The March of the Bastards

Another day, another bastard corporation tries to fuck people over. This time, Unilever, SABMiller and Nestle (surprise, surprise) are hawking their uber-advertised, non-nutritious shite to the developing world - to countries that are yet to deal with malnutrition and starvation. Clearly, for the good of the people in those countries.....

This story, I think, raises two points. First, the structure that exists within most major corporations neccessitates not looking out for the interests of humanity. Within most major companies the existence of short-term stockholders means the companies have to ensure good profits each quarter (every 12 weeks!) in order to avoid capital flight. This structural pressure from the stockholders forces a continual short-termism, which promotes, well, basically, finding different ways to screw people. These companies should not be trusted - particularly by governments entering in to "responsibility" deals or whatever the fuck they're called. The companies should be pilloried for their craven self-interest and bastardly ways in the short-term and the system should be reformed in the long-run.

Second, while we decry the use of propaganda in Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union and claim its great effectiveness at "brainwashing" the population, the Western world remains entirely blind to the continual churning of propaganda from corporate machines. These companies manufacture markets, they create desires that satisfy the interests of corporations themselves and not of the people. In this particular case, they are promoting wants over needs and seriously fucking both people and countries over. Advertising will be the fucking death of us.

The National Diet: Fat Wallets and Fat People

Along with a whole host of other disturbing announcements that have been coming from the Coalition government recently, Health Secretary Andrew Lansley has put Britain on a diet. A 5 billion calorie a day diet. This announcement follows Denmark introducing the world's first-ever fat tax. However, unlike the fat tax, which is a clear policy that uses basic economic assumptions to disincentivise the purchase of foods high in saturated fat, Britain's diet (like so many individual diets) is a "ambition". Better still, it is an ambition that will be fulfilled with the help of food and drink companies in a "responsibility deal". That is, a voluntary deal.

Why is it these companies are viewed as benign partners in the war on obesity by ideologues whose entire philosophy is based on self-interest? It is fundamentally contradictory - these companies spend countless billions of pounds promoting their unhealthy foods and their entire business model is premised upon making people fat. They have no incentive to change the current system where both their wallets, and the British people, get fat. They have no incentive to provide and promote food that actually matches the needs of our increasingly sedentary lives. They have the exact opposite incentives, which gives us two choices: either change the incentive structures through taxation, or change the structure of the organisations through strict regulation - the time for gentlemanly agreements with the promoters of crap food is over.

Once again we see craven, gutless politicians unable and unwilling to hurt the corporate bottom line; even when the corporate bottom line is hurting us.