The Emperor Has No Clothes A Practical Guide for Environmental and Social Transformation (3 page)

In American society there are several kinds
of social controls to regulate deviant behavior an informal system
that acts through effecting changes in prestige and/or status,
various types of shunning, and a legal system that utilizes various
methods of compulsion. The legal system is fairly rigid. Being
based upon precedents, it has only a circumscribed ability for
adaptation. For example, the Ford Motor Company had a vice
president and stock shareholder named Mr. Couzens, who apparently
started to have attacks of conscience about the treatment of the
company workers. The plant workers were receiving low wages of
$2.34 per day for 9 hours of work. Also at that time the number of
cars that were sold in a particular month varied, being
particularly low for December. The company's policy was to lay the
workers off when demand was low, which of course produced much
hardship, particularly during the winter holidays. In 1913 he
proposed that the workers be given a raise to $5.00 per day for 8
hours of work, more than doubling their wages. He also proposed
that the company reduce the number of layoffs, particularly during
the December holidays. This was not well received by Henry Ford,
who vigorously tried to dissuade Mr. Couzens from implementing
improved worker benefits. Mr. Couzens was a man of integrity
though, and could not be dislodged from a position he felt in his
heart was right. Mr. Couzens did fully and promptly implement the
proposed changes on 5 January 1914, and shortly thereafter he was
forced to resign from the company. His biographical information
indicates that he never regretted his actions. The increases in
worker benefits raised quite a howl among the other wealthy
industrialists. They ran a robust public relations (PR) campaign
comprised of numerous articles in the press decrying the new
policy, and demanding that it be rescinded. This same group of
industrialists also would not engage in social contact with Mr.
Ford. The new Ford policy was quite popular with ordinary people
though, and gave a considerable boost to Ford sales. Thereby,
demonstrating an attempt to change his undesirable apparent
non-greedy behavior through the use of informal means of control.
At a later date Mr. Ford, who owned 68% of the company, wanted to
upgrade the company by using earnings produced from sales, thereby
diminishing the amount of dividends. The Dodge brothers, who were
also share holders in the company as well as a major vendor, filed
a law suit against Ford for not paying the maximum amount of
dividends. Ford lost this suit in 1919 and the legal decision read
as follows: “But it is not within the powers of a corporation to
shape and conduct a company's affairs for the merely incidental
benefit of shareholders and for the primary purpose of benefiting
others.” These incidents clearly demonstrate that incorporated
businesses sole purpose is to maximize profits and that greed
occupies a central cultural position.

As just illustrated, the sole purpose of a
corporate business is to produce a maximum amount of returns to the
owners. To provide ever increasing profits, market development is a
major preoccupation. The development of a market typically follows
this pattern: a new market is created which is partially developed
to some extent by the originator, and further expanded by other
opportunistic businesses. Eventually saturation occurs, achieving
its sales potential. Once the market potential has been reached the
only options open for increasing profits, are through business
expansion by increasing market share, and/or reducing costs. The
means of expansion of market share that are available in a mature
market are to buy up the competition ( a merger), or force
competitors out of business. Ultimately the objective of a
capitalistic enterprise is to achieve a monopoly, thereby
eliminating a free market for the product or service.

Let's consider some of the means of expansion
in greater detail. The product or service can be improved in some
way or offered at a lower price. Promotional methods to produce an
emotional basis for purchase of the product or service is a
commonly used technique to enable higher pricing, and thereby
produce greater profit. The most common method of producing
emotional appeal is through incorporating a magical feature. The
magical feature induces a perception that the product can act as
means to relieve feelings of, anxiety, envy, or inferiority.
Anthropologists have identified two ways by which magic operates.
Magic works through the perception that some property can be
transferred by association with an object, and/or having shared
similarities to something. Advertising psychologists are well aware
of these mechanisms. For example: the magic of similarities is
commonly used to induce buyers to purchase high-priced tennis shoes
by incorporating similar features to ones worn by a celebrity
athlete. The magic of association is particularly important in
collectable items. For example, if you were a guitar
player/collector, Elvis Presley's guitar would command a much
higher price than one of the same model and condition that had been
owned by Joe Schlunk. These same mechanisms are used to create
“special characteristics” for branded, designer, or other
feature(s) that will produce an image, usually to enhance the
possessor's prestige, status, and/or self image or persona.

Superior performance in the case of product
innovation usually results in only a temporary increase in market
share, because the same novel feature or a similar one can be
copied and incorporated by other producers of the same type of
product. A few examples are automatic transmissions in vehicles,
high definition TV, cellular telephones, etc. All these innovations
were quickly and widely adopted throughout their respective
industries. The other type of innovation occurs within the process
to produce a product. This type of innovation is not obvious and
may be kept secret for some time. For example, the power loom for
making cloth was invented in England. To preserve the commercial
advantages of this technology, English law prohibited the transfer
this technology to other nations. Of course what eventually
happened was that a person with a knowledge of how to make the
power loom immigrated to America. The forbidden technology was
quickly recreated, and rapidly diffused into the American domestic
textile industry.

