Customer Reviews

Life Inc.: How the World Became a Corporation and How to Take It Back

5 star:		(21)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The book starts with a telling anecdote: the author, Douglas Rushkoff got mugged on Christmas Eve in from of his Brooklyn apartment, and instead of getting sympathy, he was basically urged to shut up by local residents, afraid as they were that the incident would damage the reputation of their neighborhood, i.e. reduce the value of their home. "When faced with a local mugging, the community of Park Slope first thought to protect its brand instead of its people," Rushkoff writes. The anecdote is Rushkoff's starting point to analyze how, since the Renaissance, "the market and its logic have insinuated themselves into every area of our lives." He argues that they mediate every single aspect of our existence, disconnecting us from everything that surrounds us. The book is quite expectedly somewhat controversial -- yet may also be one of the most inspiring recent books for entrepreneurs and innovative marketers.

Chapter after chapter, the author recounts how charters disconnected us from commerce, how by mistaking the map for the territory, we got disconnected from place, how the real estate business disconnected us from home, public relations from one another, consumer empowerment from choice, a unified financial architecture from the meaning of currency, big business from the creation of value - and how many of our attempts to combat corporate power are likely to disconnect us even more. "Brands were invented to substitute for the real connections we had to people, places and values."

The system that we have created for ourselves through a "six-hundred-year-old-business-deal" is a "progress" that translates into a loss. The book reads like an inexorable dispossession of connectedness to people and our environment, and like a sobering appendix to the five ages of man that Hesiod outlined in Works and Days in 700 BC. From one tectonic shift to the other, we have landed ourselves in the Age of Simulacra: "Step by step, place became property, property became a mortgage, and mortgages became derivative instruments;" we depend on brands and ad-agencies for our self-presentation and identity; our "positive thinking" and self-confidence result from intense packaging efforts and "corporate-enabled self-improvement." We can buy Disneyland souvenirs in any shopping mall without ever having been to LA. Spiritual centers, from Esalen to the Omega Institute, are well-oiled businesses, and our speculative economy has deprived us from the ability to perceive the value we create or to even create value. Even the buzz and word-of-mouth is now mediated: "In Apple's earlier days, Macintosh enthusiasts could be counted on to go into CompUSA stores when new products were released and demonstrate their benefits to consumers. But today's brand enthusiasts are paid spokespeople, faking their loyalty for money. It's big economy. New firms such as Buzz Marketing and industry groups like WOMMA, the Word of Mouth Marketing Association now conduct word-of-mouth campaigns on a scale unimaginable before." So much for our friendly social sites!

The book is phenomenally well documented and provides fantastic insights into some of the roots of the current financial debacle. The way the story is recounted is fascinating -- even if you may have questions about the angle taken by Rushkoff. One can argue that while it may be true that local trade using local currencies did foster more interactions between people and a thriving economy between the eleventh and thirteenth century, and that "real people did the best when prosperity was a bottom-up approach," the idea that the corporatist economy initiated by the Renaissance also initiated a downward spiral that all subsequent innovations only enhanced feels somewhat simplistic at times -- along with the assumption that mankind has somehow strayed from a better stage to a worse one. In the end, the evaluation of what connected/disconnectedness may depend on the frame of reference. Plato/Socrates fought the Sophists's ability to brand anything as a result of their disconnectedness from the essential, the realm of Forms and Ideas.

