Wednesday, November 20, 2024

GOODNIGHT, FUCKERS #948: CORPORATIONS AND SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS



You know how I hate advertising. If I'm stuck with commercials, I will not so much as look at the TV. I will not listen. I will not pay attention until my show comes back on. The truly unfortunate side effect of getting high is that I often forget to look away and constantly watch commercials by accident.


I saw this meme earlier, sent by my hetero lifemate Rob Tannahill, and I actually thought, no. Corporations are actually *not* trying to shut down small businesses. I mean, not usually. It happens from time to time, but it's not the standard SOP.


Bill Hicks used to say that commercials used sex appeal to sell things. Now they use nostalgia, which seems to be oddly working better than the sex. But a lot of commercials on the air right now are about corporations ready and willing to help small business owners get their business off the ground. That seems a little . . . different, right?


Why would corporations, who are notoriously in it for themselves (and whatever tax breaks they can get for tricking their customers into donating for causes by "rounding up" instead of donating, themselves), help small business owners? It is a little baffling if you're unfamiliar with corporate tactics.


Why do you think the farmer feeds his pigs so much slop? Why does he smile as they get fatter and fatter? Why do such pigs go for so much money at the county fair?


What do corporations do when they're in trouble? Money's running low, and they're running out of options. They start to look around for another corporation in a similar situation to merge with, sure, but then they would be equal partners in something, and that is unacceptable. Even Donald J. Trump hisowngoddamself knows that in every transaction there is a winner and a loser, and there isn't a CEO in the US who hasn't read The Art of the Deal. Par for the course for any CEO: raid the assets of small businesses. They don't have the crippling debt the corporations have, so the corporations can seize those assets, borrow even more money against them, and leave the small business a hollowed out carcass suitable for making footballs.


They'll come to you hat in hand, first, offering you the world if you'd only just sell for an obscenely low, insulting figure. Naturally you decline. So now it's a hostile takeover, and your lawyer will never be good enough to fight their army of lawyers. Before you know it, you no longer have a business, big or small. And no crime has been committed. No one is going to prison for this unless you flip out and murder some executive who probably has it coming. Not that such an argument would hold up in court.


All of these corporations are running on the fumes of consuming smaller businesses, never realizing for an instant that they will one day hit critical mass. There will be just one business that owns everything. Odd that they're angling for a Communist world through Capitalism. But all the same, when there are no more businesses to conquer, Alexander the CEO won't just weep. He'll eat himself starting at the feet.






























It suddenly occurred to me that I don't really know if footballs are made of pigskins. Turns out, in the early days of football they were made out of, not pigskin, but pig bladder. Which is definitely not a skin, but it's a whole lot better to say "let's throw around the pigskin" than "let's throw around the pigsbladder."
























































Although it comes down to the same thing in the end. The corporations *are* killing small businesses. That's some free market we have, there. Kinda like putting mobsters in charge of enforcing the law.

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