A widely used means to produce product demand
is to create or amplify feelings of anxiety. These feelings are
used to induce a desire to purchase something to provide relief,
such as various types of insurance, protective devices, and wars.
Wars are very lucrative for many industries; they require and
rapidly use up huge amounts of equipment and resources (we will
return to this topic in greater depth in the next section). An
illustration of how anxiety is used for these purposes occurred
during the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. Herman Goring
was asked how the Nazi regime convinced the German people to accept
its program of conquest. He replied that it is very easy to do; all
that needs to be done is to create fear within the populace. Anyone
who questioned the militant policies and propaganda would be
denounced as weakening the war effort and being a danger to the
state and the nation. The question this raises is, why was it so
easy to convince the German people to accept what in retrospect was
utter folly? Neural scientists have discovered that when one feels
threatened, the apparent threat is processed by a part of the brain
called the amygdala, where the fundamental survival mechanisms
reside. It has the capacity to override the higher analytical
functions of the mind. It dominates because the amygdala has large
numbers of one-way neural connections to the neocortex, but few
that go from the cortex to the amygdala. Also the nerve that goes
from the eye to the amygdala is shorter than the one that goes to
the cortex, thus the amygdala also receives information and can act
on it before it arrives in the other area of the brain. Another
physiological response to fear is for the blood supply to be
redirected to other parts of the body, away from the parts of the
brain where critical thinking occurs. The result is that a person
when exposed to this type of stimulus will follow the content of a
persuasive message relevant to the apparent danger in an attempt to
neutralize it. Not only are politicians aware of this behavioral
mechanism, but also the advertising industry. For example, SARS, a
potentially fatal flu virus, appeared in 2003, and later in 2009 an
outbreak of the virulent H1N1 influenza virus occurred. Industry
quickly launched advertising campaigns designed to capitalize on
fear of contracting these diseases to sell products such as
antibacterial hand gels, soaps, disinfecting wipers, and protective
medical kits. Since these diseases are transmitted by airborne
viral particles, these products have no effect on preventing these
diseases. Of course the ads were carefully designed not to directly
say they would prevent these diseases, since that would be a
blatant lie, but composed to suggest or imply that they would, by
using the magic of similarities to other pathogens. Not only does
the advertising industry capitalize on existing events, it also
creates imaginary or exaggerated fears, as do politicians. The use
of fear to shape public opinion about a number of industries in the
United States has led to extreme distortions of most peoples'
perceptions. Let's compare some of what are considered to be very
scary industries and relatively benign ones. If we compare the
safety records of commercial nuclear power generation and “clean
coal,” these are the facts: the amount of radiation produced by a
coal-fired electrical generation plant is 100 times more than a
nuclear plant (because radioactive substances are present in coal).
In fact if coal-fired electrical plants were held to the same
standards for radiation as nuclear plants, they would all have to
be shut down! If we compare the number of deaths that have occurred
in each type of plant we find that no deaths have ever occurred
from commercial nuclear power generation in the United States,
whereas coal currently produces around 31,400 deaths per year.

The coal industry PR is that it's inexpensive
and that using it is an economic necessity. Is this true though? A
recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health found
that if the externalized costs engendered by the use of coal were
included in the price of electricity, it would increase its cost by
$.18 per kilowatt hour, making it one of the most expensive sources
of energy. That is between $150 billion and $500 billion are paid
each year by the public through higher taxes, property damage,
greater insurance rates, health care costs, etc. (Note: In the next
section we will consider this in greater detail).

Short Product Life
- A prime objective
in the type of economic system that currently prevails is to
produce products that require frequent replacement and induce
continuing usage. To accomplish this, products are designed for
one-time use (disposable products originated my interest in this
topic and will be discussed below), planned obsolescence and upon
addiction, to maintain demand after attracting and inducing a
person to start using it. Carmex lip balm illustrates this point.
Their product induces a need for continuing usage by incorporating
a combination of ingredients that produces an effect requiring
further use of the product. Lyndstrom quotes Dr. Pray’s description
of its activity as follows: the ingredient phenol which acts as “a
deadening agent that literally anesthetizes our lips, at which
point the salicylic acid begins eating away at our living tissue,
namely our lips.”vi The incorporation of these ingredients
apparently is designed to produce an ongoing need to continue using
the product (one of my friends calls this a self-licking ice cream
cone). As another example, the tobacco industry frequently promoted
their addictive products using celebrities, cool images in teen
hang-outs, and cartoon images for younger people to attract new
users. New users of tobacco quickly become addicted to this
hazardous product, thereby, becoming the ideal continuing customer.
The computer and software industries very obviously are based upon
planned obsolescence. A typical laptop computer is only expected to
have a two year life expectancy. Much of the software also cannot
be used on an “older” machine, thereby, requiring continuing
purchases. Let's consider computer viruses. Anyone who uses the
Internet has problems with these, which always require one to
obtain a state -of-the-art computer virus removal software. It's
interesting if one considers these viruses. They are obviously
produced by individuals who have a comprehensive and current
knowledge of how computer viruses are made and introduced into
computers through transfer on the Internet. Who would have the
capability and motivation to produce and introduce computer
viruses? If one considers a financial motive (greed), an obvious
place to look is the very businesses and individuals who produce
virus removal software. They are certainly dependent upon the
appearance of new computer viruses, have the technical capability
and means of introduction. Well of course this is just unproven
speculation, and one can’t say for sure. After all, a possibility
does exist that all the owners and people who man these enterprises
are paragons of moral rectitude, who would never engage in these
practices; perish the thought.

If one considers where the process of
constant growth of a business ends, it ultimately results in the
formation of a monopoly. Since the United States has laws designed
to prevent the formation of monopolies how can a multinational
corporation achieve this outcome? [6] Simply by producing their
product or service outside the United States.