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Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda g

by EGreg 3y ago

Corporations, just like governments, engage in pervasive propaganda, from impressionable school years all the way to adulthood. Edward Burnays said propaganda got a bad name after WW1, so they renamed it to "PR". It's how corporations got women to smoke, too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torches_of_Freedom How they control the crowd, featuring Edward Burnays and his uncle Freud (whose theories became famous ironically because of his nephew): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnPmg0R1M04 How the corporate world market to kids: https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/ They marketed it to Black youth: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1BjKyVzRr_U They marketed it to teen girls: https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-media-girls-teens-depression-tiktok/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2023/03/30/social-m... Sometimes the mask comes off and they do it too openly: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xNzXze5Yza8 The for-profit model of news corporations and social networks has led more and more adults to become perpetually angry and tribal politically: https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ https://www.laweekly.com/restoring-healthy-communities/ There is even a term for what they resort to in order to please shareholders: surveillance capitalism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surveillance_capitalism I was at the event in NYC when Sheryl Sandberg unveiled her book, "Lean In": https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/0385349947 https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Women-Work-Will-Lead/dp/03853499... Make no mistake. YCombinator and shareholder capitalism leads to this inevitably. Corporations have to please shareholders forever. And there is more and more push for inclusivity and part of that means adapting people from traditional roles (e.g. women homemakers) into types of work that benefit the market. As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. People are distracted into being e.g. gender warriors (Red Pill vs Feminism) rather than realizing they are all being exploited by a for-profit capitalist system that gradually relegates them to gig-economy workers and depresses their wages as they get replaced by AI. It's like a slowly-boiled frog. Anyone can opt out if they want. Opt out of the over-diagnosis of ADHD for their kids in public schools, by spending more time with them. Opt out of single parenthood and nuclear families, creating something far more expansive and with the benefits of traditional societies. Health benefits abound. Kids aren't overmedicated by amphetamines. Teens aren't depressed due to tiktok or angry due to drill music. Middle aged women aren't on antideprssants. Men aren't on opiates. Elderly parents aren't in nursing homes being drugged up. I'm not saying it's a utopia but the capitalist system has gone in a very bad direction, arguably worse than USSR where people drank vodka to cope. Look at any traditional society even within the US, such as the Amish, or religious orthodox Jews, or Christians in small-town America who still get together for Church etc. You don't have to be religious to make it work. But it takes a village to raise a child, and today's children are raised by government schools and indoctrinated to be corporate drones, for a job market that will be gone by the time they graduate. I recommend phasing in a UBI, at least, to help save the increasingly under-employed (i.e. making too few $s) people and families from falling through the cracks even further. The best kind of UBI can be done on a community level, for newlyweds and new parents etc.

lotsofpulp 3y ago
> As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. Corporations did not force both sexes to flood the labor pool. Women wanted (and fought) to gain the ability to be paid. To reduce their struggle and achievement as a “corporate conspiracy” is an insult. Might businesses influence people’s decisions with marketing? Sure. But that is not why people yearn to be financially independent. People want to be financially independent so they can live life how they want to live it, and marry or date who they want to be with, and so on and so forth.
- EGreg 3y ago
  Insult or not, well-meaning movements are often hijacked and co-opted by corporations and governments. Women's lib is just one example. People are often not given a choice, individually or even collectively. For example when Crimea overwhelmingly (94%) voted in 1991 to be independent of Ukraine, no one honored it. Then 6 months later they voted 54% for Ukraine to be independent of USSR, and that was taken as them wanting to be part of Ukraine. Then in 2014, the only choices given were be part of Ukraine, or be part of Russia. They never again got to vote for independence in a referendum, as Montenegro or Kosovo did. Kurds and Catalonians voted for independence in 2017, but none of that was honored. Uyghurs, Rohingya, Palestinians and many others are stateless. In short, people are usually just kicked around by whatever system the governments set up. And similarly with corporations, though it's more voluntary, it's still a system. As a young woman, to declare that you aspire to be a mother and homemaker, is something of an oddity and peer pressure is strong at formative young years. I wouldn't say most young people are really making "their own choices" statistically speaking, and in any case, the choices society has collectively made has led people psychologically to be more miserable across the board, and we are using medication as a way to treat the symptoms. I could be wrong. Perhaps today's women are actually happier than their grandmothers ever were. But it doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. And I think it has to do with the labor market. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-rights-happiness-wellbeing-gender-gap https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-... I should say that the USSR has enfranchised women much earlier than USA, and given them equal rights to jobs much earlier. It's hard to me to gauge whether people there were happier by the 1990s (fall of USSR) than people in USA are today (we may be reaching a breaking point here as well).

by EGreg 3y ago

lotsofpulp 3y ago

> As both sexes flooded the labor pool, wages got depressed, and marriage declined. Corporations did not force both sexes to flood the labor pool. Women wanted (and fought) to gain the ability to be paid. To reduce their struggle and achievement as a “corporate conspiracy” is an insult. Might businesses influence people’s decisions with marketing? Sure. But that is not why people yearn to be financially independent. People want to be financially independent so they can live life how they want to live it, and marry or date who they want to be with, and so on and so forth.

EGreg 3y ago
Insult or not, well-meaning movements are often hijacked and co-opted by corporations and governments. Women's lib is just one example. People are often not given a choice, individually or even collectively. For example when Crimea overwhelmingly (94%) voted in 1991 to be independent of Ukraine, no one honored it. Then 6 months later they voted 54% for Ukraine to be independent of USSR, and that was taken as them wanting to be part of Ukraine. Then in 2014, the only choices given were be part of Ukraine, or be part of Russia. They never again got to vote for independence in a referendum, as Montenegro or Kosovo did. Kurds and Catalonians voted for independence in 2017, but none of that was honored. Uyghurs, Rohingya, Palestinians and many others are stateless. In short, people are usually just kicked around by whatever system the governments set up. And similarly with corporations, though it's more voluntary, it's still a system. As a young woman, to declare that you aspire to be a mother and homemaker, is something of an oddity and peer pressure is strong at formative young years. I wouldn't say most young people are really making "their own choices" statistically speaking, and in any case, the choices society has collectively made has led people psychologically to be more miserable across the board, and we are using medication as a way to treat the symptoms. I could be wrong. Perhaps today's women are actually happier than their grandmothers ever were. But it doesn't seem to be borne out in the data. And I think it has to do with the labor market. https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intellectual_Life/Stevenson_ParadoxDecliningFemaleHappiness_Dec08.pdf https://law.yale.edu/sites/default/files/documents/pdf/Intel... https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-rights-happiness-wellbeing-gender-gap https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/may/18/womens-... I should say that the USSR has enfranchised women much earlier than USA, and given them equal rights to jobs much earlier. It's hard to me to gauge whether people there were happier by the 1990s (fall of USSR) than people in USA are today (we may be reaching a breaking point here as well).