shop dropping and other guerilla art

shopdropping 1 to covertly place merchandise on display in a store. A form of culture jamming. s to reverse shoplift, droplift.

shop dropping is a (legal) way for artists, musicians, to hijack the mass distribution systems of companies to self-promote. because these new items dropped into the stores often do not have barcodes, customers and employees are often left confused. sometimes, they are sold anyways, and the consumer takes home a product they otherwise would not have exposure to!

corporate empires shirking social responsibilities

At the end of the industrial revolution, companies finally grasped the importance of creating pleasant working and living environments for their workers. Industrialists created pleasant towns for their workers with schools, community centres, and amenities that anyone in the middle class could only dream of.

Saltaire, Yorkshire, built in 1851-1876 as a utopian factory town (Wikipedia)

This was a huge shift from the early industrial revolution when workers were housed in cramped spaces without windows, ventilation, and barely a toilet. Companies squeezed the most profit they could from their workers.

Does this sound familiar? It is because multi-national corporations, aided by the world trade organization, world bank, and IMF have reverted to their cycle of exploiting their customers and employees, in the name of profits.

madame albright on ‘business and the poor’

What role, if any, do corporations have in addressing poverty?

Dr. Albright believes that businesses have the moral imperative to do more for the developing countries they are operating in. Today’s multinationals wield enormous powers, and with that comes responsibility. They must work to ensure their workers have adequate health care and labour protections, and most importantly, legal protections on land ownership. To achieve this, international bodies such as the U.N. and nation-states must include businesses in their aid development programs.

My question is this: by accepting that corporations must be involved with the process of eliminating poverty, we are affirming a capitalist system that has produced enormous discrepancies in wealth between rich and poor, and one that has exploited the working class in many 3rd world countries. We are further entrenching ourselves in a system that is flawed from in its conception - is this the right direction to head in?

sustainable food

People need three things to survive: water, food, and shelter. None is more important than the other, but what is appalling is the extent to which food has become controlled by corporations and has as a result become disconnected from the people who consume it.

always low prices! at what cost?

More evidence is mounting on why the sprawling suburban big-box stores are eroding communities, the environment, and other values. It seems that we have given up all the traditional values that make us human, for new ones based on cost and efficiency; this is what happens when any ideology, in this case capitalism, is taken to the extreme.