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Here, Have a Coke!

Entry 1488, on 2013-01-21 at 13:24:11 (Rating 4, News)

In my last blog entry I tried to dispel the idea that people dislike change in their work simply because they are averse to change. I argued that in reality it is more likely to be that the changes that are being forced on them are bad for them so of course they resist them.

Today I want to take up a similar theme regarding big business. The outgoing CEO of Coca Cola in New Zealand recently started a debate regarding what he sees as the "tall poppy" attitude towards corporations. He claimed that an unfair anti-corporate feeling has stopped business expanding and has been detrimental to the country.

So he thinks that corporations are unfairly seen as being nasty and untrustworthy just because of their success. In fact we see big business that way because they actually are nasty and untrustworthy! The parallel with the resistance to change phenomenon here is obvious: the people causing the problem are turning the blame back on the victims and trying to make them the cause.

It's particularly ironic that the company involved in this particular case is Coca Cola. It must be the absolute epitome of capitalism gone wrong, because it produces a mediocre, potentially dangerous and addictive product, publicises it with a lot of dishonest advertising, and makes huge profits which it employs various tricks to avoid paying tax on.

I'm not saying anything Coca Cola does is illegal, but it is immoral because the system is immoral and wrong. We have a system which encourages and rewards the worst type of person and organisation so of course we will often (but not always) get the most mediocre, morally corrupt people succeeding.

It's just a sign of the incredible arrogance of the corporate world that they would even make a comment like this. Does this clown really believe that Coca Cola is a company we should admire? What does it do? It produces flavoured sugar water which is largely responsible for many health issues and sells it at an extravagant profit. Then it doesn't pay a fair share of tax to help fund the health system which tries to repair the damage done. Surely we should feel disgust rather than admiration for that!

There is another side to the story of course. Big companies do provide products people want (even if in many cases they probably wouldn't want them if they were acting fully rationally) and they do provide employment for many people. But I don't think even these doubtful arguments have a lot of merit.

For every big corporation there are dozens of smaller companies which have been driven out of business. Those smaller companies employed more people and often produced a better product. They failed not because they provided an inferior product or service but because they didn't have access to the same range of dirty tricks as their bigger competitor.

And that leads to the real point I want to make about big business. I heard a commentator make a very insightful statement on this. He said something like "big business profits come at the expense of someone else".

Yes, every dollar Coca Cola makes comes from someone else. It comes from us buying its rather unremarkable products, it comes from the "efficiencies" the company gains from employing less people, it comes from the demise of smaller competitors, and it comes from paying less tax than it should. So when we see a successful, profitable company it should be no surprise that we despise them rather than respecting them.

If I was the CEO (or ex-CEO) of a company like Coca Cola I would keep my mouth shut about this sort of thing because by displaying such an arrogant and callous disregard for the way the world really works rather than how the corporates imagine it they aren't helping their cause!

Before I finish there are two issues the more astute of you might be thinking of here...

First, the title of this blog entry is very similar to another one I did recently titled "Have a Cigarette" criticising the tobacco industry. This is deliberate.

And second, what about the big corporations which I support in some way, Apple being the most obvious example. Yeah sure, I would be very happy if I got to work with products made by smaller innovative companies but that's just not going to happen. If I want to work in IT I do have to work with products made by big companies. I also give Apple special dispensation to some extent because their products are just so good. I realise I am maybe being a bit hypocritical there but in the real world I can be an idealist to a degree but I also have to be a realist.

And yes, I also drink Coke sometimes, but I hate myself for it!

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