mine summed this up rather neatly: "It seldom makes good business sense to bomb your customers."
--
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a skull.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Most corporations seem to have figured out that so long as they have the appropriate politicians in their pockets, that being king or president or prime minister is not where it is at. For one thing, you have all of those pesky people demanding something from you. There is no rest for the wicked in the world of politics.
so they stay out of politics, and enter it only to protect themselves. Then they get to have their fancy cars and jets and boats, and minions groveling at their feet. This only works well for the really big companies, but for them that is Good Enough(tm)
You worry about you favorite pet peeve, distro war, or whatever.
While all around you the age of the puppet kings is approaching. Some say it is here already.
Check out the Vinny the Vampire comic strip
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
What if I want french fries and a hamburger and not a steak? To recreate a Big Mac Meal will require having all of the right ingredients that go into a Big Mac plus deep frying facilities to make the french fries. Given the mess and labor involved in preparation and cleanup, shelling out $4 is not a bad deal.
People are very aware there are alternatives to McDonalds. If they weren't, they would eat there for every meal which they clearly aren't. Most people are willing to occasionally trade a little money for adequate food and savings in hassle and cleanup. By the same logic as above, everyone should always fix their own car, wash their own windows, make their own clothing since it's cheaper. This assumes that your time has a fairly low unit value - a bad assumption for many people.
Well, actually it probably is true. Recall the McLean, McDonald's lower fat hamburger. It was introduced in the early 90's when there was a lot of concern about the amount of fat in foods. It was indeed lower in fat, but unfortunately it didn't taste quite as good as a regular hamburger. They don't offer it anymore, because in the end there just wasn't that much demand.
The problem is that people say they want healthy foods, but what they actually buy are tasty foods. McDonalds is very much into making food that people will buy.
Market presence and a[n ad campaign designed to ensure the continued existence of a] customer base that's wholly-ignorant of the existence of alternatives
exactly. Keep in mind that the Carpet-Bombing methods of franchises like Starbucks will run a loss, canabalize their OWN stores in order to achieve ubiquity - until all choices are removed. They can sustain losses because they are funded well enough to just obliterate everyone else.... this used to be called preditory marketing or dumping.. now its an acceptable corporate strategy.
Agreed - unfortunatley most people (here's my elitism) are not capable of understanding. They dont realize they are being manipulated by their televisions. That they REALLY REALLY want %whatevertheyhavebeenshownontelevison% is not a worthwhile goal. Additionally, like you said, they dont understand finances. They run up massive debt and end up wage slaves... but they sure drive 'nice*' cars.
*they also dont realize that there is no value in cars outside of transportation - but they are so frail intellectually that they are easily told otherwise - hence your $50,000 BMW in the driveway of a factoryslave.
"hackers, programmers and open source advocates are sounding the alarm about the Microsoft-ing of the Net."
Why is it that Linux is considered to have a numerical edge on M$ products when someone is actually talking about webservers.....yet it suddenly becomes oppressed when someone wants to call in the banners?
Along the same lines, there was this commentary article ("We get CJD and bile duct cancer so others get rich") yesterday in the Guardian online. (It's by Felicity Lawrence, the Guardian's consumer affairs correspondent.) One of the particularly good points in this piece was
It may be informative to keep this kind of argument in mind when reading JonKatz's statements that
or that fast food is "the stepchild of post-war progress in farming, slaughtering and packing, refrigeration and transportation."
JonKatz stresses the "unintended ways in which technology shapes the new world," but -- more than this -- the technology itself can be the outgrowth of powerful pre-existing economic (and political) conditions. In the case of fast food, the "post-war progress" in agriculture, et cetera may in fact have a lot to do with the war-time economic order. Again, from the Guardian piece,
(Yes, the article is a bit specific to the UK, but, generally, its observations also apply to development in plenty of other places.)
One of your better book reviews, Jon. Nice going. You've summarized FFN quite well. But hey, everyone, it's still worth going out and reading. Don't settle for just the soundbites. They're the fast-food equivalent of thinking... or something.
You see? You see? Your stupid minds! Stupid! Stupid!
I think you should read Jessica Litman's "Digital Copyright." She goes into nauseating detail about how copyright laws are created in this country - and it isn't by Congress. Congressional members are handed the pre-written law, created by the businesses involved in copyright ownership, and Congress simply signs it into law once all interested parties (minus the Public, of course) find the wording acceptable.
If this isn't politics made and enforced (through lawsuits) by business, I don't know what is. The businesses are certainly making the laws, at any rate. And, unless you contest the removal of material from your ISP, they are basically enforcing the law as well (under the DMCA, the ISP must remove any material that someone 'claims' is copyrighted.)
Don't just complain - DO something about it!
As societies get richer and middle classes grow, the willingness of ordinary people to become cannon fodder declines rapidly. Mock McDonald's if you like, but in many countries it is very much considered a sign of prosperity (clean restrooms!) and popular among the emerging middle class.
I prefer the longer-standing principle that democracies don't go to war against one another. But you have to admit that, for all of its repressive behavior, Yugo was fairly democratic - Milosevic was elected, and now Kostunica is.
As for Fast Food Nation, I can't be bothered to read it, because it's clearly written with the attitude that it's somehow wrong to have a Big Mac. Don't like McDonald's? Eat somewhere else! Then quit bitching about other people's choices.
sulli
RTFJ.
Come on, Katz/Schlossinger, this is such laughable crap. Go to El Paso, then Seattle, then New York, then Chicago, and eat at the local restaurants. Note that the food is totally different. Note how you can't get decent Tex-Mex in NY, or decent coffee in El Paso, or decent bagels in Seattle. Note how the deep dish pizza in Chigago != the thin crust pizza in NY. Note further the thousands upon thousands of non-fast-food restaurants that people eat at every day.
Then, having discovered this basic fact of life, re-examine your thesis. Surprise! No monoculture. Apply to internet: diversity will persist. Thank you for playing.
sulli
RTFJ.
Go on a road trip with kids (or be a kid on a road trip yourself) and you'll sing the praises of McDonald's for life.
sulli
RTFJ.
Actually Burger King is British and Tim Hortons is pretty popular in Canada and England (not in america due to dunkin doughnuts). Basically, I believe it is mass money making global civilization that were entering and not that American. McDonalds just happens to be an American chain. I believe this is due to the increase of transportation technology which has enriched everyone's lives. After the world was connected, companies from around the world began heaping in cash and everyone wanted part of it.
I do not like the title morality vs Commercialism. I have seen the extreme of the other side in Communism and socialism and view that as almost as immoral.
I am a conservative American so the europeans reading this may be more socialist, but I believe in the capitalist dream with rules that corporations need to follow. Like the anti-trust laws for example.
Sure capitalism may be cruel sometimes but it works better for the majority of the people then all the alternatives. many people in Europe have the government come in and tax the hell out of them when they become more successfull. This gets rid of some of the motivations of hard work and risk takinging. If you gain little from taking a high stress job but could lose your job, then whats the point of taking it. I am aware that the poor are better served, but when I lived in Canada I saw almost as much homeless people then in New York City. Where are the benifits of the %50 tax then? Not much from what I see.
So I vote for keeping the more conservative capitalist american system with better laws for things like anti-trust and tuart reform to prevent silly lawsuits.
I am also aware of free software and linux as an example that good things can come with the heart to perservere but our system is quite efficient and I believe more moral in its rewards for hard work. Also their are alot of people like myself who don't like fast food. That is ok. You can still cook and eat fine cusine.
http://saveie6.com/
We pay for convience. I eat at fast food places when on lunch breaks at work, when traveling off interstate highways, when I don't want to go to the store and cook. :-)
If you don't like fast food, don't eat it.
The reason consumers eat their is because of convience and circumstances and McDonalds is alot cheaper then a non fast food resturaunt.
