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Choice & Major Companies

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Submitted By dmy11
Words 675
Pages 3
David Yanich
English 202
February 12, 2014
After doing research and realizing how much power and control major companies have in our world, I have come to this main question. How much choice do we really have when we want to purchase goods? Choice is something most people just assume they have when they are picking their cable company, choosing a bank, or even walking through your local food mart. The goal of this essay is to show that while at first glance choices may seem endless, but when you do a small amount of research you can quickly realize that most brands link back to the same parent company.
The majority of foods, drinks, and health products we buy trace their way back to 10 major corporations. Society today has this false idea that they have a choice in what they buy at the grocery store. For example you may not like large soda companies and decide to not buy their products. But if you buy bottled water, sports drinks, energy drinks, or fruit juice chances are you are buying a brand from a soda producing parent company. Most retailers charge a fee to get products on the most visible shelves which keeps small companies away from your line of sight. This is because large consumer good companies have a special relationship with retailers. Like an “I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine ideology”. Many of the products that you see on store shelves are direct competitors that are linked to the same company. “ConAgra sells six varieties of popcorn” (http://www.alternet.org/food/how-big-food-creates-illusion-choice-supermarket). Different brands of products is a ploy that most parent companies use to help give you a false idea of choice.
This “illusion of choice” is even apparent in the media. “90% of the media is now controlled by just six companies, down from 50 in 1983.” (http://www.policymic.com/articles/71255/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-this-chart-shows-how) Newspaper, radio, movies, and television all fall under this category with one company having an especially high percentage of each.
This control of the markets that large companies have is increasingly evident in the power they wield. This idea is something that has been around for the last 100 years. In 1935, the powerful radio company RCA, held its own in a long hard legal battle to keep FM radio stifled. When FM radio was under wraps in the RCA research and development department it helped create radio that was a whole level above what was currently available. But as Edwin Armstrong tried his hardest to get it into the public eye, RCA blocked his attempts and stifled what was due to become the next big thing. They saw this new opportunity as a chance for competitors to come in and take a lot of the market that RCA held. Instead of letting this happen they flexed their legal muscles and as a result, buried the FM radio market.
Major government agencies were created in order to keep large companies from becoming too powerful. But even they had a hard time controlling the power that large companies are increasingly getting. Lobbying by these companies helps keep their beliefs in our political system and gives them more power. While competition is good, it goes to show that no matter how much you have to start, it can get down to a few very quickly. Remember that the next time you go to the grocery store and think you are helping out the little guys.

Sources http://www.free-culture.cc/freeculture.pdf http://www.businessinsider.com/these-6-corporations-control-90-of-the-media-in-america-2012-6 http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/the-internet-is-the-greatest-legal-facilitator-of-inequality-in-human-history/283422/ http://www.policymic.com/articles/71255/10-corporations-control-almost-everything-you-buy-this-chart-shows-how
http://www.alternet.org/food/how-big-food-creates-illusion-choice-supermarket

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