Protesting
I see a lot of protests in the news and get a lot of paper telling me when protests are and so I stated to wonder how effective the protest is? In the past few years I can't recall any government protests that have worked (though I'm sure there have been), fully. I do know of quite a few corporate protests, though, that have succeeded. This seems to be an oddity to me at first, but when I think about it I can start to see why and it's scary.
The corporate protests are usually directed at retail businesses. Now the saying, "any publicity is good publicity probably," should have the tail, "if you can spin it correctly." This seems to be because of the chain of events. First there is a protest about some retailer doing something amoral and it gets published. Then the company decides which road to take, either deny deny deny or make concessions and look like the good guy. Usually the latter isn't financial bad and so some corps opt for it and so the system works. But when this happens to corps who don't fit into a free market system (because they are so big they exert market forces) they don't change and ignore the protest. I guess these don't work because the size of the protest is too small in comparison with the size of the Corp. For instance if McD servers a few million a year then what impact will 5000 make?
But what about governments. They are elected and are suppose to represent the people. Well in my view when it comes to protests they look with an attitude of a parent listening to his five year old about moving out. Now the elected official have to make an important judgment call: do I do what I think is right or what my constituents want? (That's an issue for another post) And it seems to me the most often used logic is: I can please the most people if I do what will make the most money since everyone loves money, especially my corporate sponsors.
The fact is on any decision in government you will make some people happy and get protest from others. It seems to me like the goal of protesting is simply to raise the issue, most of the time, unless you can get a fairly large percentage of the "stakeholders" to come out. So maybe the very fact that we have protests and learn about an issue though it maybe a reflection on how well we are doing our civic duty and managing our society.
The corporate protests are usually directed at retail businesses. Now the saying, "any publicity is good publicity probably," should have the tail, "if you can spin it correctly." This seems to be because of the chain of events. First there is a protest about some retailer doing something amoral and it gets published. Then the company decides which road to take, either deny deny deny or make concessions and look like the good guy. Usually the latter isn't financial bad and so some corps opt for it and so the system works. But when this happens to corps who don't fit into a free market system (because they are so big they exert market forces) they don't change and ignore the protest. I guess these don't work because the size of the protest is too small in comparison with the size of the Corp. For instance if McD servers a few million a year then what impact will 5000 make?
But what about governments. They are elected and are suppose to represent the people. Well in my view when it comes to protests they look with an attitude of a parent listening to his five year old about moving out. Now the elected official have to make an important judgment call: do I do what I think is right or what my constituents want? (That's an issue for another post) And it seems to me the most often used logic is: I can please the most people if I do what will make the most money since everyone loves money, especially my corporate sponsors.
The fact is on any decision in government you will make some people happy and get protest from others. It seems to me like the goal of protesting is simply to raise the issue, most of the time, unless you can get a fairly large percentage of the "stakeholders" to come out. So maybe the very fact that we have protests and learn about an issue though it maybe a reflection on how well we are doing our civic duty and managing our society.
posted by Eddie | 1:46 AM
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