Global entities and global following.
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| Just keep buying in my name |
In our beautifully constructed modern world we have created for ourselves a vision. A dream. This is where the individual has a say and rules the way. This individual enjoys freedom of movement, freedom of speech and such things as the right to vote for whom he/she chooses and so on. These are the fundamentals of modern Capitalism. In my last article I looked and briefly outlined why it may well be that the capitalist model itself is now possibly defunct. Maybe even out of date. It needs our urgent attention, to say the least. Today I want to pay a little more attention to the functionalities of our system. How it works and who works it. Who is really running tings, as they say in Souwf London!!
Well there is this perception or acceptance with the term Global Following for Global Brands or Entities. What is really meant by this, one asks oneself knowingly? In the case of U2, Beatles or Rolling Stones we get it instantly. Here is a band with four lads. This is their music. This is the CD. Bing Bang Bong!! Understood. Easy! U2, Beatles and Rolling Stones have a global following. Citizens of the world know of their music, their commodity, their product, their Brand!!
But, what about other commodities, other things or other brands? Basic things like bread, butter, milk, fizzy drinks, T.Shirts(???), super markets, cars, computers, mobile phones, credit cards, banks, etc, etc, etc. All these entities also strive to attain that same Global Following. So where ever you go in this world you will recognise their thing. And consequently buy their thing. In the normal classical and Old Skool sense of capitalism it is the way to go. Mr Marks meets Mr Spencer and work hard, identify and develop their market and hey presto, we end up with Marks & Spencer’s, after decades of continuous trading. They expand, because that is what we do within our system and soon or later they are just like the Rolling Stones. They have a Global Following. They are no longer a local or national entity but international ones. Global Entities.
But, what about other commodities, other things or other brands? Basic things like bread, butter, milk, fizzy drinks, T.Shirts(???), super markets, cars, computers, mobile phones, credit cards, banks, etc, etc, etc. All these entities also strive to attain that same Global Following. So where ever you go in this world you will recognise their thing. And consequently buy their thing. In the normal classical and Old Skool sense of capitalism it is the way to go. Mr Marks meets Mr Spencer and work hard, identify and develop their market and hey presto, we end up with Marks & Spencer’s, after decades of continuous trading. They expand, because that is what we do within our system and soon or later they are just like the Rolling Stones. They have a Global Following. They are no longer a local or national entity but international ones. Global Entities.
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| Respect your local Global Entity |
Same for Sainsbury's or Tesco's, or Coca Cola, Microsoft, Google or McDonald's. Starbuck's is also another brilliant example of a small business that flourished and gained the Global Following status, with astonishing pace!!! Another good example is within the media sector, the Rupert Murdoch Media Empire, News International. Amazing how this fantastic old man controls 70% of the news and media output for Australia and nearly half of the UK and a nice 20% of the US. Mind boggling!! Staggering!! The initial success is clearly due to the fact that they had a good service or product or both. They were prudent as businesses and of course had vision. Richard Branson from the Virgin Empire is another classic case. The system allows and nurtures the development and expansion of a good business. Let the market decide. And so it should too. But as wealth and capital is accumulated then a whole set of new and funky variables come into play. Variables that are not part of the traditional supply and demand and free market scenario. The chain store arrives on the high street and all the smaller businesses shut down within a few months. We have all seen this not just in the UK, but in the US and across Europe. Butcher shops are now a quaint vision of the past. They simply can not compete because the chain store agrees an insane rent level, and takes a very large space from the land owners, knowing they can sit it out until they capture the main segment of the market. Because of their size and availability of capital they can also implement and dictate purchasing power as well as super management systems that tells them who sneezed before they bought half a kilo of minced beef. Just in case there is a correlation between sneezing and minced beef. So we all think, but to open 500 stores in less than 2 years must take some serious selling, a lot of surplus capital and saving. You are wrong. There is no selling or savings or much surplus capital what so ever. Remember, they are in a different club now. The Global Entity club with the Global Following. And it matters if the Global Following is not present as yet, because they can literally create the Global Following. Do your accounts well, then a nice set of projections, a bit of Public Relations, a Splash of Advertising, then go to your contacts in the City and come up with the strategy and further projections. Put it all together make a neat handbook, then present it to the share holders, the pension fund managers and issue another 5 million shares. People will be flocking to give you money. These people are not me and you. These people are the City brokers. They are finance houses with their own brands, Stanley Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Barclays, HSBC, money institutions. Who in their own right are busy to have a Global Following. So, shares are issued and before you know it, you have Companies like American Apparel or Super Dry at every conceivable corner of all high streets. In this case the product or service never really existed. Certainly not enough to warrant a million stores across the planet. It is the finance packaging that allows this to happen. Net result: You have to buy their product one way or the other. You can not get away from them. They must be good. They have so many branches, after all!! So, these smaller wannabe Global Entities with Wannabe Global Following ambitions are effectively cheating, except they are not. It is perfectly permissible within the rules of our systems. They are allowed to do as they please. If it fails, then the pension fund crashes and you get nothing. Tough shit. Always remember the get out clause, the price of shares may go up or down! The directors, however, will walk away thoroughly remunerated. The fact is that the majority of the Uber Brands are actually not making any money at all. But they are everywhere and operating. For us poor buggers all we get is bad and poor choice in the supposedly open and free market place. So the consumer is not benefiting. The tax man, gets little, because they are not making much, if any. The land owners are the winners and the main directors and of course the financiers who packaged the whole charade. That is it. Very select few benefit at the expense of many others.
