Friday, August 12, 2016
Monday, August 8, 2016
Corruption, Marketing,and Influence
So when I was reading up on organized crime I found it interesting how they had a role in the jukebox industry, and in helping make some songs popular. Now I had a second reason for why certain songs became popular, particularly from that era - someone with influence wanted to make it popular.
I brought this up because I wanted to discuss something with presidential elections, actually. I wanted to go into more of what I meant by saying some people 'subvert the process'. See - you don't generally get to those positions without a belief in your own locus of control. That is, you are capable of influencing or controlling your fate. There are all sorts of professionals out there willing to help (for a fee) make sure that you are marketed well. Focus groups, political ads, consultants and speech writers...we all know politicians are practically a commodity in and of itself. Kind of like music, or movies. Except (just like with music and movies) it's very hard for an insider to know what is really going to work or not.
Movie history, in particular, is full of stories where directors thought something would be a hit and instead it failed miserably. Or the reverse, where they make something nobody expected to be a hit. Plus I think we've all had the experience of watching a movie when it first comes out, it's a big hit and we're super excited...and then when we watch it ten years later we wonder why the heck anyone thought it was that great to begin with. I can watch a preview and know if the preview interests me or just makes me shrug, but how does the person creating the preview know?
Anyways, when you have people who are used to influencing opinion, creating opinion, waging a political battle for voters (and businesses) hearts and minds...how do you know when you're just playing the game of politics, and when you've crossed a line and subverted the system?
It's as easy for those of us on the outside to go "what were they thinking" when we see a horrible preview, as it is when we hear some story of corruption. But the insider? When they're in a business based on relationships? How do they know when getting Vice President Biden's videotaped well wishes for a bar mitzvah is just a sign of friendship, versus the DNC chair putting her obligations to the Democratic Party in the backseat and drumming up support for her own re-election campaign?
Right now I'm not trying to say something was or wasn't corruption. I just wanted to point out that something may not feel like corruption, may not seem to you as though it is affecting your judgment - and it still can be a problem. My company's ethics training touched on this, with an example very similar to one I heard about in my undergrad years. Someone offered tickets to a game...was that just two friends getting the chance to hang out together? Or was it a bribe for helping the other guy out with a nice offer?
The thing is, lobbying, marketing, and sales reps all make money because what they do works. And it doesn't necessarily work in an obvious fashion. That is, a doctor doesn't say to him or her self "I'm going to prescribe this medicine to my patient because the sales rep gave me a really nice gift." No...the doctor probably has a relationship with the sales rep, and thinks well of him or her.
Complaints about corruption come in part because average citizens can tell that what we want doesn't matter. Like that study showing that economic elites and organized groups had an outsized influence on policy. Trump is so radically different from the 'marketed' politician that many voters believe (foolishly, I think) that he's different. That he's somehow more authentic, and not beholden to those interests.
Unfortunately, I think many political insiders convince themselves that there is no corruption, and that such charges are signs of naivety or foolishness.
Saturday, August 6, 2016
Wow.
So I saw an article on Facebook with a headline discussing class war and education. I clicked on it expecting something about how elites will say that not everyone needs or should get a college education (true, I think) while at the same time making sure their nearest and dearest still get one (in other words, this argument applies to all those 'other' people, who shouldn't aspire to the top... But you and yours quite naturally deserve to be there and still should get the education- and the jobs, and social position that comes with it.) I first heard something like this from one of the worst bosses I've ever worked for, so I can't say I think he really belonged in the tier he thought he deserved.
But as usual, I digress. I did not expect this article, if accurate, to be what sounds like a hidden transcript of our dominant class. One that starts off with such erroneous judgments that all the latter conclusions are suspect. If this is true, no wonder 'the establishment' increasingly seems out of touch and clueless.
https://andrewgavinmarshall.com/2012/04/02/class-war-and-the-college-crisis-the-crisis-of-democracy-and-the-attack-on-education/