The book is also an insightful approach to the history of the United States, full of interesting reminders. Mirroring the techniques of the railroad barons of the century before, GM crafted the legislation that made highways federally funded and controlled - and idealized suburbs. Yes, Teddy Roosevelt, fighting corporations, may have been more progressive than FDR when the latter endorsed the Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) that changed the perception of mortgages (from a stigma to a plus), but ended up empowering appraisers as they assessed the quality of neighborhoods (and this to the detriment of Jews and blacks). The magic of PRs in the country has a unique ability to reframe or gloss over history. PR artists such as George Creel and Edward Bernays enabled Woodrow Wilson, who had run for reelection in 1916 on the platform that "he kept us out of the war," to persuade everybody "to make the world safe for democracy" a year later. In the same fashion, it's stunning how fast we forgot that IBM sold punch-card tabulators to the Nazis, that GE partnered with Krupp (a German munition firm) and that GM and Ford, which already controlled 70 percent of the German automobile market, retooled their factories to supply Nazis with war vehicles. As I say that, I can only suggest that you read a few foundational books in the history of marketing persuasion (of which many currently successful marketing books are spin derivatives), mentioned by Rushkoff, especially Edward Bernays's Crystallizing Public Opinion, Public Relations or Propaganda. While at it, also read Larry Tye's book, The Father of Spin: Edward L. Bernays and The Birth of Public Relations. Also consider another classic: Vance Packard's The Hidden Persuaders or The Status Seekers. Also, Douglas Rushkoff has written several other interesting books. One of them,MEDIA VIRUS - Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture, is the origin of the expression "viral marketing."

The last chapter of the book, "Here and Now," subtitled "The Opportunity to Reconnect," is in fact better than any marketing book, and may give you great ideas of companies that can make a difference. As the author reminds us in the previous chapter, PayPal's original plan was to offer an alternative payment service. True, the business model changed as Paypal activity was perceived as a violation of the banking laws. But you may have other ideas... and it's when they read scouring, abrasive books that entrepreneurs invent new rules -- and eventually might pave the way towards a new economy, or creatively revisit Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations. "Like the founders of America, who may have differed on almost everything else but this," notes Rushkoff, "Smith saw economics as characterized by small, scaled, local economies working in interaction with one another."

PROS: -Very fast and engaging read. Entertaining and provocative.
-Personally - hit very close to home on many points regarding how we are suckered in to so many corporate schemes on both large and small levels. Especially impactful when discussing how little value we create and how little value we give our own lives, working every day just to survive long enough to work another day.
-Fascinating take on the Dark Ages, Renaissance, and rise of corporatism that came of these periods, and how it relates to our lives now.
-Easy to follow explanations of the cause and effect relationships between corporatism and our lives unraveling.
-On-point analysis of the current state of American society and, most importantly, WHY it is the way it is. Personally I felt like he was expounding upon the exact complaints I've been voicing gradually over the past 10 years, such as: Why don't I know/see/interact with my neighbors? Why can't I walk/bike to all the stores I need to get to? Why don't I know who made my food, or even what state it's from? Are there ANY small businesses left? Why do all the radio stations suck? Do I actually own my home when I own a home? Why does buying a car feel scarier than getting married? Why don't my kids play outside? Why can't I sell my house? Why don't I watch the news anymore? Who has my name and contact information and purchasing history? Why am I so fat? Why do I own so much crap? Why are we always at war? Will I ever be out of debt? If the apocalypse came tomorrow, and I survived, would I be able to support myself for more than a few days? And so forth.

CONS: -At times I worry about the generalized and simplified chains of cause/effect that are spelled out when summarizing the past 600 years or so, especially in areas that run counter to traditional history education. My hope is that the explanations are not always weighed down in excessive detailed analysis due to the relative shortness of the book and the bigger point that is being made. I would trust that his numerous sources cited would back of many of the bolder claims he makes. As a teacher I have no problem doubting that the textbooks have taught us anything close to the truth anyway.
-Solutions? While I felt appropriately cynical, angry, and disgusted by our current state of the world, as well as relieved that I'm not alone in feeling disconnected from reality and other people, I also am eager to know how to change things. After all, the subtitle does include "and How to Take It Back." After 200+ pages of hearing how this Matrix was created, I was a little disappointed to read only a very small handful of concrete ways to unplug ourselves. Even the traditional ideas about how to contribute (corporate & private donations, environmental awareness, etc) were pretty much torn apart as either having minimal net impact OR as only feeding into the same broken system in the long run. I feel compelled to action but with no real direction on what to do, I'm still plugged in...


