As I watch less TV and pay less attention to advertising, I notice it surrounding me more. And the message that creeps out as a constant theme is: we are surrounded by predators. Hungry, voracious animal corporations with crappy products and only tricky (sometimes to the point of brilliant) marketing tactics designed to lure you and trap you. Entrenchment they call it. And we are helpless. Buyer beware is the advice.
For too long Goverment has abdicated its core responsibility to determine the limits of acceptable behavior. Too many companies believe that they have the open space to prey on society. With continued mergers, weakening of regulatory oversight (a constant pressure pushed by corporate lobbyists), deceptive marketing practices to obscure the real situation and the disappearance of ethics in corporate management, we have unleashed powerful, hungry forces on an unsuspecting, generally trusting public. The imbalance – in power and information – between corporate predators and individual citizens has grown dangerously large.
What has been forgotten? Corporations are not voting citizens. Corporations operate in our economy with our permission. Our society, and the actions of its citizens, decides what we need (and don’t). We are not defined by the corporations (or their marketing and brands) – we have the power in the firmament of our society – to define them. Citizens must decide what is acceptable behavior and the role of corporations in our society.
