CONSUMER IS KING
Most democratic governments are voted in by its peoples, formed by individual consumers. Even dictatorial regimes require popular acquiescence to a certain extent. Industries and corporations require consumer demand before they decide to invest and produce. Without demand from the individual consumer, industries cannot survive in the long term. Overproduction has always been a nemesis to industries in this post-industrial age, which is very much the reason why giant pharmaceuticals can make astronomical profits only by existing in a closed and oligopolistic market protected by patent laws. Mass advertising can only secure a limited consumer base in today’s fickle consumer that is already speaking out against spamming and hard-selling.
THE CONSUMER-ENGINE OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION
The consumer is at the heart of industries and government, for the individual consumer justifies their continued existence and both players are willing to do almost anything to pander to the consumer’s voracious appetite and fickle changes. In a subtle sense, the individual consumer can be the dominant power in such a tripartite power relation, although the consumer is dominantly portrayed as a slave to magazine and industry prescriptions of what it means to look good and feel good. The consumer is the engine of globalization’s ugly corporate face.
It would indeed be in the interest of corporations to further capitalize on the global obsession with aesthetics to continue to create the impression that the consumer is in charge and in control. Yet subtly, industries do very much control the global politics of aesthetics by determining how people should dress, eat, even indulge in recreation. The corporation today sells products but advertises more of a pre-determined packaged lifestyle than a product.
A ‘GLOBAL’ VILLAGE?
Indeed, when we speak of globalization, we tend to imagine how the whole world is becoming more connected due to advancements in telecommunications and transport, the compressions of time and space. Building upon these infrastructure, we are painted a picture of global connectedness where global trade and capital flows invades all economies and nations. However, this totalizing tendency of globalization is exaggerated and even some scholars of globalization are guilty of this inaccuracy. We tend to forget that the dominant nature of this phase of globalization is one of information capitalism, where investments and capital-in-finance moves in search of markets which speak the language of globalization; Information technology and English to a certain extent.
If we scrutinize the post-Cold War dominant capital flows, they are mainly directed at previously untapped markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and a further centralizing of capital in information technology sectors in established markets of the US, Western Europe and perhaps Japan. Indeed, there are large parts of humanity in South Asia, South America and Africa that is left out of this equation and in the new modes of participation in this ‘global’ economy. How could be speak of a ‘global village’ which is gradually developing a global identity when most Africans have only seen their thatched villages their whole lives and the closest thing to modernity they have witnessed are probably international food aid and wildlife documentary crews?
Indeed, there are certain ‘black holes’ in this age of information capitalism, certain sectors of humanity that are simply ignored in the global corporate map. The corporate face of globalization requires something or a people to exploit, however there are certain sectors of the globe which are just too poor to exploit, especially if the corporate engine continues to be fired by the demand and supply of luxury consumer goods. These people are systematically left out in this global exploitation, due to their complete irrelevance in a global economy that requires the acquisition of knowledge, especially IT knowledge. However, before we cheer at the notion that these poor peoples are at least spared this global exploitation, we need to understand that this is a changing reality, as even corporations have been alerted to this and have modified their nature to penetrate these last remaining markets.
PROFIT OFF THE POOR
When we talk about consumerism, it is usually in the context of individuals pursuing wants rather than needs, luxuries rather than necessities. It is usually within the context of purchasing cultural goods so that one may remain or scale the ladder of social mobility. However, the post-Cold War neo-liberal corporate machinery has been quick to capitalize on anything that can make profits, even if it is at the expense of profiteering off the poorest in the Third World through the capitalization on necessities.
The Bolivian water crisis of 2000 provides a good case study, and it must be understood amidst the post-Cold War neo-liberal streak of developing countries to adopt a privatization road map out of poverty. Bolivia, being the poorest South American nation, succumbed to the lures of privatizing its national assets, compounded by World Bank and IMF pressures to do so. The Bolivian government stood to gain from the retention of credit trust for continued international loans and from foreign capital flows that would have been impossible to attract without privatizing its state assets like its airlines and water utility.