One major factor we all have to keep in mind is how our economies have evolved and developed over the last few decades. We can all agree that we have evolved ourselves into a nice and tidy consumer economy. We consume things, from Global Entities. We buy stuff. Choice or no choice. We buy things.
In the UK 72% of the economy, is the consumer market. Bigger than the City, car or any other sector. Nearly three quarters of a rich nation's money comes through tills in various shops.There are some problems with overt emphasis on consumption. One is environmental degradation of raw materials, then wastage, pollution, use of unsustainable resources and so on. Then there is the problem of work force. The skill required to work within the sector is basic, or relatively unskilled. So it can never offer a very high salary, because the market forces within the labour market dictate that aspect too. So all your local boys and girls do not recognise working in the retail sector as "proper jobs". This is then justified by opting in doing nothing and going on benefits and a bit of ducking and diving to just get by, until a proper job comes along. I call this a waste of a generation. The majority of the work force do not want to work or take part in three quarters of the nation's income!! Woah!! We can all see the contradictions here, surely. Given that we no longer wish to get our hands dirty and yet have developed an obsession with buying things from Global Entities then we need to come up with someone who will make it. Oh yes, our lovely China Man. Job done. There are loads of Chinese people all sitting there doing nothing, they can make the table, the hairdryer, the dishwasher, the PC component and everything else for the Global Entities to maintain and entertain their Global Following. It is at this precise point that we all get ultra nationalistic and start bitching about the lovely China Man. Conveniently forgetting that we opted not to get our hands dirty, collectively. Personally, I love the China Man. Without him, I will not even have a sink! Or at least one that I could afford. Britain was called the workshop of the world. Now it is China. They make things and we buy things. There now exists the small issue of over consumption. We have to see an annual growth no matter what. If it don't grow then it is shit. Or is it? I suggest that soon our beloved Global Entities will need to become Solar-Fucking-Entities with their new Solar-Fucking-Following!! Planet earth ain't big enough! There is a limit to everything. How many varieties of pencils or cars or mobile phones do we really need?? 10-20-50-100-1000?? There has to be an end number here. Or am I being stupid again? But all these are also within the rules of our modern systems and that is exactly how tings get Global. Expansion through market manipulation via over consumption.
Then within this beautiful psycho-socioeconomic mix we have to add our new self created and yet unregulated markets. These are the markets that the Global Entities with their Global Following play in. Day in day out. They are all at it. In the pit, trading and selling. Buying Tesco shares and selling gold. Buying Euros and dumping British telecom or Royal Mail. Then they dump the whole lot and start buying gold. Maybe it is just for entertainment. Computers are set to do virtual trading at unbelievable rates. Thus distorting the real market. Then news comes on and the Global Entities who have their Global Following are now all watching the reports for that day. It starts off by saying and the markets did not receive the chancellor's announcement for opening 2 new hospitals too well. The market, namely, the sum total of the Global Entities did not like what our politician who we elected has to say. And we are all led to believe that the market does not lie. Not only does the market lie. The market which represents the entire set of these Global Entities is actually defrauding the whole lot of us. Classic and factual example of this was when President Obama was effectively fighting fist to fist in order to pass the new health care programme for which he was elected for, as part of his mandate. So how the markets perceive things seems ultra important. Why so? It is the new religion. The religion that uses currency instead of a book. There is no Bible or Quran here. Just hard core corporate and Global Finance. So any news or moves that remotely affects the well being of any Global Entity is, therefore, resisted, fought off, rejected or dismissed. The bigger the Global Entity the more influence it yields on the market and more pressure on the Political Class. So any unbeneficial legislation is reacted to in one way or another. This limits the way our elected politicians are permitted to work. At least the more honest politicians.