In poorer countries I can imagine people eating there every once in a while because a nice resturaunt is way too expensive. This is the case with Russia and China. ALso McDonalds is more friendly to children who find conventional resturaunts quiet and boring. THey can be themselves at a fast food place and to them its much better then the food at home.
I am getting sick and tired of this anti commercial atmosphere at slashdot. As long as there is competition and choices you shouldn't care.
http://saveie6.com/
China is pretty third world and maybe a military superpower but not an economic one. The rich few are either Hong Kong capitalists or know members of the communist party and they get funding from them to start their bussiness.
Here in America, the dream is for everyone and not just for those approved by the government. The poor farmers in China not only can't switch jobs to better themselves but they can not EVEN MOVE OUTSIDE there CITY WITHOUT PERMISSION.
I will take capitalism any day.
http://saveie6.com/
There's a great hole-in-the-wall Mexican food joint 2 minutes from my house, and I don't care how many McDonald's they open, that place is NEVER going out of business!
struggles against totalitarian political power, then the history of the Twenty-first will likely be marked by efforts to curtail the excessive corporate power that grips the United States and is spreading throughout the world.
While I usually just skip over the Jon Katz articles, sometimes I need to stop and post something about his half baked ideas that he likes to spew upon us. Everyone here at slashdot seems to feel that large corporations are always bad (and perhaps that is true to some degree), but the very idea that the "badness" of a corporation can compare in any way to Nazi Germany or any of the wars or politcal battles of the last century (or ANY centry) is just wrong.
Look around, you're not being oppressed just because a new McDonalds opened up...
Some historical and political thinkers see a parallel between the current capitalist philosophy of 'right to make a profit' and the philosophy of 'king as god', which began to erode in 1215 C.E. with the signing of the Magna Carter. This right was and is often taken to the extreme as to justify the destruction of people and nature. Indeed, even capitalist thinkers have taken this viewpoint with books such as Elizabeth I, CEO, by Alan Axelrod, Prentice Hall. If we take this metaphor to the limit, capitalism will enslave all people in a life of mediocrity and filth until such a point that we peasant rise and overthrow the oppressors. That such a comparison is valid I will leave as a Gadanken exercise for the reader.
Free markets are not good for economies. In general most counties and companies want well-regulated predictable economies that allow significant amounts of flexibility. We see the need for such regulated freedom in the current problems of Russia and Japan. The only companies that want free markets are ones that are already monopolies. Most other companies want certain regulations lifted, while leaving the basic structure in place.
Most things are double-edged swords. Back in the 80's, it was not uncommon for us, as protestors of global domination, to go to a McDonalds for food. We knew better, Diet for a Small Planet was over 10 years old but it was fast and easy. We see the same thing today with current protestors wearing Nike and Gap. There are no complete answers.
In the end, we get the government we deserve. There are plenty of independent coffee houses around, but people still get the crap from Starbucks. There are plenty of independent bagels shops around, but people still buy the crap from Einstein's. As long as parents drive their SUV's to McDonald's and feed their kids slop, it will remain profitable and necessary to provide such service, no matter who or what is destroyed.
...this is a good article, and if it's not, it's at least a thought provoking one.
...but it's all for the benefit of the little man
The idea of a corporate republic is a very frightening one. It all involves one thing: money.
I guess this is why we have anti-trust lawsuits, campaign finance reform, software licenses, and subscription-based formats. Not only will we soon have to pay an annual fee to use some software, we may soon have to pay a subscription fee to get that burger at the drivethru...
BIG CORPORATION:
"Power corrupts. PowerPoint corrupts absolutely."
All I got from this particular essay is:
Unfortunately, he forgot to offer any constructive solutions, making the entire thing little more than a misdirected troll.
Nothing that McDonalds sells is "low-fat" or "healthy", and calling it "McLean" doesn't make it so. Ultimately each and every one of their food products is a well-nigh flavourless mixture of gunk, so the people who appreciate food that tastes well don't go to McDonalds anyway. So the failure of that product doesn't really prove anything.
People have been warning of MacDonaldization before the 70s. A noteable example is John Steinbeck in "Travels with Charley" which is from the 60s (I think).
There, the standardization and loss of culture was attributed mainly to nationally syndicated radio and TV shows, which probably provide an even better analogy to the Net.
Not confused enough? http://translate.google.com/translate?u=www.slashdot.jp&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ja&tl=en
Preaching to the choir again, Jon?
Jaysyn
There is a war going on for your mind.
you GRILL steaks. sheesh.
i could live a little longer in this prison
Or maybe most teens are overqualified for the outrageously low amounts of money that some companies wish to pay. I currently work for a college and do technical work all the time. I was offered a job by a a very large computer and A/V company recently, and turned the job down because they couldn't pay me the money that I requested. They offered to pay me "more than my current job." Too bad that they couldn't offer me what I already have- competitive tuition prices and flexible hours. If there were any benefits to my college tech job, these are the benfits. It is a shame though that many smart individuals are underpaid or underemployed as a result of not having a piece of paper that says they went to school. I know how to do my job, and never again will I let someone underpay me. If they want to hire the next grunt that is happy with low pay, then by all means. This is why companies spend more money on hiring new employees time and time again.
I don't refuse to eat McDonalds because I hate the company... I refuse to eat it because I like to eat food that is actually healthy. Nobody is forced to stuff cow sandwiches, greasy potatoes, and carbonated sugar water down their throats. I am greatful that I have a choice in what I eat and that I don't starve.
McDonald's ethical policies?
Since when is massified flavored synthetic liquid that's honestly labeled as "Beef" ethical? Now if McDonalds were to LABEL all the food thay have as what it is (Genetically Engineered, hormone enhanced, etc) that would be ethical. But that would also mean the fall of McD. So you see? You can't be ethical and be a multi-billion company at the same time. Money is dirty.
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i have been reading this book (FAST FOOD NATION) recently and thinking it would be a great subject for a slashdot review. whatever you think of katz's review (i didn't read it) i highly recommend the book! the description of french fry processing reminded me of logfile-processing in perl. :)
Jesus, Jon, what has McDonald's ever done to you? :)
Honestly, fast food chains have come under an inordinate amount of PR flak from the tree-hugging eco-warrior contingent because they combine two of their greatest bogiemen - globalisation and meat. By attacking fast food chains they don't have to do such much running around, which means they can get their social security money from the Government.
But while McDonald's may not live up to the greenies' standards, who does? Many of them fail this test I'd imagine. But for such a large company, McDonald's does realise that popular opinion is all important, and it makes a lot of effort to maintain a reputation as a "good guy".
Which means clearing up litter around their shops, donating money to various goodwill groups and acting according to what their customers want - if there's even a hint of a food scare they'll react before the Government even starts to get its act together.
Basically, McDonald's has become the fall guy for the corporate world. The attacks on it would be far better placed on other companies which don't share McDonald's ethical policies, but instead act as they damn well please.
Fast food has supplanted the family meal more than the family restaurant. Most Moms hold jobs. How many women are going to stay home slaving over a hot stove for 0 wages, 0 benefits and 0 job security to fix a nutritious meals for picky kids who would rather eat hamburgers and french fries anyway? If people really wanted to eat vegetables and low-fat, healthy foods, McDonalds would crank it out.
You want broccoli with that?
We wage serfs know this well. Pay the same corporations for whom you work for the lifestyle stuff, and you're in the same mess as miners in the 1920's- working harder and keeping less. With mega mergers everywhere, the world itself is becoming a company town.
But does the problem lie in corporate behavior or our own willingness to buy the lifestyle they sell?
[That's an honest question, folks- not a rhetorical one]
(
In other news: Jerry Bruckheimer's Next Epic)
And what would be the other nation that was at war with Yugoslavia? Yougoslavia against Yougoslavia, that doesn't count. You must have different nations, otherwise it doesn't make two.
