www.flickoff.org

Last week’s post about conniving corporations‘ marketing strategies based on deception prompted this response:

Fred Cadena – I believe in this little thing called personal responsibility. No, I don’t think we need the overhead of a Federal bureaucracy to protect us from ourselves. The fine print may ‘taketh away,’ but only when we agree to things we don’t take the time to read and understand. There is no free lunch.

Ah, personal responsibility. Would that organizations, states and really wealthy individuals feel personally responsible for their obligations – like paying their bills on time. Pity the business that is waiting for payment from the State of Illinois, California and  many others.

When I received Chase Bank’s notice raising my interest rate to 14.99%, I read it and promptly filed it in the pit of my stomach under “anxiety and resentment”, rather than acting upon it straight away.

The main idea was to illustrate that a marketing strategy based on deception may look successful in the short term but sooner or later they will need the customers they have driven away. Indeed this is already happening. Print media and television cannot figure out how to lure viewers and readers who will pay for publications. The internet changed the game. A fellow working at an independently owned organic grocery store, wearing really cool glasses, said he bought them at a thrift shop and had his prescription filled by an optician, saying “It’s one way to wreck the system.”  The Delocator is a website to find independently owned shops for books, coffee, movies, music and organic food where money spent circulates into the local economy at a much higher rate than if spent at a corporate outlet.

This environmental and economic tsunami threatens our food supply. Agri-business thinks that genetically modified foods are at least part of the answer. For us to accept genetically modified food requires trust of corporations that have spectacularly betrayed that trust in the past. In 1993, Archer Daniels Midland received the largest fine in history for price fixing lysine. Three of its top executives spent time in prison. Did it become a good corporate citizen? Not exactly. It has been fined millions for environmental damage and is currently a key threat to the Amazon rain forest.

Living in a culture in which we must be “armed” to deal with corporate deception and the prospect that some people, fearful of looming gun control legislation, are “packing” today is more than a little disheartening. As an educated adult, with a job that pays me every week, I  should be well equipped to deal with credit card companies and the seemingly unlimited number of scams perpetuated daily.

These scams and the need to feel armed are based on the underlying belief in scarcity, a human perversion of the laws of Nature. Nature is inherently and simultaneously thrifty and abundant. Nationwide, we throw away more food in a day than the people in some countries eat in a year. We not only waste food, we waste people as well.

The reality is that we cannot legislate fairness, morality or even justice as Fairness, the Illusion points out. As the world shifts in front of our eyes, a more successful long-term marketing strategy is to figure out how to lift ordinary people up to become stronger, healthier and more educated. Preying upon the unfortunate and the ill-informed is short-term thinking that leads to a downward spiral. Eventually, their bones will have been picked clean. Don’t cry for Chase Bank, Archer Daniels Midland, Monsanto and countless corporations that are enriching themselves at the expense ordinary, working people.  Mutual trust greases the gears to conduct business efficiently. That trust has been betrayed and won’t be easily regained. The forward momentum is coming from the grass roots and from educated, proactive consumers using Delocator and buying glasses at thrift stores to wreck the system.

Tags: fraud, scams