Overall, a very fresh and eye-opening perspective on how we've come to depend on corporations for everything, and how this has resulted in a complete meltdown of our human essence. If you are feeling disconnected from the real world and disconcerted by the commercialism engulfing everything, read this book to understand why things are the way they are and who is responsible. If you want to know what to do about it... hopefully he'll come out with a sequel!

Full disclosure: I performed research for Rushkoff on this book.

And I'm proud to have done so.

LIFE INC. isn't another Shock Doctrine or some Millenial Marxist Manifesto. It's a history of how we came to mistake human-implemented value systems as natural laws, how these value systems have disconnected us from each other and from our work, and how we might reprogram this systems and reconnect with each other.

It was a tough book for Rushkoff to write, incorporating myriad disciplines and historic perspectives into a narrative of our corporate lives.

Whether you think you agree with him or not, Rushkoff will certainly get you thinking about how we got where we are and where we can go next.

Under 250 pages, it's a light read. The book doesn't dive into technicals and I found it a decent airplane read.

The chapters on pre-Renaissance commerce are thought provoking. The idea of local versus centralized currencies is also interesting. But midway through, the book starts to wallow in your typical left-wing hodgepodge of history lessons that are loosely tied back into the main thesis of the book. The middle section of the book jumps around from Joe Millionaire to Walmart to GM writing road legislation. It's the system, man, the system.

And I feel a little conned when the subtitle includes, "and how to take it back" which only accounts for the last 15 pages of the book. Rushkoff tells a few stories about some people in the Bronx starting a garden and a restaurant that makes a different kind of coupon. My guess is the publishing house tacked on that subtitle.

Overall, I learned something about pre-Renaissance Europe, a different way to think of commerce and currency, and it opened my mind to new possibilities. The institutions in our world have been around before we were here, and I had been ingrained to think of them as a given, and not a choice. This book is thought provoking in that sense, and this book opened my eyes to think of commerce in a different way. Should have waited for the paperback though. Or maybe created my own currency and paid for the book that way (sorry cheap shot I know).

My whole perspective and understanding of the Renaissance is changed forever. I wish more teachers would tell this side of the story.
Great book, great stories! Cheers to history. Huzzah..

Those who control history control the future and in Life Inc. Douglas Rushkoff makes his mark on our future by detailing the history of Corporate Capitalism as the political and economic reality of the modern world. After evolving over hundreds of years into its current form, Corporate Capitalism is now taken so thoroughly for granted that few even question the basic mythology behind it. Rushkoff was jarred into this revelation after being mugged outside his home and being told by neighbors to keep quiet because it might hurt property values. His fellow homo sapiens were becoming dispassionate economic actors instead of human beings. The unquestioning behavior towards the value system of Corporate Capitalism is compared to waking up with Microsoft Windows on every computer, and every computer you've ever known.While nations and economies thrived using alternate models of economic transaction, the course of history has resulted in our particular economic arrangement. Rushkoff succeeds in tracing a clear and coherent history in Life Inc. and uncovers how arbitrary the rules of the modern economic game truly are.

As corporations gained power in the Colonial era they changed places into 'territories' and people into 'labor', solidifying the power of the state to grant monopoly power to the corporations. Ultimately, everything and everyone could be colonized for profit, fueling European colonialism and establishing corporatism as the basis for a new continent. This new classification of human interaction created a value system that extended to every aspect of human life. Rushkoff draws a distinction between the division of labor and specialization of labor, in doing so he reveals a major flaw in our valuation of specialization. We would think a society of trained merchants, managers and laborers are more specialized than one of self-taught artisans and inherently entrepreneurial shop-owners but managers didn't want to hire highly skilled labor which could demand higher wages. The managerial classes standardized processes as to hire the least qualified and most replaceable laborers around. This activity favored generalization instead of specialization: the basis for the modern education system. A modern education system designed by people like Stanford professor Ellwood P. Cubberly created a curriculum to produce "mediocre intellects" for a docile citizenry. The model for this education was one of the factory where, "the raw product (of children) are to be shaped and fashioned according to the specifications laid down." My own thought is that by creating a population of generalists, we create individuals that have no specific knowledge, no actual ability to create a tangible good or to experience the inherent pleasure of such creation. This is an insecure individual and one with an inherent fear of survival imposed on them by the scarcity in a compounding interest based monetary system.