However, the privatization scheme went awry when the water utility of Cochabamba city was privatized and almost immediately water prices were tripled. The poorest South Americans in this city were forced to pay almost a third of their meager monthly wages on a basic necessity like water. Indeed, local residents were also banned from collecting rainwater to produce potable water, ensuring the utility’s complete monopoly. Riots and demonstrations soon followed in 2000 which resulted in a violent clampdown by a complicit government, eager to protect its selfish gains by its partnership with the utility. Here, we witness how the two major players of industry and government can be complicit in their eagerness to make a profit, even at the expense of the millions of impoverished consumers, who require water to survive. Third World peoples being denied of even the basic right to produce and consume safe water; this is neo-liberal capitalism at its ugliest.
Indeed, industries have been flexible enough to capitalize on even necessities like water to make profits off the poorest peoples in the Third World, a situation also mirrored in the Nigerian context in Africa. Corporations have also been able to identify acquiescent governments to collectively oppress the poor consumer. This example may serve to weaken the argument that the consumer is at the heart of globalization’s corporate face. However, we must be mindful that this is an extreme case where the consumer is extremely disempowered, and it is indeed worthy of note that widespread popular protests did eventually force the Bolivian government to reluctantly break the contract with the foreign MNC, majority owned by a subsidiary of the US firm, Bechtel Corporation.
NEO-LIBERAL PROMISE OF GLOBALIZATION
The Bolivian water crisis is not an isolated crisis by itself. It is symbolic of the general failed promise of globalization to bring wealth to all who participate in its complex web of corporate relations. In stark contrast, it has furthered miseries and poverty in the Third World and in the Bolivian case has even robbed them of access to a basic necessity like safe water, something that most people in the developed world assume will flow out of their taps when they turn the faucet.
Under the guise of a responsible corporation that intends to revamp Cochabamba’s water grid and promising millions of follow-up capital investment, Bechtel has systematically robbed a poor people of their most basic rights to water and held its complicit government at ransom. It is made more abhorrent by the fact that it was supported by global institutions like the World Bank and IMF which preach neo-liberal privatization solutions and structural adjustments to the Third World. It is not hard for the average Bolivian to imagine a global conspiracy of epic proportions by the developed world to profit from exploiting the poor and disempowered. It is not hard for us to imagine how this tragedy of globalization and neo-liberal capitalism is repeatedly played out in different forms all across the Third World, which face a tricky choice of submitting to World Bank and IMF conditionality or face economic ruin and total irrelevance in the global economy.
Most democratic governments are voted in by its peoples, formed by individual consumers. Even dictatorial regimes require popular acquiescence to a certain extent. Industries and corporations require consumer demand before they decide to invest and produce. Without demand from the individual consumer, industries cannot survive in the long term. Overproduction has always been a nemesis to industries in this post-industrial age, which is very much the reason why giant pharmaceuticals can make astronomical profits only by existing in a closed and oligopolistic market protected by patent laws. Mass advertising can only secure a limited consumer base in today’s fickle consumer that is already speaking out against spamming and hard-selling.
THE CONSUMER-ENGINE OF CORPORATE GLOBALIZATION
The consumer is at the heart of industries and government, for the individual consumer justifies their continued existence and both players are willing to do almost anything to pander to the consumer’s voracious appetite and fickle changes. In a subtle sense, the individual consumer can be the dominant power in such a tripartite power relation, although the consumer is dominantly portrayed as a slave to magazine and industry prescriptions of what it means to look good and feel good. The consumer is the engine of globalization’s ugly corporate face.
It would indeed be in the interest of corporations to further capitalize on the global obsession with aesthetics to continue to create the impression that the consumer is in charge and in control. Yet subtly, industries do very much control the global politics of aesthetics by determining how people should dress, eat, even indulge in recreation. The corporation today sells products but advertises more of a pre-determined packaged lifestyle than a product.
A ‘GLOBAL’ VILLAGE?
Indeed, when we speak of globalization, we tend to imagine how the whole world is becoming more connected due to advancements in telecommunications and transport, the compressions of time and space. Building upon these infrastructure, we are painted a picture of global connectedness where global trade and capital flows invades all economies and nations. However, this totalizing tendency of globalization is exaggerated and even some scholars of globalization are guilty of this inaccuracy. We tend to forget that the dominant nature of this phase of globalization is one of information capitalism, where investments and capital-in-finance moves in search of markets which speak the language of globalization; Information technology and English to a certain extent.