- Rising cases of obesity
- Increased gun-related crime
- Lower education standards
- Greater apathy among citizens
- Ever-growing divide between upper and lower classes
If you're going to plug Americanization, you'd better damn well take the bad with the good.From hell's heart I fstab at /dev/hdc
....this a few years back, before we bombed Belgrade. Even though that exception pretty clearly wipes out the rule (after all, there are lots of Mickey D's in China, and we may find ourselves at war with them someday)...
Uhh, who is this "we" you speak of?
If by "we" you mean the United States government acting on its own volition (with the prodding of a few profit-hungry hawks) to commit an act of aggression against Serbia, then you speak for that government and yourself ONLY.
You do not speak for me, nor should you presume to do so.
Why does this forum look and feel more and more like 1938 Nuremburg?
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws."--Tacitus, The Histories
While I vehemently detest monopolies and overly-powerful megacorps, I really have to disagree with the stance that many take against fast food, using it as a scapegoat for what they perceive as wrong with this country.
Basically, the central point of my assertion is that there is a huge difference between fast food chains such as McDonald's and Burger King, and companies like TW/AOL, Microsoft, and Verizon. The difference is consumer choice.
I've been all over America, and I certainly haven't noticed fast food taking over the food business. If I don't like McDonald's, but still want cheap, fast food, I can go to Taco Bell, Fazoli's, BK, El Pollo Loco, Whataburger, Jack-in-the-Box, etc. If I want higher quality food, I can go to other chains such as Macaroni Grill, On the Border, Applebee's, TGIF, etc. They cost more, but you get better food and a better dining experience (but it's also slower). If that's not good enough, there's all kinds of non-chain, locally-owned restaurants that seem to do just fine. Some of these do suck (like charging hig prices for small glasses of Coke and not giving free refills), but the ones that don't seem to be very popular among the locals. The only places I've noticed fast food driving out all the competition is in really crappy rural areas where the only "culture" is rednecks driving 4x4's (I used to live in the South). In any other town or city with any kind of culture at all (and a middle class with the income to afford more expensive restaurants), restaurants at all price/quality points are available. (Sidenote: this is one of the great things about business travel: you can eat at expensive restaurants and you don't have to pay for it!)
However, in the areas of software and telecom, such choice doesn't seem to be available, even if you do want to pay more money. If you want broadband via cable modem, you only have one choice. If you want DSL, you have a few choices (in certain regions), but that appears to be disappearing fast. If you want an OS that does everything your company and/or customers require, or you just want to interoperate with other people, you pretty much have only one choice (even when alternatives are actually free).
There are many differences between the fast food chains and the monopolies and megacorps. Fast food fills a desire that people have for cheap, quickly-obtained food, and is successful because people buy it. They also buy more expensive food sometimes (that's why those other restaurants are around), they buy from other fast-food places (that's why McD doesn't have a monopoly), and sometimes they make their own (that's why we still have grocery stores). Why does such choice exist? Because humans can eat a lot of different types of food, and because no one company controls a majority of food production anywhere in the chain.
Software, on the other hand, isn't like food. I can eat all kinds of food and satisfy my hunger. But if I want to work with Excel or Powerpoint files, I only have one fully-compatible choice for office applications which can work with these. And then, there's only one OS which can run this particular office suite. Thanks to monopolistic control of file formats and interoperability "standards", we're deprived of choice.
So while some may point to this monopolism as the reason why capitalism/free-market economies are bad, I disagree. When there's monopolies that restrict consumers' choice, a "free market" no longer exists. Corporations such as McD's aren't a problem since they don't force you in any way to pay them money. But monopolies such as TW or Microsoft are a problem since they control too much of their markets and people frequently have no choice but to pay them if they want various goods or services that are considered fairly essential in these times.
Personally, I think the answer is a law which prevents a corporation from controlling more than 50% of any market.
If you enjoy that which is unique and beautiful then Provence is a nice place to go. (Quick, before they put up an McD's or Kentucky Fried Rat!)
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Of course, McD's food doesn't usually crash, but the blue screen of death after several years of wolfing down Big Mac's and Natural Beef Flavored fries, is certainly a possibility.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
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Your meal is not responding, please press CTRL-ALT-DEL to terminate or re-boot.
-- .sig are belong to us!
All your
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
One example in this topic is of the cost of a steak and potato dinner vs that of a Big Mac & fries. Consider how well a family of 4 could be fed on hamburgers and homemade fries (the secret is to freeze your cut potatoes before frying, otherwise they're kinda weird) for the cost of one meal at McD's.
Almost everything is much more expensive in Europe, mostly as a result of limited living space and resources. Had I less disposable income restaurant food in total would be reduced significantly. When I did splurge it would be for something I really enjoy (like red curry.)
-- .sig are belong to us!
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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For my money, I'll still go to the local joints where I'm actually waited on and can choose real food.
In news this morning I hear that France's Alcatel is expected to tender an offer of $38 billion for Lose-cent. Interesting how some of the large multi-national corps are being picked up by companies in other countries. US exports hamburgers, sneakers, flavored-carbonated-sugar-water, fried chicken, and cultural values(tinted with puritanism) and sells off one of the oldest technology research companies.
-- .sig are belong to us!
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
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A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Everytime society goes thru a change someone always cries wolf. Two hundred years ago the industrial revolution began. Suddenly the price of many goods dropped and they became affordable to people. A century ago women started entering the workforce. People said it signal the end of civilization. In the 1920's people started listening to jazz and it signaled the end of life as we knew it. Ditto for the rock and roll era. Kids sold their soul to Satan. Things change. Since he hates corporations and their goods maybe he would like to custom build his own car. I don't hear anybody decrying Henry Ford here. What's wrong with going to a mom and pop to get a custom built car? I bet with their supply chain a small compact won't cost you a penny over $80K. And how about computers? What if every mom and pop built custom computers with custom versions of Windows or Linux kernels for their differnet CPU's. Good luck finding compatible software or ISP's.
If there's one thing that bugs me about tech in our fast food nation, it's the damned BEEPING at McDonalds. There you are trying to eat a cheeseburger and it's all BEEP BEEP BEEP all around you from the kitchen. My god that pisses me off!
--
--hongpong.com
Perhaps, with all the problems in Russia today likely caused by the switch, Russia should have still allowed big changes but switched to socialism. Sure, problems were rampant in Russia, but that does not nessessitate a switch to capitalism. That's like saying, that with campaign finances, we should switch to communism. No; it would be simpler just to regulate donations. You must go with the will of the people.
It's the secret sauce that subverts the mind and makes you lethargic. The sauce makes you less inclined to go to war with another person, unless they have stolen your last Big Mac.
Gentlemen! There will be no fighting in the War Room! -- Dr. Strangelove
What's this got to do with the corporations' effects on society? You see, one of the main proponents of Estrada's ouster were the corporate giants of Manila, citing that the Philippines' business sector has been severely hampered by Estrada's relatively poor performance, the jueteng gambling lord scandal late last year, and the way he handled (yet another) war going on here versus the bandit elements in Mindanao. And the Estrada economy also saw the sudden rise of "crony" capitalism, where the government is actively taking part, for better or for worse, in the success of key corporations, leaving the other small players behind. In fact, these so-called multinational corporations also played a part in the recent slump of economic growth in the Philippines and in the Southeast Asian region in general, details of which would take me forever to elaborate.
What does this all mean?
The rise of multinational corporations and westernization does not necessarily translate to development and peace. Who knows, this crony capitalism thing might become a global phenomenon once governments all over the world start accepting capitalism as the norm and ignore all the checks that have been set into place (think the American Great Depression). And then it would bring about conflict, just as it did here.
p.s. Sorry I deviated a bit from the technology issues =)... Hmm, how about... well, the Love Bug worm came from us. ;) (Not that I would even be proud about that... :/)
Pet peeve: Profane people propagating perfunctory pedantry.