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| We are the 99% |
In a nutshell Global Corporatism and Global Entities are intrinsically linked and determine what goes on in our every daily lives which is dictated to us by the political class. The political class is, of course, our elected Dear and Beloved Leaders. The North Korean guys have nothing on our lot. They force their will, in North Korea. In our system we force it upon ourselves. And irrespective of the nation the whole lot are the same. Just like the multitude of Global Entities. Check the old boy in Italy, Ex-President Silvio Berlusconi. Again a classic example of a chap with his own Global Entity, except in the Italian version the Global Following voted him in to power so he can stay in charge of Italian legislation as well as influencing European legislation or help invade and bomb other countries. Nice stuff, hey?? There is this Triangle of power, where we have absolutely nothing to do with. This equilateral triangle is self sustaining and it has been for some time. A little like the Sun in the Solar system. Keeps fuelling itself. The media paves the way for the Finance which in turn feed the political class which in turn feed each other. As for us The Global Followers, well we give them a mandate to do just this by making sure that we never have more than 45% of the voting population ever attend to vote for an election. The media has made us feel like what is the point in voting anyway? We have given up on the political class. But the systems tell us that we must have a fair and democratic election. So we do. Except the election is not a true representation of our reality in any form or shape whatsoever. I would like to see the face of any of these politicians when there is a 90% turn out. Not one of them will be in office. I guarantee it. The Media will not be able to influence or control the outcome. Any statistician will tell you, if you want a true mean value, then increase the sample size. So it is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the total pool of votes does not go beyond 50% as the absolute maximum. Then you get the majority from that which is normally about 20% of the total vote and you got yourself a Government with a landslide!! Everyone claps and pats each other on the back saying didn't they do well? This new government now has mandates to satisfy its other partners, namely the other sides of the triangle, Media and Finance.
So the reason we find ourselves in this current predicament in terms of our national psychology and other socioeconomic as well as our political structures, is because you and I are the Global Followers. We feed the Global Entities that feeds the media that feeds the Political Class that in turn does nothing for you and me. I suggest that the current state and multitude of Global Entities is the very Anti-Thesis of Capitalism. They operate outside of the realms of the free market at every given opportunity.
The whole point of becoming a Global Entity is to ensure that you can Avoid competition. They are terrified of it. They inflate their true value, hide money, falsify records, defraud one another and do what ever is required for the board of directors to eventually retire somewhere very nice behind a 12 foot high wall with a security guard at the door.They are huge entities, using vast sums of money, employing thousands of people and yet remain effectively unaccountable, because we are theoretically a free economy. In practice it is some bastard Capitalist Version gone Communist scenario. The main difference in here is that the Politburo is our equilateral triangle of Media, Finance and the Political Class. The totality of the Global Entity and Capitalism is now stronger than ever as it remains unchallenged. Knowledge and education are now the new commodities, reserved for the new elite generation. As in the past, if you are poor, you best remain stupid. The peripheral interaction of religion within this triangle must not be ignored. When all fails, everyone gets religious and godly about it all. Religion is then applied and used as the subtle regulator of the triangle. When things get sticky it is because they are Catholics or Protestants, Jews or Muslims. They will tell you anything to avoid the economic and political conditions. The Divine Inter Galactic Entity who works hand in glove with all the earthly Global Entities to further its own power base, using the same finance and media.
As for us mere mortals, well we all work our arses off and play the game. We take part as believers. We are the Global Followers. We actually believe that The BBC reporter is telling the truth from where ever we happen to be occupying or bombing, illegally!!! As the Global Followers we are conditioned into mass consumerism so we pay more attention to the next consumer product than what is actually taken place down the road from our houses. So the obvious and naïve conclusion would be boycotting these Global Bastards. Don't buy from the Zionist Starbucks. Avoid Tesco's. Don't wear any socks and underwear until it puts Marks and Spencer's out of business. But that is too naïve. What we need to do is to totally deconstruct the existing paradigm. The supremacy of the Markets can not be allowed to continue unchecked. Markets do not tell the story any longer, as it is not a free market. We need to move away from our moral and political neutrality. We have to ask questions and demand answers like an irritating child. We have to quit going on and on and on about the Banks or Starbucks or big land owners. Leave that to the Liberal Democrats and other Sunday afternoon do gooders.
The reason these Global Entities exist and do what they do, legally, is because they are allowed to. By Me and You; the Global Followers.We have been distracted, conned, deceived, conditioned, hypnotised and more all at the same time. How can the Greek Economy single handedly affect and threaten the economies of 26 other European Nations? How can the immigrants, who represent a small percentage of the population, be the reason for such huge shortages of jobs? Why is it that in 2011 and under the current economic crisis we have 30% more multi-millionaires in the UK alone when hundreds and thousands are in living in total desperation? So we have to give big thanks and respects to all those boys and girls who are occupying various parts of different Cities from New York to London to Madrid. Simply to open and force a debate by being present. They do not have the answers, I certainly don't, but the need for the debate and discussion is now becoming paramount. The problem with the Global Followers is that there will not be any challenge or action until things really hit rock bottom. Of course, rock bottom in the "Free World" is not the same rock bottom as in Rwanda or parts of Asia.
Global Followers Of The World Unite!
K Savage
December 2011
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