Technology And The Fast Food Nation

If the history of the twentieth century was marked by bloody 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. This conflict between morality and prosperity isn't only about the survival of individualism. It's about the soul of technology, which created the Fast Food Nation. It could soon be the story of computing too. (Read more.)

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.

Comments

Very Important Book

[Scotter]

Schlosser's Fast Food Nation is a well written, well organized journey into an industry which reflects and has partially determined our current society.

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.)

How original

[Kohath]

Taking shots at McDonalds and "evil corporations". How original.

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.

Re:My first trip to Prague

[Tackhead]

> But people like the convenience, the low price and the fact that they know what they are getting.

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.

Viable Solutions

[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*

Re:Well capitalism is a white European invention

[briancarnell]

Well capitalism is a white European invention and it is poised to disappear as non-European nations become dominant.

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?)

Re:The New Feudalism

[OmegaDan]

My god is this true ... every last one of my friends who didn't go to college -- work menial job after menial job (read: guitar center, Wherehouse, CompUSA etc.) to buy pot, their videogames, and make payments on outrageously expensive vehicles.

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)

Any coherent thesis?

[NearlyHeadless]

As usual, Katz is railing, but it's never exactly clear about what. There must be some problem, but he can never state clearly what it is or any possible solution to it except that we must stop "corporatism," whatever that is.

Examples:

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?

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

Oh, Christ - get a grip

[legLess]

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

Age of the Puppet Kings

[Alien54]

Corporate domination of the real world no longer seems possible unless companies like Microsoft and AOL/Time-Warner bring the virtual one under control.

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

The New Feudalism

[tenzig_112]

A relatively impressionable public wants what they are told to want. And so we have millions of people working unsatisfying jobs just to "get by" [read: Cable, Playstation, etc.].

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)

Additional relevant reading

[Essron]

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.

No Jon, politicians still rule, and are our bane.

[Shivetya]

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.

Re:My first trip to Prague

[bahtama]

Here is a quote from http://www.urban75.com/Mag/prague1.html

There are now 10 branches of McDonalds in Prague and one strategically placed on every major road going into the city. There are plans for 40 KFC outlets in the Czech Republic by the end of the year and Coca Cola and Pepsi signs are everywhere. It is impossible to evade their presence.

Would they be put there if the first 4 locations failed? No. McDonalds is not the whole problem, although I will admit it is mostly to blame. But you have to remember that the only reason McDoanlds continues to grow is because of consumers. If people don't buy McDonalds food, there would be no McDonalds. But people like the convenience, the low price and the fact that they know what they are getting. They know exactly what is on a hamburger, what the chicken nuggets will taste like and what kind of sauce they can get.

This is the same thing as a picture I saw of the WTO protests. When you protest in Nikes and Gap clothes, or when you protest McDonalds by only eating there once a week, the problem isn't going to go away. By boycotting a product, you can affect the corporation. But since most people don't care, this is very unlikely to happen..

=-=-=-=-=

abuse of the term "corporatism"

[regexp]

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.