A chain of public bathrooms that happen to serve fries, too. :)
A clever sig would prove nothing.
And now to the facts of the matter. While I can't argue the validity of most of what was said, I seriously doubt that fast food can be blamed for the breakdown of regional cultural diversity within the united states, or the re-introduction of a class seperation within the country. I have to admit though, it does make for an interesting metaphor...
--CTH
--Got Lists? | Top 95 Star Wars Line
Y'know, I feel kinda stupid pointing this out, but there is exactly one reason why fast food is at the epedemic level Katz keeps telling us it is.
People buy it.
Scream all you want about how mom 'n' pop's Greasy Spoon Cafe just closed down, or how 2/3 of the US population is now approaching dangerous levels of obesity, or how these companies are spreading overseas (and *gasp* succeeding!), but they've become so powerful because lots and lots of people buy their product.
Fast food is cheap, fast, (debatably) tasty, easy to access, and the same no matter where you go. For some completely inexplicable reason, people seem to like this, and subsequently keep pouring cash into McDonald's coffers for their 10-minute Big Mac Extra Value Meal lunch.
So now that fast food restaurants have proven their popularity (and that they're not going away anytime soon,) it's the fault of the corporation that society is going down the tubes (at least in Katz's head?) I dare you, Jon, to consider that the root of this problem may just be the millions of Americans who regularly and voluntarily patronize fast food restaurants instead of independant restaurants.
If the fast food corporations have become a giant, international, all-consuming monster, it's because millions of ordinary people keep happily flinging their money into the mouth of the beast.
Joe Q. Slashdotter is to blame; he goes out, buys CDs/DVDs, eats fast food, watches cable/sattelite TV, buys the fastest residential broadband connection he can, and owns the latest cell phone on the market. Then, once at work, he's crying all the way to the submit button about the crimes against humanity committed by the MPAA, RIAA, TW/AOL, McDonalds, the telcoms, and pretty much anything with an international headquarters.
Why not do your next earth-shattering exposé on the nauseating hypocracy of the average Slashdot reader, Jon?
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
I bumped into a copy of this book last night. It looked excellent, although it seemed to focus more on the actual disgusting reality behind the counter of fast food joints rather than the social and cultural concerns
I highly recommend "The McDonaldization of America" and "Expressing America: The Credit Card Society," both by George Ritzer.
Also, "The Electronic Sweatshop: How Computers Are Transforming the Office of the Future into the Factory of the Past" by Barbara Garson (1988, Simon and Schuster) has an *excellent* chapter on what it is like to work at McDonalds and brings these concepts to take on office situations and electronic surveillance. Dated, but good.
Seriously, every "feature" from Katz that I've read takes all of its supporting evidence from a single book, and I wouldn't doubt that the writing also mimics the books structure.
Don't get me wrong, I think its great that Katz is reading, but he may want to consider researching the otherview point before posting a knee-jerk /. feature.
Plus, one source is still better than ninety percent of the journalism on the web.
I Browse at +4 Flamebait
Open Source Sysadmin
Wish I had mod points for you right now.
Seems lots of the +5 posters (and the people who put them there) are more concerned with taking shots at Katz than thinking through their statements in any meaningful way.
Ex:
Beyond that, fast food franchises obliterated a sense of geographical and cultural differences among different regions of the United StatesThe appeal of fast food -- that people would know just what to expect no matter where they bought their Whoppers or Taco Bell burritos -- was also one of its most devastating consequences.
This is a devastating consequence? The fact that you can get McDonald's everywhere? Shudder! The blood's running in the street. What exactly does this have to do with "corporatism," anyway? I can get Chinese food everywhere, despite the notable absence of any national Chinese food chains. Seriously, Katz, are you saying we need laws to preserve regional cuisine? Is that what you want?
Of course that's not what any sane person would want. The replier _completely_ misses the point. And is sitting at +5. Love it.
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
Does yugoslavia still exist??
Or maybe he just rewrites the same article with a different topic every few days.
I'm on a road shaped like a figure eight; I'm going nowhere but I'm guaranteed to be late.
Its politicians we should still be wary of. Corporations can try and take our rights away, but we have the courts to fight them. When the government takes our rights away we can't even beat them in the courts as they have guns to back them up.
Corporations are as manipulated by politicians as politicians are by corporations. By and far, its politicians who are the worst of the two. Corporations don't take your money at gunpoint and spend it where you could care less. They can take your money and give it to some schmoe who doesn't want to work because he doesn't have to. A corporation can't do that.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich. The Geography of Nowhere by James Howard Kuntsler.
Both books are enlightening as well as entertaining. Just like Fast Food Nation.
btw - I wish you people would give Katz a break. He does fine. Also, many of you no not what you speak. I'm growing weary of reading bold assertions that are groundless and incorrect. If you aren't 100% sure of what you're talking about, just be quiet and listen. You might learn something.
Once again, the solution to the problem is right in front of us, and you did allude to it when you mentionedhow corporatism is stifling competition. We can deal Fast Food America a deah blow and STILL improve our food choices: look at the Hong Kong model: when I was there a couple decades ago, it was an expensive city, but a poor sailor could still eat well by patronizing the street vendors, who had well-equipped, full featured, sanitary mobile kitchens that delivered quality and variety at a low price.
But how can we break the mold? No matter who we vote for, they go on the take. Most of them are, or sooner or later, will be.
We had a chance with Perot, but we let the media demonize him.
If we take to the streets, we lose capital investment.
First we have to make mainstream TV -watching America realize what is going on.
The H1B situation is the perfect example of corporatism run rampant in the USA.
BSCS in May 01
Sig:
Navy nuke sub lifestyle?
It is one of the classic methods of an oppresive government. Control what your population can read; control the education of the children. I see both of these happening, only it is now happening with private corporations. Look at how many private corporations are now offering special programs for schools. Look at the the recent legislation that is suppose to "protect" our children. This may be a classic slippery slope argument, but we now allow private corporations to feed information into our schools, to control what we may and may not read and when we may read it, and, even, to regulate speech. How far down the slope to we get before it is a real concern?
Regardless, I think the lack of any real wars is attributable to two things, the nuclear deterrent and our diplomatic terminology ("police actions," etc.) Not to some shared love for crappy hamburgers.
"When it rains, it pours." --Morton's Salt
Katz has done an interesting job discussing corporate greed, and i think its difficult to say that corporate greed isn't a problem today.
However, what is the solution?
1. We would need new laws.
This isn't possible with the current elected officials.
2. So, we need to elect a bunch of people who think like us, so they can implement #1 above.
There is no way we're going to re elect our entire government. So instead, we will:
3. Write long winded rants and railings against evil corporations, ignoring the true cause of the problem, 97% of society.
People are stupid and selfish. How do we fix that?
Captain_Frisk.
He discusses the main reason why this occurs and that is you wouldn't kill your business partner.
It's actually a really good book about the globalization of corporations and what he sees as a counter-force of the globalization of individuals and activism. Globalization puts General Motors in Mexico as well as environmental and work standards. Nike has China make it shoes, but universities won't buy slave labor made equipment. The same forces that drive McDonalds to Japan, puts Thai food in your town.
Good call. This is an argument that I've had with the anti-WTO/NAFTA/Globalization folks for some time now. Multinational corporations are shaping up to be the most powerful entities on earth, true. It's also true that there is absolutely no controls on these fantastically powerful corporations. I'll even grant you that many governments are or will be in the pockets of these corporations. However, there's one important fact that's impossible to argue with, and that's that dead people make poor consumers.
