America’s corpocracy, or what I call the Devil’s marriage between dominant corporate and subordinate government America, is a vast domain of thousands of colluding corporations and government agencies.1 While the corpocracy’s rampant and successful wrongdoing is what makes the corpocracy so powerful, it still must depend on customers to survive and thrive. Customers? Let’s make that more often “victims,” people harmed by the corpocracy’s wrongdoing in some way or another from trivial to irrevocable, like death.
Ironically, one of the corpocracy’s victims is itself, as when the Department of War is exploited by the war industry.2 This article is not about how the corpocracy can protect itself from itself. Why would I ever want to offer self help to the corpocracy? Better that it self-destructs! No, this article is a review of the literature on ways in which Americans victimized by the corpocracy can fight back, if they should be plucky enough or sure enough.
Why, you may well ask, do I even bother to write this article since the counter-puncher is invariably outpunched, sometimes more than once? Since Corporate America tells Government America what to do and not to do, if there is no redress from the former, there is unlikely to be any from the latter either. Since Government America is a corporate service, not a public service, “the public be Damned” is more likely to be the outcome of any follow-up counter-punching. Nevertheless, being an informed customer surely is preferable to being an uninformed customer, particularly at the beginning when the options are to buy or not to buy a suspect product or service.
Not writing the article, moreover, would be defeatist, a response to be avoided. Moreover, writing a good article requires good second-hand research only fingertips away from the keyboard and the Internet that just might yield some practical insights and revelations.
But before getting to the types of counterpunches available to those wronged, let’s quickly scan the land of wrongdoers to remind us of who they are and what they do to their customers. Excluded will be the greatest wrongdoers of history, the U.S. war (and gun) industry and the U.S. Department of War.3 Their customers and non-customer victims are well known and fall outside the present topic.
A Few Examples of Wrongdoers and Their Wrongdoing
Since knowledgeable readers of the alternative media already know what they know about the subject at hand and are also victimized customers themselves, only a few examples are given for the three more harmful industries.4 A few examples are also given for the retail industry simply because of the sheer volume of their customers.
Pharmaceutical Industry. Diluted cancer drugs to boost profits. Successfully lobbies to keep drug prices high. Sells pills that kill about 100,000 Americans annually. Markets a drug that is more expensive than alternative drugs and deadly among adults and children.
Agriculture/Chemical Industries. Sued a farmer claiming he was using the company’s patented seeds. Causes billions of dollars to be spent yearly for healthcare, subsidies, environmental damage, and more from producing and consuming foods laced with pesticides, antibiotics and GMOs.
Financial Services Industry. Created and marketed fantasy financial products plummeting U.S. into its 2nd greatest depression. Soaks credit card holders with excessive rates. Constantly raises deductibles while shrinking coverage. Hem haws in honoring insurance claims and short changes legitimate claims.
Retail Industry. A dozen or so large corporations monopolize this industry. Its predominate victims are their employees who work for pittance and are bullied along the way, bullied suppliers, and small communities that lose their small retailers when a mammoth retailer arrives on the scene. An illustrative retailer is Walmart, referred to as “the beast from Bentonville,” by the author of an incriminating expose. 5
Its other victims are customers in the ordinary sense. Exploiting them is rife in this industry Sometimes customers don’t even know they are being exploited. Here is an example of stealth marketing: a few extremely pricey items are prominently displayed to lure bargain hunters into buying two of the less pricey items displayed nearby.6 Other examples of exploitation include making false claims, baiting and switching, reneging on deals, using small print and lengthy terms and conditions to discourage their being read or understood, and requiring prospective buyers to waive their Constitutional right to sue in court for any damages from the product after its purchase and use.
Counter Punches
- Complaining
- Boycotting
- Lobbying
- Suing
Complaining
To whom do the complainers submit a complaint? Let’s briefly review the three options: business complaint departments, independent complaint resources, and the government’s myriad complaint resources.
Business Complaint Departments. They are, to put it simply, a farce. Companies with the worst customer service that “people hate calling” reportedly are Comcast, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Wells Fargo, and Dish Network.7 Mind you, they are simply the five worst, which leaves a lot of room for hundreds of other despised customer complaint departments.
Private Complaint Resources. Probably the most familiar is the Better Business Bureau to which consumers can submit complaints and get ratings for better businesses to patronize. BBB is a useless resource and has been criticized for allegedly giving higher ratings to businesses that pay a membership fee.8 Then there are websites on the internet that air complaints without resolving them such as the “Complaints Board” that bills itself as “the most trusted and popular consumer website.”
