Tuesday, December 20th, 2011
“Politics,” John Dewey once observed of the normal state of corporate capitalism, “is the shadow cast on society by big business.” As this normalcy has grown and the methods of big business marketing have been increasingly applied to selecting and selling candidates, Dewey’s shadow metaphor has seemed less and less adequate. Politics is now the scientific management of society’s macro-choices by big business.
For those interested in this topic, check out this new report from the Sunlight Foundation. Its main finding:
If you think wealth is concentrated in the United States, just wait till you look at the data on campaign spending. In the 2010 election cycle, 26,783 individuals (or slightly less than one in ten thousand Americans) each contributed more than $10,000 to federal political campaigns. Combined, these donors spent $774 million. That’s 24.3% of the total from individuals to politicians, parties, PACs, and independent expenditure groups.
For those still laboring under the illusion that the Democratic Party is somehow an exception to the rule of capital, the report shows that:
Over time, the share of all individual campaign contributions coming from The One Percent of the One Percent has increased for both parties, increasing from 17.8% in 1990 to 32.1% in the 2010 election cycle. Consistently, Democrats have been slightly more reliant on The One Percent of the One Percent than Republicans – relying on The One Percent of the One Percent for, on average, about three percentage points more of their itemized campaign receipts.
TCT would suggest that aspiring progressives and radicals can save themselves a great deal of precious energy by keeping this fundamental reality in mind.
Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Adweek is profiling what it calls “new model agencies.” Dig the poozers below, featured there today.
The latest hipster band? Aspiring novelists? Nope, the “cool” and “creative” mini-capitalists behind such stunningly important work as the Dr Pepper Social Program. Click the picture to see their amazing genius on display.
You have to hand it to these two yankers. Clearly, they’ve sensed that corporate marketers themselves love to be flattered as they “award” out their button-pushing assignments. Hence, the pomo-nerd “Code & Theory” moniker and the pseudo-intellectual/bored-ecstasy-dealer presentments.
All in the name of tricking the kids into becoming “fans” of a brand of soda-pop on the world’s biggest marketing data-harvesting engine, of course.
Such are the priorities and things that are cool in early 21st century America…
Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
There is, of course, no such thing as a $6,200 cell phone. Except, of course, that there is. It’s called the Vertu Constellation. It’s made by Nokia, and has apparently sold more than 300,000 copies.
Mental illness is obviously as epidemic as ever within the overclass.
It’s also something of an IQ test, this Vertu geegaw. See if you can spot the pseudo-intellectualisms, flatteries, and effete product differentiations in this promo blurb:
Constellation is the first handset with a full touch screen from Vertu. Designed with simple elegance at its core, each Constellation is handmade using state-of the art technologies and manufacturing techniques including 8 megapixel camera with ruby surround, hard worked leather and our unique high fidelity sounds system. With one delicate touch you can navigate effortlessly and intuitive [sic] to explore the exclusive services available and a range of carefully curated apps providing bespoke services and information at your fingertips.
Lulz and barfz.
Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
For those interested in the story of how the overclass suppresses not-for-profit public enterprise, the latest edition of Bloomberg Business Week carries a must-read.
Funny, isn’t it — the extravagant tricks required to preempt something that’s supposedly stillborn and/or self-destroying and/or a road to serfdom, if not simply impossible?
One might also wonder if the case of the model telecom legislation pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council will also be taught as part of another of ALEC’s efforts — an attempt, on behalf of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, to plant state laws “requiring that all high school students take a class in ‘free enterprise’ as a condition of graduation.”
Monday, December 5th, 2011
The Occupy movement is drifting, trying to figure where to camp next. Meanwhile, the United States Postal Service, despite being all but mandated in the purportedly perfect and holy U.S. Constitution, is being further starved and strangled, at the cost of another 28,000 decent jobs next year alone.
Why not put 2 and 2 together, and demand that the United States not only stop the euthanasia, but reverse course and develop a robust, modernized postal system?
We know the USPS used to be permitted to open and maintain savings accounts, and that national postal services still do so in other nation-states.
We might also observe that the reason everybody states for tolerating the further erosion of the USPS — the rise of email, fax, SMS/text, and internet messaging, and the attending decline in paper-based letters and volumes — is merely a new form of the human process the Post Office was intended to encourage. Why permit the overclass to enjoy making the first half of the point without pressing them on the second? Why not fuse reason and radicalism, on a topic that few could dispute is of deepest importance?
So, Occupiers, why not occupy Post Offices and insist that the USPS be reinvigorated and launched into the business of building and maintaining a modern communications infrastructure, as well as maintaining some appropriate amount of snail-mail delivery? Why not use the USPS to compete with the corporate squatters who are now allowed to suppress public enterprise while sucking money-for-nothing from the patchy, over-priced, for-profit, advertising-intensive, second-rate telecom system in this country? Why not insist that the Postal Service build a modern, universally-available national internet, with lower prices, minimal marketing overlay, and no place for payouts to private investors? Why not out-compete the cell phone oligopolies and their pathetic but hugely expensive war over meaningless market shares? Why not insist that junk mail and corporate marketers pay first-class or even first-class-plus rates to use the public’s physical mail system?
While we’re at it, in our moment of deserved but dangerous bankster bashing, why not also press to restore the banking function to the Post Office? A 2% savings account sounds pretty good right about now, doesn’t it? And the deposits could be used to finance the USPS’s modernization and universalization of the means of citizen-to-citizen communication.
Why not insist on preserving and expanding a major public enterprise that provides decent jobs to people who do honorable, vital tasks? Why not stick it to the Man — and in some vital organs, for a change?
Monday, December 5th, 2011
The marketing platform known as Christmas is, given its obvious importance to the powers-that-be, often a season of increased honesty among the professionals who plan, implement, and track our market-totalitarian culture’s driving gears. Hence, in today’s edition of Advertising Age, reporter Natalie Zmuda asks:
Consumers claim they’re keeping a close eye on holiday budgets, so how to explain this year’s record-breaking post-Thanksgiving retail sales?
The answer, of course:
The secret is landing on the right marketing message, but it’s no simple feat. For retailers, planning for the Christmas ads just now airing kicked off months ago. Many begin assessing the season as soon as the last holiday season ends, with the heavy lifting in market research and consumer testing happening in late spring or early summer.
Social engineering, in other words.
All to the intended (for the overclass) end:
Research from Shopper Sciences, part of IPG’s Mediabrands, found that 80% of shoppers surveyed spent more than they planned to Black Friday weekend. Shoppers have been “living in a siege state of mind,” said Shopper Sciences CEO John Ross, so consumers are susceptible when they stumble on that perfect item that wasn’t on the list.
Tis the season — of induced stumbling and susceptibility!
“Politics,” John Dewey once observed of the normal state of corporate capitalism, “is the shadow cast on society by big business.” As this normalcy has grown and the methods of big business marketing have been increasingly applied to selecting and selling candidates, Dewey’s shadow metaphor has seemed less and less adequate. Politics is now the scientific management of society’s macro-choices by big business.