Real world example: Say that I'm Steve Case, running AOL/Time Warner/Turner/Etc. I've just gained a foothold in China and I'm looking forward to selling my crappy product to a new market of over a billion people, making untold billions of dollars. What do you think my stance on war with China is going to be? The moment that the Bush administration starts talking about taking military action against China, I'm going to be on the phone to remind him of my large campaign contribution and ask him to back off.
Admittedly, Multinationals are responsible for some heinous shit. Shell Oil has mercenaries in Africa clearing out villages to make way for oil pipelines. Globalization is not without its problems. However, if McDonald's in China means that I don't have to worry about San Francisco becoming a smoldering crater, then I'm all for it.
This
Naw, peace leads to having enough free time to build things like McDonalds. As opposed to concentration camps, and smoking piles of rubble.
Well, we don't totally have world peace, maybe that's why McDonalds is the norm for now. Maybe as we get more and more peace, we get botannical music gardens or whatever else is "better" than McDonalds ; -)
"But there has to be a balance between the prosperity of the market and the morality of the market -- a balance already tilting off center in almost the entire range of tech industries, and on the Net and Web"
I think his point was that Laissez Faire (SIC?) capitalism / Free Markets don't always work.
Balance is essential in all aspects of life. You know the saying... All things in Moderation.
Like anything else in life, when taken to extremes and imbalanced, free trade can lead to unforseen, often negative consequences. This is neither uniqute to the Fast food industry, nor the Net.
If there's a castle floating upside down in the sky, then there's a castle floating upside down in the sky.
Clearly not all of McDonalds employers are mindless followers of the system they have created to exploit and kill the average American. Now the burden falls on our shoulders as consumers to put and end to this madness. McDonalds will do whatever is profitable. what if suddenly became profitable to sell healthy balanced meals? what if consumers no longer decided to trade their health for 99 cents?
~ArK tUv
This is not serfdom; it actually sharecropping. Worst of all, most choose to be sharecroppers.
I think that we need to start realizing that we do not have to participate in the sharecropping system, or can participate on our own terms.
Talk to people. Tell consumerists that it is OK not to live like they appear to on "Friends". Tell Windows users that they may actually get more out of a Mac or Linux. Encourage people to stop getting into debt. Most of all, let people know that there is more to life than work, watching/living tv, and buying shit on the weekend.
>
Some capitalist systems will sometimes gravitate, slowly and incrementally, towards socialism. One need only look at US farm policy to find and example.
I could be wrong here - and please correct me if I am - but wasn't the current farm policy first begun as a response to the Depression, so that all the farmers would not have so much surplus driving prices down and themselves out of business? And somehow I don't think "incremental" really describes the Depression or the New Deal.
1. It allows people to keep what they have earned. Any system which does not is essentially slavery.
I suppose this depends on your view of our role here on Earth. Personally, I think we're here to advance the species. However, in order to keep the species going through the hard years, when we didn't have the capability to fuck the Earth like we do now, we had "ourselves" placed above "everyone" in our priorities. This is simple survival of the fittest, but isn't it time we moved beyond that and stopped being selfish? That you started thinking about the future and not your future?
2. It generates prosperity and promotes the general welfare better than any system yet conceived. By "prosperity", I mean fewer people starving, and more people providing for their families.
One key quibble with this one: I would replace "conceived" with "implemented." You know what they say about fact and theory..
3. It is a system in which the only legal means of enriching yourself is by serving the needs and desires of others, either by your labor, or by investing your property.
It is a system in which the only legal means of enriching yourself have absolutely no care for a)morality, and b)the future past the time it affects you. We all share responsibility for what happens down the road (with the people who will live then), and it's blind of us not to see it. The saying "nature or nurture" applies to cultures, too: What environment created it? (us). How does it live? (by our children, X generations down the road).
Are there flaws in this system? Yes, many. For one thing, the system completely fails if people of means fail to embrace their civic duties of charity and compassion.
No shit. Capitalists are always talking about providing "incentives" for this or that - if you're so concerned about morality, why the fuck aren't there any "incentives" for it built into your economic system?
Has a more moral one been offered? Not yet. Maybe one will someday, but it will not be communism, which forces people to enjoy no reward for greater efforts and risks... nor socialism, which forces people for forfeit all the rewards of their efforts to the state in exchange for a meager subsistence.
Don't judge poor implementations of a concept for the real thing. The idea behind "everyone benefits equally" is that everyone benefits, not just those quick enough to drop their morals and abuse their fellow beings (and descendants) to get rich now. I think socialism is a workable system - if only people can get past their selfish nature and work together for everyone's good.
Reality is indistinguishable from any sufficiently advanced fantasy.
No. Did you even follow the link in my post?
IANAPS (I am not a political scientist) and I haven't read the Saul book, but are you suggesting that the business-driven society Katz refers to as "corporatism" is actually "fascism," thus validating his use of the term "corporatism"? I don't quite understand your point. You can make an argument that what Katz calls "corporatism" (or corporate-ism), is a form of corporatism (in that interests are channeled through institutions), but to me it seems clear that is not what he means when he applies the term.
"Corporatism is politics made and enforced by business"? You must have seen a different page than the one I linked to, or else not actually read it.
Maybe I missed where Katz talked about trade unions? Hmm. My earlier response applies. Katz clearly isn't talking about "corporatism" in the generally accepted meaning of the term; he's talking about another idea altogether, call it "corporate-ism."
I'm not so much trying to get Katz's goat as to enforce a greater precision in the use of the terminology.... It's hard enough to exchange ideas when we don't use this type of terminology capriciously.
Katz apparently thinks he has coined this term "corporatism" to refer to rampant pro-business policies. However, the word "corporatism" is already used widely to mean something very different. Katz, I implore you, come up with a new word, to avoid confusion. It's as if I decided suddenly to start using the word "socialism" to refer to the social hierarchy that makes some people popular and others unpopular.
China is poised to become the 21st century super power and they are communist, not capitalist. Communism is a third world philosophy, not a western one.
Sigh. Communism was "invented" by whom? Marx, Engels? Where were they from? Right, Europe!
Why did they come up with it? Right, it was industrialization! Sounds perfectly third-world to me!
There's nothing like a well-informed post!
Sigh. You fell for the marketing name and slept through history-classes.
Hitler was sponsered and supported by industrial leaders from the beginning because they hoped he'd give them (economical) free reign once he held power - and so he did. "IG Farben" anyone?
Please, PLEASE, don't post unless you know what you're talking about!
1) Please don't mix capitalism with democracy! Those two are not the same thing! However, I understand that living in the US, you might get the impression that they are.
2) Wealth is the moving of an asset from a lower value to a higher one. You are confusing the accumulation of wealth with weath itself.
However, you seem to forget that communism is not about the creation of wealth but about the distribution of it. And looking at the way third world countries are currently being denied fair prices for many of their products while interests (? "Zins") for credits payable to first world countries eat up what's left of their economy (causing poverty and millions of deaths as a result of this), a point could be made against capitalism, too.
Can someone please mod up some funny comments to this story? All the 3+ rated comments are INSIGHTFUL, INTERESTING and PAINFULLY SLEEP INDUCING. Damnit, I read slashdot everyday, but I only turn to the funnies. Oh, and add a crossword and TV listings.
-nd
And who told you that? A Macdonalds recruiter?
/.er can utter such nonsense here.
I used to read Time magazine and Newsweek, but I got tired of the article that reads: "now I am visitng town and one can feel that progress is going on: Coke adds are everywhere, everybody listens to the latest hit of Maddona, and the latest Mcdondls join has just opened." Or the counterpart: "we are analyzing now the issues surrounding , we can see that all is in a stay of decay, the fashion shops we are so used to in the western world are nowhere to be seen and a surely pirated version of MS WIndows in used in every shop".
