Part 2 of the 2-parter series...
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Alright, last time I spoke about the problems facing us nowadays. Now I am going to share with you my idea for solving them. Firstly, we have to recognise an important fact. The majority of the companies, no matter how big and powerful they are - depend on customers. No matter how many millions they make ever year, if they had no customers, they would collapse.
Economy and Capitalism works on something weird called trust. The value of a company is simply how much trust the stakeholders hold in the company. So lets use that to our advantage shall we?
Firstly, the consumer needs to be correctly informed of what is happening - in order to be able to take informed choices. Review sites are a solution of sorts for this - however their current implementation is rather incorrect at the present time.
For a start, review sites usually contain a small community of people who are able to comment or write reviews. In certain cases, the owner of the review site will be connected in some way to the company they represent - and in other cases, act as a sort of unofficial customer relations. There were cases where a particular website was 'bribing' customers and then removing their negative reviews - ready for the next mug.
The solution: A trusted and neutral hub of information - a website of some sort -which contains not only experiences from real buyers, but also contains certain history and other interesting facts which could effect the decision of a potential buyer.
The second solution is somewhat related. Workers gained many of their rights through Unions. Through the ability to band together and make a difference. A 'consumers union' would be the solution. Not particular related to other meanings of "Consumer Union", this would be like a trade union. Linked to the above solution - the group of consumer members could easily agree to boycott or strike, even temporarily. A noticeable drop in profits, no matter for how short the period of time - will make the right people notice.
Both these ideas require a lot of people - a lot of contacts... In the words of Philip K. Dick - "When two people dream the same dream, it ceases to be an illusion". Let us hope that this some day comes to fruit.
The Llama
The solution isn't going to be solved by a consumerist hub and consumer union, which do exist in some shape or form. This is, because a lot of people either don't give a shit or do not agree with you (because they are stupid, against any kind of market interference or both).
ReplyDeleteSort-of Solution: The entire political system has to be overhauled and laws need to be changed in order to prevent corporations from gaining any form of power.
Even with this done, eventually there will be an elite class of people who can do whatever they want. Democracy is the best example of the few ruling many, because people are free to resist and vote against bad people, but few ever bother doing so.
Aye, many people don't care. That is a problem. However, interestingly enough, boycotting was used in the past in Malta (for political reasons...meh), and it actually succeeded in greatly damaging certain companies.
ReplyDeleteA giant political change is pretty impossible. Politics is good about keeping everything the same. And given that companies already hold much of the lobbying power, I don't think anyone is ever going to cause that overhaul. And would we even have the choice? You generally have 2 or 3 very important parties - all the radical ideas come with the smaller parties which never get a look in.
At least this idea is... plausable. Far more plausable than a political rehaull.