What Do Companies Want?

Mark Morford of the San Francisco Chronicle has become my favorite writer. His ability to say it strongly, clearly and colorfully is unmatched. I am glad someone is out there shouting it at the rooftops and is not worried about being PC. Here is the link to Mark’s column How Many Companies Want You Dead?, and here it is in full:

Oh, don't even pretend to be shocked. You know it's true. You know there are simply a huge number of big, sweaty major corporations out there in big, sweaty capitalismland who claim to be in the business of feeding and caring for the human body, but who actually care about as much for your general health and well-being as a Republican cares for his meth dealer's lesbian daughter's organic free-range Vermont wedding.

Deny it at your peril: It is just sinisterly evident that many corporations -- seemingly far more in quantity and scale than we like to imagine -- would very much like to see you, well, if not completely dead, then surely to suffer, wallow, shake and wobble for as long as you shall barely live.

Why? Because, silly, no matter how you slice it and what sort of optimistic green/organic/progressive wool you like to draw over your eyes, the truth remains: Disease and sickness, obesity and mal-education are still where the real money is. It's just the American way.

Is that too malicious? Too ugly? I'm not so sure. You have but to ponder: Who wants a healthy and calmly educated populace? Who wants people attuned and wise, spiritually secure and inwardly stable? Not the Coca-Cola Corporation. Not Exxon. Not the life insurance industry or Big Tobacco or Big Pharma. Not the Catholic Church. Not Yum! Brands, Pfizer, big agribiz and industrial farms, McDonald's, Kraft Foods, or your local school lunch program. Not most of Congress. Not Fox News or reality TV or the bleating clown car that is the Tea Party. Not fundamentalist Christianity, Mormonism or about 89 percent of Texas.

After all, the smarter and healthier you get, the more you are self-defined, attuned to wisdom and spirit, the less power and influence they have over your life, and the less they can sell you swill and poison, false hope and a sour idea of a bitter, vengeful little God concocted by surly white men in a dank Roman basement sometime around 300 AD.

Let us examine one little example. It comes in the form of a nasty news tidbit that hit my in-box recently, courtesy of a thoughtful and rather horrified reader, in the wake of the greasy fallout over KFC's famously vile Double Down meat abomination thing.

It's a story that reveals a rather unexpected, but not entirely shocking little factoid: It turns out the health and life insurance industries are just hugely invested in the success of the world's fast food companies.

How hugely? According to the study, in 2009 the big health insurance companies owned upwards of $2 billion in stock in the biggest garbage food purveyors in the land. That's a lot of high fructose corn syrup, guar gum, ethoxylated monoglycerides, hormones, antibiotics, pesticides and buckets of greasy, synthetically flavored slop, happily sanctioned and supported by the very companies you would think very much want you to shun those poisons like the pope shuns Ireland.

You may then rightly ask: What the hell are they up to? What sort of nefarious forces are at play? At first glance, maybe you can excuse it as pure capitalism at work. Large corporations often invest in other large corporations, seeking any means to making as much money as possible; principles don't usually factor into it.

In fact, as the nation just witnessed, it is inherently forbidden for ethics to come anywhere within a 100-mile radius of Wall Street. You want to round out your portfolio? Are you seeking some good cash flow and (relative) long-term stability in the market? Invest in the classic cornerstones of capitalism: oil, sweatshops, junk food, pharmaceuticals, weapons manufacturers, industrial slaughterhouses, coal mining and so on, and tell your soul to shut the hell up. Daddy needs a new speedboat and some bullets for the apocalypse.

But that's only part of the picture. It takes no effort at all to peel back one more layer and say that the health insurance industry obviously has a vested interest in keeping you fat and sick and ever at their mercy. After all, they're just hedging their bets.

Much like Big Tobacco's brilliant collusion with Big Pharma, both cheerfully feeding you a slew of lies and misinfo about smoking's terrible addictiveness on the one hand, while turning right around and convincing you of the need for expensive drugs and patches, rehabs and gums on the other in a vicious cycle of shame, victimhood and failed willpower, so do the health and junk food companies work together to make each other mountains of cash, with you as the dumbass hub.

Put it this way: The more successful McDonald's is, the sicker the nation gets, the higher your insurance premiums will skyrocket, the more drugs you will demand, the less willpower you will have, the more you will crave toxic garbage "comfort food," the more you will believe you're a victim, the less control you will have over the your body and your life, the happier these companies will be. And lo, the circle of life continues. Until your heart collapses.

Do not misunderstand. I am not saying these corporations are intentionally, murderously malevolent. I am stopping just short of implying a scenario where despicable corporate meatheads sit around bland boardrooms concocting ways to literally poison and kill you. Well, not entirely, anyway.

Because the truth is, you're just not that important. Your health and well-being are entirely incidental to the larger goal -- which is, of course, making a s--load of money. If these companies think of you at all, it's simply as a means to that end. You're just a bulbous ATM to them. You are, as always, entirely expendable.

Is there any good news? A little. As Michael Pollan pointed out, as flawed as the health care reform package is, come 2014, we will still see a dramatic shift, as heathcos will no longer be able to turn you down for coverage or charge higher rates for pre-existing conditions. This means they will have a far greater vested interest in keeping you healthy by eating better and living a tiny bit smarter.

Of course, it's still for the most part just a thin, ruthless charade. The fact remains: They're all still for-profit industries. Much like how KFC -- and its vile parent company, Yum! Brands -- showed that it could give a dead, hormone-engorged chicken about ethics, corporate responsibility or anyone's overall health, the instant that many of these companies sense any new path toward profit, they won't hesitate to glom onto it.

Does that path just so happen to involve poisoning your blood, crushing your coronary artery, or running right over you in the street? Well gosh. Too bad for you.

Comments

[Maria Droujkova]

I can't shake the feeling the style supports "disease and mal-education" by targeting their victims exclusively. Bombast, in particular, assumes people's feelings are deadened, which does happen when you don't feel well or can't comprehend finer arguments.

Here's something in the similar vein, also with strong language, but more logic-based: http://scienceblogs.com/goodmath/2010/04/shocking_fraud_from_financial.php