If "serious" reporters get confussed this bad, no wonder that a poor
Mcdonalds as a mean to measure peace and stability. Gimme a blody break.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
From the latin: "it happened after so it was caused by". A fairly common and fallacious argument, confusing cause and effect.
Methinks you should read about Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit.
cryptochrome---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
It is very convenient for us frightened citizens to have the evil specter of Big Brother looking at us from a book instead of from the reality.
The problem is that 1984 is not entirely a work of fiction. With a few organizational and technological tunings, 1984 is very well chosen, for a date. Right in the middle of the Reagan/Tatcher era, the propaganda/public relations machine pumping more and more bullshit through the TV tubes...
And that's only in occident. Consider the time in which the book was made (50s?).. In Russia, in that time, the book was only far-fetched on the technological side. Not on the political, social or philosophical side. Coming back to our century, we realize that the world didn't really change. Us geeks are just on the good side of the machine. (face it).
I don't think enough people have read 1984. I stopped reading it recently because I found it profoundly depressing. The parallels that I am able to fit into modern life are just too disturbing. The morning exercise (!), the hate sessions (one word: hockey), the telescreen.
The only thing that may be "comforting" in our world vs. 1984 is the way the telescreen works, ie. it can't spy on you. But that's another problem. Since it now works only in *one way*, the human before the tube just becomes a feeded brain to pack with propaganda. The TV screen is no democratic media that allows discussion, it is a massive distributor of tasteless unimaginative nonsense. It can't provoke debate because there's nothing to debate about. And that's how corporate media wants it.
IMO, George Orwell was a journalist. Not a sci-fi writer.
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction
I want some of that, in Taco Bell Burrito (TM) flavor. Everything I ate would taste like taco bell. I'd be eating burrito salads, burrito ice cream, burrito SPAM. I could lose massive amounts of weight! this could be the new diet craze.
"If you act now, you, too, could lose fifty pounds by summer, just take some narsty sort of diet mush dish and pour our sauce on top! It's made in New Jersey fresh from the waters of lovely Newark! Buy now and we'll throw in our new Burger King flavor. Spice up those boring diet dishes, and come over to flavor country."
Brant
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
Anyway, for about three days I was really glad my toilet and my sink are right next to each other.
Funny - that's just what they said on the eve of the First World War - the economies of the European nations were clearly far too interlinked now for the to ever be another general war.
I can look up the reference for this if need be - I know there's a discussion of it in Barbara Tuchman's The Guns of August...
Shouldn't that be the bloody struggle of US supported dictators against supposed communism? If you were against communism the US happily provided training in torture and murder along with the implements to carry out all manner of despicable acts; that way you could more efficiently murder your citizens.
to read this guy's babblings. What are you thinking? You must have smoked too much weed or something.
The fact is, the U.S. was founded based on money. Believe it or not, the main reason many of the people wanted free from England was to get away from the taxes imposed by imports and exports. After freeing themselves, it helped improve their standard of living and forced england to pay them for England to bring things into the country. It worked out for the better.
On another note, McDonald's has not detracted from cultural differences in other parts of the country. For instance, in Philadelphia you have the cheese steak. It's very hard to find an authentic cheese steak anywhere else in the U.S. In Chicago, the Deep dish pizza was born. Pizzeria Uno's (a national chain) has spread this nationally (and i love their food), however I have NEVER had a pizza as good as one from Chicago area! New Orleans... Cajun cooking, nothing like it anywhere but in Louisianna. Mexican, real mexican, best in the southern states. I've never had a chunk of beef as good as the ones I've had in the upper western states (Wyoming and Montana). The western food in these regions, especially with meats from bovine are superior to ANYTHING in my NYC suburb.. or anyplace else I've been. To say that McDonald's has ruined the U.S. culturally is narrow minded thinking!
The U.S. gov't has always been open to providing large sums of money to people who want to "make a difference." Especially providing money for people to compete against big companies. The problem is, no one looks into these features... and even with technology, there is nothing *better* for the Corporate Desktop environment other than Windows. Sorry, but it's true. Linux is nice and All (Yes, I use it.. and Windows) and many things I can do in Windows I cant do in Linux (and visa versa for that matter). Needless to say, a lot of the things I need to do at work I can't do in Linux.
I think "get over it" is my phrase for the day!
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
Because it's fast and convenient? The price is good? Good reasons for me to grab a burger as opposed to spending an hour on a home-cooked dinner especially when I don't have an hour to spend. McDonald's hasn't replaced anything... it's meerly a compliment.
I think you need to flash your brain's firmware.
So, Jon, is it time to stop complaining about capitalism and start investigating some alternatives yet? Or is merely complaining enough for you?
It bothers me that you're allowed to write this kind of stuff, and I have yet to ever see you reply to a single comment posted to one of your stories. You constantly sing doom and gloom, and I have never seen you once offer any kind of solution for the countless situations you go on moaning about all the time. Bah.
My Webcomic: Asylum on 5th Street
Being a big fan of Adbusters and their clan, I have to say that seeing this story on Slashdot makes me feel a trillion times better than reading its likeness in Adbusters. Adbusters, besides being a whup-ass, well-put-together mag, is a full-steam-ahead revolutionary organization. They already have the numbers, they're already convinced, and they're already fighting. All of that is nice, but to see them talking openly about issues like this is (duh) commonplace. It's when those issues pop up in widely-circulated, not-primarily-revolutionary media like Slashdot that there seems to be a little hope, and the little revolutionaries like me get the warm-fuzzies. Whatever anybody thinks of Jon Katz, he gets my solemn kudos for tackling an issue that a) means something and b)needs tackling. Go Jon!
As far as (c)BigMedia(tm) goes, you won't believe me if I try to just tell you their track record for refusing to allow Adbusters, and others, to publish anything resembling a non-corporate point of view (including a lot of surprising issues). Just take your most sickening estimate and triple it. Suffice to say, you won't see this story on ABC or in Time magazine, nor would you, I bet, if Madonna'd co-written it with the Dalai Lama (no offence to Jon).
Hit their site for the whole gruesome shebang, or if you don't like good graphics (*snerk*) take my Reality Test, and see if They've Affected Your Brain Yet!
(No) Peace (Without Justice),
S.T.
America was created an oligarchy. American was initially governed by those who had a stake in the system. The authors of the constitution were very wealthy, and intentionally formed it to sustain the ruling elite. They realized the stark contrast between the educated upper class, and the uneducated poor. By these comments I am not supporting any particular type of govt. but I personally believe that bipartisan politics is tearing this country apart.
Katz should be commended for delving into the sociological implications of the internet and technology. It is very difficult to explain issues that are so vast, universal, and real, but cannot be summed up in a mathematical formula, or a computer algorithm. Unlike our politicians, he refuses to reduce these issues to their simplest form. That at least is a start.
You mean like the protests in Seattle and, more recently, Quebec?
Big Business has been buying the governments of the U.S.A. and Canada (and Europe? I don't know.) since the 1970s. Weren't large sums of illegal corporate campaign contributions a significant part of the Nixon Watergate coverup? And here in Canada you just have to read "On The Take" by Stevie Cameron to discover how badly Mulroney sold Canada to business interests during the 1980s.
The Public, however, has started to catch on. The so-called "Free Trade" agreements that have been signed over the last 20 years are just another step in the MegaCorps' plans. How else do you explain giving companies the power to sue governments, even (or especially) when a government is doing what it is elected to do - represent the public interest in areas of public safety & health, resource management & preservation, or just preserving its sovreignity. The protesters, for the most part, aren't against trade itself, they are against their elected representatives giving away the right to represent the people who elected them.
The struggle has already begun.
Here is a question I extend to myself, Mr. Katz, and the Slashdot reader. How is this competition bad for us?