Even the original American Revolution was one against corporatism, as the Tea Party slogan of "No Taxation without Representation" was primarily about Britian's tax laws which removed barriers to trade and allowed the East India Company to destroy the colonial economy. The irony is that our modern Tea Party movement shares the same angst as the original one but without the clarity of understanding the connection between Corporatism and their frustration. In the United States, corporatism was held mostly in check until the landmark 1886 decision of Santa Clara County v Southern Pacific Railroad Company. This case established the ability for corporations to claim all the rights of personhood granted under the 14th Amendment to the US Constitution, a law ratified to ensure the rights for former slaves. Over the next 25 years 307 14th Amendment cases went before the US Supreme Court and 288 of them were brought by corporations. With this as a precedent, money became equivalent to speech, so corporations could obtain their 1st Amendment right to free speech by spending money. Since 1944 when the US set the rules of the global economic game with the Bretton-Woods agreement which established the US Dollar as the global reserve currency, the policy of Corporatism has been international. We've dragged the rest of the world along, yielding a race to the bottom as municipalities and then nations competed to offer corporate handouts for attracting major companies. We've demolished local economies and land with the scorched earth policy of Wal-Marts and other big boxes.

The corporation has built a mythology so transcendent it has disconnected us from the world of true science, technology, ecology and thought. As Rushkoff notes, "Corporatism depends first on our disconnection. The less local, immediate, and interpersonal our experience of the world and each other, the more likely we are to adopt self-interested behaviors that erode community and relationships." We become the rational dispassionate economic man the corporations need us to be for their survival, and in doing so we become ever more dependent on their services, confirming in our own minds a subconscious subscription to the ideals of the system. We were told the perfect society is one we could own a stake in, through owning a home and a car and our own piece of suburban perfection. As Walt Whitman wrote, "A man is not a whole or complete man unless he owns a house and the ground it stands on." This was a directed goal because it was the burden of home ownership which, "chained a man to the factory where he worked." A focus on home ownership drove a seperation of classes and produced much of the wealth disparity in the US today.

Ultimately, the myth that we are all free to compete for the great prizes the free market has to offer prevents us from conferring about the value of the system itself. Divided and conquer, as a people but mostly as a mental environment. And so we are stuck with branding instead of the relationships we used to have with real people and their craftsmanship. We are piled in droves towards others with similar brand loyalties and the public discourse is standardized by using the media to speak to "individuals". We've removed everything of value from its context and in doing so we've removed the sense of awe that is a product of its uniqueness. Even the quest to find our place in the world while recognizing the power of being human has been co-opted by a spirituality that is derived from corporate values. From L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz where Dorothy could have whatever she wanted as long as she believed, to the modern obsession with The Secret, we've developed the purist spiritual expression of consumerist culture: a disembodied other delivering whatever we want when we want it.

A questioning and curious mind is culled with the depravity of modern intelligensia as dominated by the de-facto standards of a corporate value system. Surely there must be more to this world? Fear not, economists have explored it and found, as in Freakonomics, that maximized utility is surely the primary drive behind human actions. Malcom Gladwell offers spiritual and intellectual comfort for modern persuasion professionals with advice to classify our fellow humans for finding Tipping Points and harnessing snap judgements with Blinks. When we think Wal-Mart succeeds because it is efficient, it only does so because it has access to speculative markets beyond the reach of local shopkeepers. In reality, the Fortune 500 are just names on huge piles of debt. Adam Smith and his invisible hand were regulated by the pressures of neighbors and social values, not abstract speculation on derivatives and demolished trade barriers.

