How the Corporate Takeover of Society Is Leaving Us Feeling Empty Inside

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/corporate-accountability-and-workplace/corporations-have-taken-over-profit-more-way

How do you engineer a bland, depoliticised world, a consensus built around consumption and endless growth, a dream world of materialism and debt and atomisation, in which all relations can be prefixed with a dollar sign, in which we cease to fight for change? You delegate your powers to companies whose profits depend on this model.

Power is shifting: to places in which we have no voice or vote. Domestic policies are forged by special advisers and spin doctors, by panels and advisory committees stuffed with lobbyists. The self-hating state withdraws its own authority to regulate and direct. Simultaneously, the democratic vacuum at the heart of global governance is being filled, without anything resembling consent, by international bureaucrats and corporate executives. The NGOs permitted – often as an afterthought – to join them intelligibly represent neither civil society nor electorates. (And please spare me that guff about consumer democracy or shareholder democracy: in both cases some people have more votes than others, and those with the most votes are the least inclined to press for change.)

To me, the giant consumer goods company Unilever, with which I clashed over the issue of palm oil a few days ago, symbolises these shifting relationships. I can think of no entity that has done more to blur the lines between the role of the private sector and the role of the public sector. If you blotted out its name while reading its web pages, you could mistake it for an agency of the United Nations.

It seems to have representation almost everywhere. Its people inhabit (to name a few) the British government's Ecosystem Markets Task Force and Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition, the International Fund for Agricultural Development, the G8's New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, the World Food Programme, the Global Green Growth Forum, the UN's Scaling Up Nutrition programme, its Sustainable Development Solutions Network, Global Compact and the UN High Level Panel on global development.

[Earth_First]

1. USAID, Peace Corps, National Endowment for Democracy...

The list goes on and on.

All working to waging Democracy in the interests of the Corporatist agenda.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[cprise]

7. Also quite manifest in the photo and comments of

...this thread: http://www.democraticunderground.com/1014772772

Notice the people who defend the corporate-sponsored version of "civil society".

Its amazing, really. They can spend oodles of time on DU and never clue in to the real civil society concerns that course over the front page every day.

[Enthusiast]

10. PLUS A BRAZILLION!

[Junkdrawer]

3. Destroying Public Education turned off all remaining burglar alarms ....

Last edited Wed Apr 9, 2014, 08:55 AM - Edit history (2)

Still Undetermined:

What will the new "owners" do, exactly, with what they've stolen? Seems the act of turning off the alarms changed the value of the spoils.

[nikto]

5. Good analogy

[madfloridian]

6. True.

[Dustlawyer]

15. So true, then Fox, Limpballs & company did the rest as adult education!

[daleanime]

4. K&R....

[ancianita]

8. Not to mention how empty the children feel in these corporate run schools. The empty calories of

capitalism.

[cprise]

11. Otherwise, simply attach child to HDTV

to ingest endlessly writhing-gyrating-computer-generated-dystopian-monster-superhero images with an unprecedented rate of violence and ad impressions per minute.

Oh, and "like us on Facebook"!

[ancianita]

16. Ugh, what a vision. Not that I don't believe in the importance of a developmental gaming curriculum.

A good sequential gaming system teaches focus, sequence, delay of gratification, long term concentration, problem solving, analytical thinking and teamwork.

So don't quickly sell it short. It should, however, be presented within a thematic content framework that requires lots of reading, writing and discussion.

[Enthusiast]

9. I feel sick, not empty.

My sick feeling is directly attributable to the actions of corporations.

I guess if I felt healthy then I could feel empty too.

[fasttense]

12. The emptiness of being a consumer and serf to corporate kings

Can be depressing and overwhelming at times. Just shopping and working at a boring job is soul sucking.

I find that spending time caring for animals and plants in an outdoor setting (oh, um farming) cheers me up.

[whathehell]

13. I know the feeling, especially of "just shopping and working at a boring job"..Yes,

it IS soul sucking, and like you, I spend time caring for my dog and three cats...I also volunteer and donate

to good causes when I can. I find that helps me feel "connected" and gives me a sense of purpose.

[fasttense]

14. Yes, volunteer work can be so invigorating

so can connecting with other life on this planet.

It is the furthest thing from shopping and kowtowing to a boss that you can get.

[whathehell]

17. Yes, definitely.