If we scrutinize the post-Cold War dominant capital flows, they are mainly directed at previously untapped markets in Eastern Europe and Asia, and a further centralizing of capital in information technology sectors in established markets of the US, Western Europe and perhaps Japan. Indeed, there are large parts of humanity in South Asia, South America and Africa that is left out of this equation and in the new modes of participation in this ‘global’ economy. How could be speak of a ‘global village’ which is gradually developing a global identity when most Africans have only seen their thatched villages their whole lives and the closest thing to modernity they have witnessed are probably international food aid and wildlife documentary crews?
Indeed, there are certain ‘black holes’ in this age of information capitalism, certain sectors of humanity that are simply ignored in the global corporate map. The corporate face of globalization requires something or a people to exploit, however there are certain sectors of the globe which are just too poor to exploit, especially if the corporate engine continues to be fired by the demand and supply of luxury consumer goods. These people are systematically left out in this global exploitation, due to their complete irrelevance in a global economy that requires the acquisition of knowledge, especially IT knowledge. However, before we cheer at the notion that these poor peoples are at least spared this global exploitation, we need to understand that this is a changing reality, as even corporations have been alerted to this and have modified their nature to penetrate these last remaining markets.
PROFIT OFF THE POOR
When we talk about consumerism, it is usually in the context of individuals pursuing wants rather than needs, luxuries rather than necessities. It is usually within the context of purchasing cultural goods so that one may remain or scale the ladder of social mobility. However, the post-Cold War neo-liberal corporate machinery has been quick to capitalize on anything that can make profits, even if it is at the expense of profiteering off the poorest in the Third World through the capitalization on necessities.
The Bolivian water crisis of 2000 provides a good case study, and it must be understood amidst the post-Cold War neo-liberal streak of developing countries to adopt a privatization road map out of poverty. Bolivia, being the poorest South American nation, succumbed to the lures of privatizing its national assets, compounded by World Bank and IMF pressures to do so. The Bolivian government stood to gain from the retention of credit trust for continued international loans and from foreign capital flows that would have been impossible to attract without privatizing its state assets like its airlines and water utility.
However, the privatization scheme went awry when the water utility of Cochabamba city was privatized and almost immediately water prices were tripled. The poorest South Americans in this city were forced to pay almost a third of their meager monthly wages on a basic necessity like water. Indeed, local residents were also banned from collecting rainwater to produce potable water, ensuring the utility’s complete monopoly. Riots and demonstrations soon followed in 2000 which resulted in a violent clampdown by a complicit government, eager to protect its selfish gains by its partnership with the utility. Here, we witness how the two major players of industry and government can be complicit in their eagerness to make a profit, even at the expense of the millions of impoverished consumers, who require water to survive. Third World peoples being denied of even the basic right to produce and consume safe water; this is neo-liberal capitalism at its ugliest.
Indeed, industries have been flexible enough to capitalize on even necessities like water to make profits off the poorest peoples in the Third World, a situation also mirrored in the Nigerian context in Africa. Corporations have also been able to identify acquiescent governments to collectively oppress the poor consumer. This example may serve to weaken the argument that the consumer is at the heart of globalization’s corporate face. However, we must be mindful that this is an extreme case where the consumer is extremely disempowered, and it is indeed worthy of note that widespread popular protests did eventually force the Bolivian government to reluctantly break the contract with the foreign MNC, majority owned by a subsidiary of the US firm, Bechtel Corporation.
NEO-LIBERAL PROMISE OF GLOBALIZATION
The Bolivian water crisis is not an isolated crisis by itself. It is symbolic of the general failed promise of globalization to bring wealth to all who participate in its complex web of corporate relations. In stark contrast, it has furthered miseries and poverty in the Third World and in the Bolivian case has even robbed them of access to a basic necessity like safe water, something that most people in the developed world assume will flow out of their taps when they turn the faucet.
Under the guise of a responsible corporation that intends to revamp Cochabamba’s water grid and promising millions of follow-up capital investment, Bechtel has systematically robbed a poor people of their most basic rights to water and held its complicit government at ransom. It is made more abhorrent by the fact that it was supported by global institutions like the World Bank and IMF which preach neo-liberal privatization solutions and structural adjustments to the Third World. It is not hard for the average Bolivian to imagine a global conspiracy of epic proportions by the developed world to profit from exploiting the poor and disempowered. It is not hard for us to imagine how this tragedy of globalization and neo-liberal capitalism is repeatedly played out in different forms all across the Third World, which face a tricky choice of submitting to World Bank and IMF conditionality or face economic ruin and total irrelevance in the global economy.
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