The Illusionists

There's an art to getting the public to believe something that isn't necessarily true, to create an image for the purpose of making money. The latest trend in public relations is to blend a minimalist message with the liberal ideal of social responsibility. The two best (worst) examples of this in the United States are Google and Starbucks. I hear the "socially responsible" crowd sing the praises of these international corporations while sipping bad coffee at Starbucks and shelling out more than $500 for a single share of Google stock. The boards of directors at these two companies are laughing all the way to the socially responsible bank.


Google

Google's motto, Don't Be Evil, has a progressive, socially responsible ring. Yet the company jumped at the chance to help the communist regime in China oppress a billion people. Only recently did they withdraw to Hong Kong, and only after a cyberattack. Most people think they argued with the communists over the hacking of two political dissidents, but that's more PR spin. John Markoff wrote in the New York Times a few days ago that Google's secret password system was compromised during the attack. The move to Hong Kong was profit driven, just like everything else Google does. An honest pursuit of profit is fine, but that's not what Google's doing.

A while back I did a post on search returns for "Tiananmen Square" at Google's China site, google.cn. The links went to sites with history of the square and its importance in Chinese culture. There was nothing about the massacre. The commies were hiding this from the people with Google's help. When I went back to my first post on this, I noticed that the links to search results from google.cn and google.com had been changed.


Another interesting thing about Google is their corporate website, a PR agency abomination blending tired, dot-com era techno-hype with the "social responsibility" message. Two items on their list of "Ten things we know to be true" caught my eye. I wonder what the average Chinese citizen thinks of these.

No. 6: You can make money without doing evil.

No. 8: The need for information crosses all borders.

I made the switch to Microsoft's Bing, because Microsoft offers something refreshingly different -- honesty.


Starbucks

Starbucks is probably the worst of the international mega-corporations with the "social responsibility" PR scheme. The reality is Starbucks coffee is bad, to which all people who know about coffee will attest. And they've spread across the planet like a plague. You could swing a dead cat on any street corner on Earth and hit two of them.

All these stores, all those profits, and we are told it's for the betterment of mankind. Fact is, Starbucks is a malt shop for a "hip" new age. The calorie listing for their products is appalling. People frown on Krispy Kreme, but don't hesitate to drain a frappafucknutz packing hundreds of calories.

This mega-corporation rakes in profits so fat that J. P. Morgan would blush, then touts their coffee as "responsibly grown and ethically traded." No doubt. Let's be honest about it, doesn't coffee taste better when it's picked by an oppressed workforce locked in perpetual poverty, and traded on the open market by all-powerful multinational corporations? In seriousness, we're all happy that the Starbucks "fairtrade" policiy helps what they call family farmers.


Thanks to the socially responsible attitude at Starbucks, the humble family farmer shown above is living like a king in eastern Africa. He has six wives and has murdered only two daughters for dishonoring the family.

Why do you suppose Starbucks uses disposable cups instead of ceramic mugs? Ever price out a million industrial dish washers? What would the maintenance and electricity costs do to profits? Sure, there's "post-consumer content" in the paper cups, but where do these millions, if not billions, of cups go? I'll give you a clue:


In fairness, Starbucks acknowledges it would be better not to use paper cups. They offer an alternative to filling up landfills: buy their travel mugs! It's obscene. In the image below, notice that Starbucks says "use a tumbler" instead of "buy a tumbler from us". A company can't be seen as wanting to make money when liberals are the target market. I would love to see somebody try to "use" a tumbler instead of purchasing one. "I'm just going to use it. You can have it back when I'm done."


Underneath a veneer of feel-good liberalism, Google and Starbucks are nothing more than huge corporations, greedy for profit.