I was one of the first people to cry foul when Internet Explorer hit the scene. I found JScript and the bugginess of it unbearable. I also found it terrible that Microsoft, in releasing IE for free, destroyed the premium browser market.
Wait... how am I harmed? Netscape started the Mozilla project which helps differing platforms much more. Konquerer has now sprung up. Where the consumer had a single choice of browser on non-Win32 platform, there are now more. Do I think there was foul play involved with IE's rise to the top? Most certainly, and the Department of Justice agrees. Still, I no longer think of Netscape as a benevolent savior. When the going got tough, they sold out to of all people, AOL.
Mr. Katz uses McDonalds as a 'Mom and Pop' crusher that eliminates our freedom. I agree to a certain extent, however we can't ignore that consumer demand placed McDonalds to where it is now. We can't ignore that consumers now have decent (compare McDonalds to rotting, unfit food certain nations must ingest) food available cheaply and quickly. We can't ignore the jobs that were created.
If we believe huge corporations like AOL and Time/Microsoft/Blockbuster are harmful, we can't just complain. We must _do_ something about it. I dislike the RIAA so I give my recordings away freely. I dislike Microsoft so I don't use their operating systems. I disliked the McDonalds on my college campus so I successfully helped boycott it. My point isn't that we shouldn't raise the issue. My point is that we can draw awareness then _do_ somthing about it. Otherwise, we just sound silly.
Linux has the edge on Microsoft on a few things, like platform support, memory support, and price. However, those factors alone aren't enough to turn the tide of computing. Joe OEM cares little about that and more about how much money he can receive. Keep in mind that Microsoft gets vendors then customers.
This article is more about influence than technical superiority. Linux has little influence on Microsoft (With the exception of the Allchin and Mundie remarks) while Microsoft has much influence on Linux. Notice how nicely Linux competes in web benchmarks after the Mindcraft benchmarks were released.
Is it a double standard for Linux advocates to proclaim Linux superior then inferior for the sake of the context of the argument? Yes. Still, look at _what_ is being argued. Argue server merits and Linux has the edge, but you are scare to find anyone saying Linux has the edge in political power, OEM markets, and userbase.
I'd say one of the biggest problems with that statement is whether China actually are communist. They are becoming increasingly western and increasingly powerful because they are starting to adopt more a more capitalist economy. Go visit The Forbidden City, then take a walk across Tian'anmen Square to McDonalds.
#1) People hate each other #2) Trade secrets and billions of man hours wasted reinventing the wheel... Not to mention billions defending patents etc. #3) Unvoiced threats to put other companies out of buisness which result in unfair profits. Totay many regions go without broadband just because its better for a company to do certain spots. The government should SOOOO totally be involved with things like this. Open source vs Microsoft. Capatilism works because it makes stupid people work. Too bad the intellectuals are not part of the equation...
God spoke to me
adbusters is one of the most interesting anti-corporate sites that i've seen - i'm just wondering how long before there's a magazine that's the technological version of the same thing... hey, there probably already is.
anyway, visit adbusters - i'm sure you'll find it interesting or funny or both.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was angry:1 with:2 my:4 friend - i told:3 4 wrath:5, 4 5 did end.
i was 1 2 4 foe i 3 it not 4 5 did grow
So, fast food may be used by some as a metaphor for what is wrong with western civilization. However, a few years ago I read an interesting fact:
No two nations with McDonalds on their territory have ever gone to war with each other.
This may be a coincidence (and it may no longer be true ... is there a McDonalds in Yugoslavia?), but there were analysts in the article I read who suggested that the presence of a McDonalds in a nation indicated a certain level of national development, democracy, and sophistication, with an educated middle class, who patronize the McDonalds, and who are intolerant of war.
An interesting thought. International trade has its problems, but frequently it brings peace.
Toronto-area transit rider? Rate your ride.
I didn't read most of this article because of the way it started. He says the twentieth century was marked by bloody struggles against totalitarian political power. True. He thinks the twenty first will be "marked by efforts to curtail the excessive corporate power that grips the United States." What the hell is he talking about. Can corporations kick your door down in the middle of the night, take everything you own, and throw you in a dungeon for the rest of your life because of a *plant*?? Government can. Can a corporation decide that your land is a perfect habitat for a rat and keep you from doing anything with it? No, but government can. The struggle for this century will still be against totalitarian political power I'm afraid. And now no one seems to even be aware of the danger. When you see corporations trying to buy politicians so they'll vote one way or another for the benefit of those corportations, the knee-jerk reaction is that the corporations are evil. But why do corporations want to pull the strings of government? Because government is powerful. If we limit government to its basic role of protecting our rights, corporations will no longer want to buy politicians. Instead, they will have to compete in the marketplace for whatever it is they want (usually money). And the best way to make money in a *fair* marketplace is by pleasing your customer. In an unfair marketplace, companies can use bought government power to create and enforce a monopoly (can you say DMCA??).
...poor and minority workers who have little real chance of advancement...
I would hope that someone with as much intelligence as Mr. Katz' professes to have would be a little more careful with such claims. Do they have no chance of advancement because they are a minority, because they work at a McDonalds or because people like Mr. Katz refuse to give them the chance.
I hate to play the race card. I am a caucasion male who will probably never have to face discrimination of this form, but it disgusts me to think that he actually thinks this way.
DocWatson
MessEdUp
#/var/www/v
A popular saying in Russia these days, after the people getting used to the taste of capitalism: "What Lenin told us about communism, was all lies, but what he said about capitalism was all true."
-- Another senseless waste of fine bytes.
As it stands, though, the countries that are the most "advanced" require people to work longer hours just to support their families in an "acceptible" lifestyle. Really, though, we are stuck in a vicious cycle.
The media tells us that we "need" all sorts of useless crap to make us happy. Of course this costs lots of money, so we all work in relatively empty jobs that pay well, but have no sense of fulfillment. We feel empty, so we buy more crap. That doesn't work. (We continue to do it, though.)
People turn to the "old" ways to feel fulfilled. They meet members of the opposite (or same, if that's your preference) sex. They foster relationships. These relationships are fed more and more by codependence, though, and less by real love. People get together because they need someone, rather than that individual. This, of course, leads to the same sense of listlessness. We try something else.
We procreate. Why? Because children will fill the empty voids in our lives. Of course, this is one of the most selfish reasons to have a child, but it's one of the most popular these days. Kids are raised in day care and by nannys. Those that are lucky enough to have two loving parents generally see them only rarely. People don't interact with their children, and therefore this strategy doesn't work, either.
We turn to trendy methods of salvation. We're hungry for anyone to tell us that we're OK. We turn back to religion. We take Yoga. We become scientologists. We take a 7-part course at the Adult-ed center on the art of macaroni neclaces. We have affairs. We're still empty.
Unfortunately, our society has bred us in this way. The media tells us that the only way to be happy is to consume, and we do that better than any country on the planet. We've created all of these things that are supposed to make life more convenient and fulfilling, but they do just the opposite. We have become slaves to our stuff.
The cultures that have the greatest amount of leisure time are those that are hunter-gatherer societies. They work around 10 hours per week to food, clothe and protect their families from the elements. They tend to live happy, stressless lives. We should take our cue from them. How much of the crap that we buy do we really need? Does anyone need an SUV? Will that large screen TV really make you happy? Will bringing home a sack of burgers bring your family closer together than actually cooking a meal together?
Sorry to rant and drone, but America is in a decline. We've got more money and a stronger military than any country on the planet, but we're all becoming slaves to what corporate culture tells us we want.
Simplify your life. Remember the simpler things. It will bring you happiness.
Are we talking about war of the riches, war of the jealous, war of the greedy, or war of the lusted, war of the revengeful, etc. Each are types of wars that have been fought, many resulting in 0 human casualties but they are types of wars nonetheless.
