Condescending Hillary fans: Man, did this pro-Bernie blogger get it right.

[Manifestor_of_Light]

77. Or you can lie to your customers, like Volkswagen.

They lied to the EPA and a lot of other people, and somehow it came out.

Usually a large corporation will lie about all sorts of things and get away with it because there is nobody to stop them. If a whistleblower comes out, their lives will be ruined, and they will be called a crazy nutcase and a disgruntled employee with "an ax to grind".

And who owns the majority of the stock in these large corporations? Your average blue-collar working stiff? No. The wealthy.

Oftentimes the big corporations do not give us choices because all their products are basically the same, and any differences are accounted for by marketing and advertising. All the choices between companies in one product line may all be terrible, and the consumer doesn't know it, because the consumer doesn't know what a quality product looks like or acts like, and now we're all buying cheap Chinese crap in many cases. When only a few giant companies control 95% of the market in a particular product, and we don't have many choices, we don't have real competition. They want to keep their market share. So Americans buy what is advertised to them. The worst case of this is the high prices of prescription medications and health care compared to the rest of the world.

We don't have competition among big corporations. We have rule by big corporations and the illusion of competition.

The ultimate corporation with no competition that I have seen is Wal-Mart. It took over the rural market and is usually the ONLY store that you can buy many things at. Small businesses have been driven out of business. You can't find a local business to buy a good or service at, and if you do, the chances are really good, especially in rural America, that they are incompetent. A lot of business in America is based on lies and bullshit. And the cost to taxpayers of each Wal-Mart store, in the costs of food stamps and government aid because Wal-Mart does not pay a living wage, is something between 900K a year and $1.6 million per year. Subsidized by the taxpayers when it should be paid by the wealthy corporations. Corporations put the burden of risk (via bailouts) and their failure to pay a living wage on the taxpayer and privatize the profits.


In the town I live in now, population 1,400, when I went shopping with my grandmother in the 60s, there was a dry goods store, a doctor, a dentist, a veterinarian (important when you have farm animals as well as pets),a pharmacist, a movie theater, a dry cleaners, and two grocery stores. Now all those businesses are gone. The only two viable businesses besides the two banks are a Dollar General store and a Subway sandwich store. And about 3 crappy gas stations/convenience stores where I can't even get a receipt out of the gas pump. Keeping paper in the gas pump for receipts is beyond the capabilities of the owners.

I have to drive 20 miles just to buy groceries and any other necessities of life.


If I want to buy quality goods at a real department store with helpful salespeople, like Nordstrom or Neiman-Marcus, I have to drive 150 miles to the city. And of course the vibe is completely different in Nordstrom than it is in Wal-Mart or a dollar store. It's the race to the bottom with no middle class to buy stuff. No middle class stores as a result.




GM started making cars better because people started buying Japanese cars and the Japanese cars were far ahead of the American Big Three in quality. People noticed. They started partnering with the Japanese companies such as Ford with Mazda. The Japanese started building their American assembly lines in Southern, non-union states and using us as a third world country for their labor. So did the German auto industry. Then the Koreans came along and started competing in the American car market as well. The Big Three were AGAINST seat belts and air bags. They did not even want to consider safety as a selling point. I thought wanting safety was part of human nature, but apparently the guys in Detroit knew better than the consumer.


Japanese engineering is a lot more precise than American engineering. As an example, I know someone who was a project engineer working for an American subcontractor, on a huge oil rig built by Mitsubishi for Royal Dutch Shell. The American engineers were sloppy. The Mitsubishi folks had their calculations down to FIVE significant digits. The Americans had to go back and recalculate their specs in order to not look like fools.

This is when Detroit was getting their asses whipped starting in the 1970s and had no idea why.