Why do they hate us?

[xela]

I just caught a few minutes of Peter Jennings' "In Search of America" thing on ABC, in which people who work for the Pepsi/Frito-Lay empire talk with evangelistic zeal about conning people the world over into eating more junk food. These people are sincerely convinced that what they're doing is good and important and promotes world peace, or at least have mastered the trick of faking sincerity.

And Americans wonder why people hate us.

I believe in markets. I think market capitalism does a damned fine job of developing products and technologies that can make people's lives better. But that's not what always happens, and I would hope that people who find themselves in the business of selling people things that aren't so good for them would feel a little bad about it — would innovate by coming up with better, more beneficial products. But instead they have all these clever people innovating to find new ways to sell the same old shit. Listening to the guy running the Dutch Lays operation gushing about getting their products into schools, I could hear the thing he wasn't saying: "Hook them while they're young."

Admittedly, it's not on the moral level of tobacco: I don't know how people who work for tobacco companies can stand to look at themselves in the mirror. And I'm too much of a realist to expect people to feel bad about working at companies like Pepsi or Microsoft that make products that are really not good for their customers. But to watch people celebrate that sort of work, with almost religious zeal, was too much for me. I watched about 10 minutes of it, and turned it off, muttering something to myself to the effect of "this is Satan" — a very strange thing for me to say.

This is what America is to most of the world: we come into their cultures, and we manipulate them. We sell them bland, crappy food, and bland crappy entertainment, and convince a lot of them that they like it. At least at first, until they — maybe — develop a little immunity to marketing, or see some treasured native institution die.

I'm not saying that the export of American business techniques and products and ideas is an unmixed curse — but neither is it by any means an unmixed blessing, and I don't think most Americans have the first clue about that.

In my own limited travel, and from all I've heard from people who've traveled to far more distant places, they don't hate us. Americans seem to be greeted warmly around the world. It's not americans, it's America they hate, because of what America imposes on them.

I think we owe it to those people, who treat us so warmly despite how they feel about our country, to try to better understand their feelings, and maybe to put some brakes on the American cultural steamroller.

Comments

junk food

[crs.livejournal.com]

The main paradox of junk food is that the human body craves it, despite the fact that it's so very bad for it in the long term. I don't know if evolution is still at work right now; it is probably rewarding those who don't have this reaction as much as others... But the point is, marketers have figured out that if you make something healthier, it won't sell as well. You see it in low-fat anything, you see it in the occasional attempt by McDonald's or other fast food places to push their grilled chicken, or some other healthy thing (McSaladShaker, anyone?)... And they always die out or go low-profile, not because the companies are trying to kill everyone, but because everyone's busy trying to kill themselves, because it feels good to do so.

McDonald's recently changed their french fry oil to be less of the "bad fat" and more of the "good fat"... so they're at least making an effort to look like they're trying. And as for Frito-Lay, I have one word for you: Olestra. On the other hand, I'm no longer convinced that the real badness of all those chips is in the fats - it might actually be in the massive consumption of starches it promotes. This, compounded with the sugar water that are carbonated sodas today, makes Atkins (the low starch/sugar diet guy) sound really quite sane.

Tobacco... used to be respectable, and I would be very interested to know if anyone had made the connection to death before 1950. After 1950 these people had a lot invested, a lot of people depending on them for a livelihood... Entire communities would be ruined if tobacco had come out as dangerous. Or so they thought. Oddly enough, people still buy the stuff, and it's not just the addicts. How much of a buzz does smoking give you, anyway? I don't actually know.

What's my point? I don't know. The government could be more restrictive on fast food, but that would feel too much like stifling capitalism. The government clearly can't ban smoking, it'll be prohibition all over again, and a lot of people are truly addicted. Hey, maybe they could help the health care industry at the same time as fighting back against tobacco addiction by making it a prescription thing. Like Allegra.

As for exporting the stuff... hopefully the rest of the world has seen what doing what feels good has done to America, and will fight back. Though it doesn't look good - fast foods are cropping up everywhere. I ate at a BK a couple years ago when I was in Stockholm. It seemed tastier than the ones over here, actually. Not sure what that means.

Re: junk food

[yakshaver.livejournal.com]

I'm not advocating government action to stop companies from selling products that aren't very good for people --- that would be putting government in the business of making the sort of value judgments it's really poor at. In fact, I'd like to see the end of certain government actions. My tax dollars subsidize tobacco growers, and through the export-import bank, help fund tobacco advertising in Asia. The United States government flexes its diplomatic muscle against countries that, for instance, try to regulate genetically modified food because they're not sure it's safe, or decide it's in their national security interest to use open source software. They claim that by pimping this way for American companies they're representing the interests of American citizens. As an American citizen, I disagree.

[nellwyn.livejournal.com]

I think the attitude that people here don't like is the 'My country is better than yours.' We all acknowledge the USA is a great power, just like we acknowledge Micro$oft is a great power. However, this doesn't mean the USA is a better country. Comparing countries is about as good as comparing toilet paper in the grocery store. Do you want double or triple thickness? Do you want more sheets per roll or more rolls per bag? Do you want the el cheapo recycled stuff or the luxury aloe vera stuff? How can you really compare to find which is the 'best'? It's not the 'best' over all, it's 'best for the user' that you're looking for.

Of course, here in the UK and in Europe, most places love the USA. If it weren't for them, we might all be speaking German.