----
Just because a bunch of people believe or do something stupid, doesn't make it any less stupid.
It has, naturally, attracted a disproportionate number of immigrant, poor and minority workers who have little real chance of advancement, and whose work is so rote and mechanized they have no need for high wages, further training or the opportunities to acquire meaningful new skills. This corporatized industry has, with the help of an equally corporatized media, portrayed itself as a great boon to the underclass, hiring people nobody else would employ.
It's to be noted that a lot of fast food chains are having problems hiring and retaining quality workers, and the problem seems to be the absolutely low wages they offer. Most suburban teens do not wish to work for minimum wage, so they must turn to the "underclass" as they call it for the worker pool.
I work for a company that employs a teen for a part-time shipping position. Despite an offer substantially higher than mininum wage, we are having trouble finding a replacement. Maybe teens are getting a little greedy. I worked for the mininum myself years ago (in a movie theater).
We need standards and homogeniety on the Internet so that everyone's browsers, plugins etc can view more or less the same web page. The problem is that no one can every agree out of the goodness of their hearts to adopt a given standard. As a result, we have corporations imposing standards on the Internet as they see fit - but I think we'd be even worse off if they didn't, and I needed to have 12 browsers installed just to read Slashdot :-).
As for the effect of corporations on American politics, I agree their donations to politicians are making them corporate puppets, but what can be done? Any politician who tries to get true campaign reform (Bradley, McCain) can never is squashed by candidates with a lot more money with which to fund ad and smear campaigns. That extra cash comes from the corporations, of course.
The problem, in other words, is that as long as Americans continue to depend on high-powered ad ad campaigns instead of educating themselves about the issues, the candidate with the largest ad budget will always win, and the candidate with the largest ad budget will be the one with the most corporate backing.
I'm the stranger...posting to
what "morality" are we to enforce against the freedom to act, and the choice of the individual?
i'm not saying that individuals do not choice to do bad things. there are lots of people in the world doing really nasty things to their fellow humans, who consider themselves to be the pinacle of "moral" at the same time. the Talaban in Afganistan is a good example. so is Hitler.
every warning in the article as posted, and likely in the book (i have no read it) is a good one. free individuals must be allowed to choose.
and if people choose the "fast food culture"? are they wrong for doing so?
the greatest danger is see in all of this is the combination of government/corporate power. the government monopoly on initiation of force allowes their creation, the "corporation", to act irresponsibily. and isn't the real objection of the individuals to this fast-food encorporation of culture that the people responsible are never punished for the harm that they do?
as a "moral" guide, i submit solely that it is wrong to initiate force, or to deligate that initiation to a third party, against anyone.
how does that fit with your model of "morality"?
remember, the government that can give you everything you want can as easily take it all away. and will.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
...to different people, and different things to the same people in different circumstances. I never eat McDonald's in the U.S. It's too mundane. But in China, I ate there every chance I got because I knew that at least the food there wouldn't make me sick. For the Chinese in the McDonald's, however, it seemed to be a social statement, an expression of modernity.
So, while I wholeheartedly agree with Jon about corporatization vis-a-vis government, for the consumer market it's not necessarily a bad thing or the end of the world. Obviously, if there wasn't a demand for the product and services the multinationals provide, then they wouldn't do very well. Of course a portion of the demand for said products and services is manufactured, but even without advertising and monopolistic behavior there are times when all you want is a burger, fries, and a coke, and when you go to McDonald's you know you can get exactly that.
It does mean that the McDonald's, Fords, and Targets of the world will continue to spread worldwide, but the region- and cultural specific companies will continue to exist and thrive because no mass chain can satisfy all needs. Sure, McDonald's in Bordeaux might someday offer pate, but I wouldn't recommend it and the natives probably wouldn't buy it.
Lastly, who are we to stand in the way of the world's demand for choice? Think of the poor schmuck in China wondering what to have for dinner. He can have Chinese food again, or, go for something really exotic like...Kentucky Fried Chicken!
That was an article that resonated with me, Jon. Do you think that cars might also be part of the trends that you write about? I do. To support cars you need a highway infrastructure that makes every place look the same. Cars make people out of shape because they drive alot, and driving alot is a part of the sprawl, that you mentioned. What is the solution? I would like to believe that the simple act of riding a bicycle is a solution. Bicycles aren't cages, so it's easier to talk to people. You earn every mile you bicycle, and get into great shape. And lots of space is saved, so there isn't much sprawl. It's Health, Wealth, and Community in a two-wheel package. The bicycle seems like an ideal symbol for a good use of technology.
Sure, it did.
Do I have to refresh your memory in regard to Nazi Germany diplomatic succeses with Austria and Czech Republic ?
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
"is just the dying roar of an old white ugly beast. "
Without which all these "new and enlightened" cultures are sure to engage into what they do best: savage and completely irresponsible copying of old and discarded political and social ideas (resulting in hunger, poverty and other ills third world countries are so well known for.)
Don't you ever forget, communism was White European Invention. The difference is that Europeans finally realized it took them to nowhere.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
It is not his definition.
" underperform" was defined by millions of people who voluntarily (and sometimes risking their lives) decided to escape from USSR and other Communism practicing countries.
People vote with their feet. Communism overwhelmingly lost that vote.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
No, it is not about human rights.
Most of the refugees from Soviet dominated countries escaped because they recognized the lack of any economical future ( specially as compared to western world.)
They refused to live in Communism because it would be a shity life. Simple as that.
...and you can't blame meteors for everything.
Think about it... We all respond to things (good or bad). We enjoy it in fact, as humans. The high's and low's. I am not one for communism, and it sounds like to me that some of these ideas in the article are trying to LEVEL the playing field, so to speak. If you make everything even for people, how can someone achieve more than another person? It just won't happen. That's why I don't like that idea. Even if I achieve less than another person... I still can try to achieve more, I have the opportunity to achieve more. I hope I am not alone when I same I am a big believer in CHANGE (good or bad) :)
That's my 99 cents on the matter.
Writing reality is always better than amateur middle class philosophy, just as sex is better than amateur porn. Rockin' damn good job kid! Americans really ARE disgusting!
According to this view, the sense of dissatisfaction associated with consumerism is a consequence of the suboptimal outcome that this interaction pattern generates. Suppose that two neighbours each want to project an image of success, and that projecting such an image becomes essential to their sense of well-being. The problem, of course, with projecting an image of success is that success is entirely relative. What were considered sure signs of prosperity and success twenty years ago are now just rudimentary components of a middle-class lifestyle. The only way to project success is to appear more successful than one's neighbours - to drive a nicer car, have a larger house, and so on. Thus comparative consumption can easily become competitive consumption. And in many circumstances, this competition becomes a race to the bottom.
Suppose that both neighbours are working a standard week, and driving modest sedans. However, by putting in a bit of overtime, it is possible for each to buy a more expensive car, say an SUV. Suppose further that the extra status associated with being the only one to own such a vehicle is of greater value than the foregone leisure time, and that the humiliation associated with being the only one not to own such a vehicle is worse than the loss of leisure.
Both neighbours will decide to work harder, either to get the extra status, or just to avoid the humiliation. As a result, they will wind up right back where they started - both driving the same type of car, both having the same relative status - except that now they will be working harder in order to maintain their lifestyle. Thus the outcome produced through status competition is inferior, from both of the participants' perspectives, to the situation that initially obtained. (Notice, incidentally, that the possibilities for status competition are limited by the range of consumption goods available. The appearance of exotic new consumption goods makes it possible for individuals to distinguish themselves in a new way. Thus consumers can be harmed by the introduction of new status goods, even if they voluntarily purchase them.)
excerpt from:
The Structure of Hip Consumerism
by Professor Joseph Heath