Regulatory Agencies. The Bureau of Labor Statistics lists, if I counted correctly, 115 industries in the U.S. but a U.S. government website lists only six federal regulatory agencies by product type where consumer complaints can be filed, and two of the unlisted types are two of the most harmful industries I highlighted above, the pharmaceutical and agriculture/chemical industries. Such bureaucratic nonsense is to be expected. But it really doesn’t matter, anyway. All the federal regulatory agencies were captured by Corporate America long ago. Suppose you were permanently impaired by eating a GMO product engineered by “MonSatan.” Don’t bother contacting FDA, the federal agency supposedly regulating the safety of food. FDA has given “Monsanto a pass” that amounts to “playing with genetic fire” whenever we eat.9
Boycotting
Boycotts have minimal effect. Corporations can afford them. A few years ago, corporations were listed that were boycotted by various groups for one reason or another.10 As far as I can tell the corporations on the list are still thriving, although a large percent of customers dissatisfied with a given brand switched to a different brand and are likely to tell friends about their negative experience and may even post a negative review online.11 Kudos to them!
Lobbying
Lobbying, you ask incredulously, when corporate America is the summa cum laude of lobbying for their self-interests? Well, any approach, I reason, is worth considering when the corpocracy has us hanging onto the ropes by our fingertips. Consider consumers of eggs and animal rights activists, for instance, who have been lobbying against the cruel treatment of hens by industrial farm factories. Despite a few isolated reforms, “severe abuses throughout the industry remain commonplace.”12 Let’s not dismiss this form of counterpunching altogether, however. I learned, for instance, of a success story, one in which the “largest and most powerful lobbying group for the processed food industry” has been brought “to the breaking point” by organized consumer groups.13
Suing
The scold of corporate America, Ralph Nader, has exhorted us to “sue for justice” because our “lawsuits are good for America.”14 His exhortation is most quixotic. He contends that “tort law is seriously underused,” and finishes the sentence with the reason why, namely, “primarily because it is not easy to hire attorneys to litigate against wealthy commercial firms.” Tort lawyers, an appendage of the corpocracy, and legislators, have all but guaranteed through tort “reform” legislation the futility of winning a lawsuit against corporate wrongdoing except for truly egregious and indisputable cases. Moreover, even if there were a customer-friendly tort law, proving the plaintiff’s case probably would take a Houdini lawyer because no corporation is going to go down without an interminable and nasty fight. Furthermore, wily corporations put clauses into contracts for big ticket items replacing the customer’s right to sue with arbitration agreements skewed in favor of guess who?
Conclusion
This article’s title is written as a question implying uncertainty over the usefulness of counterpunching the corpocracy. It is mostly a rhetorical question. Except in rare instances involving indisputable cases of bodily harm or wrongful death, we can be almost certain that the corpocracy will win the fight.
- Brumback, GB. The Devil’s Marriage: Break Up the Corpocracy or Leave Democracy in the Lurch, 2011.
- See Brumback, GB. “Inside the War Industry“, OpEdNews, April 6; Dissident Voice, April 10; Uncommon Thought Journal, April 15, 2018.
- Brumback, GB. America’s Oldest Professions: Waring and Spying, 2015.
- See Brumback, GB. “An Evil Root“, OpEdNews, March 8; Dissident Voice, March 15; The Greanville Post, March 20; Uncommon Thought Journal, March 21, 2017.
- Hightower, J. “How Wal-Mart Is Remaking Our World: Bullying people from your town to China”, April 26, 2002.
- Poundstone, W. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value and How to Take Advantage of It, 2010.
- Oswald, E. “Worst Customer Service: 5 Companies People Hate Calling”, CheatSheet.com., July 14, 2017.
- Reference Designer. “Better Business Bureau – A Useless Institution?” Reference Designer, September 21st, 2009.
- Todhunter, C. “Genetic Engineering and the GMO Industry: Corporate Hijacking of Food and Agriculture”, Global Research, January 1, 2013.
- Ethical Consumer. “List of Consumer Boycotts”, May 2016.
- Llopis, G. “Consumers Are No Longer Brand Loyal”, Forbes, December 10, 2014.
- Greenwald, G. “Consumers Are Revolting Against Animal Cruelty — So the Poultry Industry Is Lobbying for Laws to Force Stores to Sell Their Eggs”, The Intercept, March 2, 2018.
- Mercola, J. “Lobbying Group for Processed Food Industry Teeters on Brink of Extinction — Will Its Science Propaganda Arm Follow Suit?” Organic Consumers Association, February 27, 2018.
- Nader, R. “Suing for Justice. Your lawsuits are good for America,” Harper’s, April 2016.