Go to almost any city in the center of this country and you will find that its beating heart has been ripped out and replaced by a strip mall. Everywhere you go, you see the same chain restaurants, wal-marts, Best Buys. Our country is wrapped in chains.
I think that large corporate entities like these are inherently evil. Their focus is purely on profit and lacks a real connection to the community whose money they gladly suck out of their pockets. The small acts of "community involvement" in which they participate are calculated acts of public relations.
This is part of what I loved about New York City when I moved here a decade ago. Every neighborhood had its own flavor and it was not a strip mall like the rest of this country. Over the last ten years I have seen the monster that sucked the life and individuality out of every other city, wrap its clammy hands around the neck of my beloved New York with a stranglehold that brought forth a starbucks and a gap on every corner. Yes, I exhagerate, but not too profusely.
Today it was announced that Starbucks would be shuttering 600 retail locations and throwing 12,000 employees out onto their asses.
This is where the problem lies with large corporate beasts like starbucks. They come into an area and put all the mom and pop places out of business. These are businesses that are a part of the community and would struggle through hard times to stay afloat. Starbucks however looks at a larger picture of profitability on a national scale devoid of caring on a community level. They will gladly close 600 locations that are underperforming, leaving vacant those spaces to maintain their profit margins.
They essentially leave the community with a gutted building that used to be a starbucks and an empty boarded up "tea and bean" or whatever the coffee house was called that preceeded them.
The bloated underbelly of capitalism is showing itself more and more these days.
I urge you to support small american owned businesses. They are the lifeblood of this country. They are the real american dream. If we all work together and quit feeding the beast of corporate america, we might just be able to take back our country. We might just be able to destroy the structure that feeds Washington lobbyists. These are idealistic thoughts, I know.
There is one thing I have come to learn. This place runs on money. The way you choose to spend your money may have more of an impact than pulling a lever in a voting booth.
On that note, Your recommended listening for today is Dar Williams' Play the Greed, lyrics below
Play The Greed
I finally learned that the market's righteous holler
Comes from a pale face on a paper dollar
And I betcha got few bucks in your hemp wallet
So throw a tiny wrench in the fiber optic wires
Morals are cheap and you can be the buyers
We can let 'em poison and perish foreign lands
Or we can play the greed right into our hands
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Everybody says it can't happen here
Everybody says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they all take credit
So ask why there's only forty songs on a station
And ask your cafe about their coffee's plantation
And why is it Arizona hasn't gone solar?
And tell your print shop that hemp grows faster
And it doesn't mean a back room clear cut disaster
The market doesn't care but it wants to understand
And you can play the greed right into your hands
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Smiling man says it can't happen here
Channel 4 says it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, the change comes and they all take credit
So roll up your pennies and do your battle
The chairman will start quoting Chief Seattle and
Put little tree frogs on their letterhead
'Cause the market resists and the market absorbs
With a five-pointed leaf on the cover of Forbes
The very same people turned valleys to dams
These are the ones that drain prairies to sand
And they'd just as soon you didn't know this land is your land
But we can play the world back into our hands
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Malcom's gonna say it can't happen here
Rupert's gonna say it can't happen here
Things'll turn around just as sure as they said it
Hell, things change and they'll always take the credit
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Oh, woah - oh, woah
Hell the change comes
Let's let 'em take the credit
No comments:
Post a Comment