In the modern era corporations became giant externality generating machines, displacing liabilities as fast as possible to increase profits and our natural world suffers. Yet, the primary discourse regarding economies treat them as a natural system, ignoring that it is itself but a man-made system imposed on an ecosystem. Fiat currency has become the operating system which runs this game but has faded to the background so that we no longer think about. We can only think of one system of money despite the existence of many others throughout history. The most valuable piece of Life Inc. are the historical accounts of jealous monarchs which outlawed local currencies based on tangible grain stores in medieval towns to regain power through their coin of the realm.

As the Corporate Capitalist systems which have driven economic reality and moderated human life continue to break down, Life Inc. provides a guide to understanding that our species has survived and thrived in many alternative economic arrangements. This is a powerful book which dispels an unconscious acceptance of the corporate value structure and outlines a path towards returning to authentic human interactions once again.

But deservingly so.

I made the mistake of identifying Rushkoff for a Marxist that would take the easy route and blame all of the systems current problems on big bad Republicans and banksters. Instead he provides a very insightful roadmap of how WE'RE the problem and in summation he provides us with steps to become activists in our own way to take back control. All this is done by respecting the foundation of our Republic.

Life, Inc will make you question any beliefs and preconceived assumptions about the "economy". He talks about Ayn Rand, Hayek, Thatcher, Reagan, and free market capitalist as if their ideology exists solely to confuse the consumer and placates to big bankers. I disagree. And at times his interpretation of events in history seem to conveniently fit his objective. Events that span over hundreds of years are just way to complex sometimes. However, his understanding of the history of the modern day corporation, our currency, "crony capitalism" and the speculative economy is brilliant.

It felt good to read a book that doesn't necessarily subscribe to any ideology or have a hidden agenda (Maybe I'm too naive and didn't realize it).

The timing of this book is perfect. People are fed up with the system but they collectively can't quite figure out the root cause. Hopefully more books like this will help spark a peaceful dissent aimed at taking it all back.

There is a growing sense among many that there is something wrong with our society. Books like Bowling Alone and Last Child In the Woods talk about our disconnection and isolation from each other and from nature. Life Inc makes the case that we arrived at our current state through our corporate economy. It makes for an interesting argument. However, I found some things in the book to be irksome.

Firstly, I think that it is unfair to put the blame entirely on corporations. We, the public, are not zombies. We were willing accomplices in what took place. We bought the goods offered by corporations. The alternatives proposed at the end of the book have always been available to us.

Secondly, the necessary references are missing. In presenting his arguments, Rushkoff sometimes mishandles the facts. I know that this is not intended as a scholarly work, but a great deal of history is provided. Footnotes or at least a bibliography would have been helpful. At one point in the book the statement is made that the Mayflower was chartered by the British East India Company. I decided to check this out on the Web. What I found is that there were several ships at the time named Mayflower (after a shrub that grows in Britain) and that one of them indeed was chartered by the East India Company, but there is no evidence that this is the same ship that was used by the Pilgrims. Later, criticism that is quite off base is made of primate studies showing the aggressive nature of the animals studied.

These criticisms aside, I think the book is still worth reading. Although the chapter presenting solutions to the problem is short, I feel it is on the mark. The only way to fight corporate influence is to connect at a community level. This is not a Utopian vision, but one which is doable and which may yet come to pass.

I haven't read this yet, but I want to buy the Kindle version. The only problem is, the book was updated in January 2011, with 70+ pages added. The only Kindle version for sale is from the 2009 edition. Many people who buy this will not realize that they are not getting the updated version.

Amazon, fix this now! Either get the updated Kindle version or split the editions into separate entries.

If you've ever hear that cliche and wondered about its deeper connotations, this book is definitely for you.

Rushkoff's dissertation is "big picture" and provides a coherent, although at times intermittent, historical perspective of the 21st century and what got us here financially, physically, and mentally.

There is a fair bit of social science in this book - does our societal structure make us behave in ways that humans normally wouldn't? Have markets coerced people to compete between themselves to the point of compromised well-being?

Rushkoff thinks so, and his book provides ample anecdotal evidence to make for an engaging read.

Undoubtedly there will be reviews here that point to Rushkoff's extensive use of anecdotal evidence over impressive charts, tables, and stats. I'm thankful he did so, writing in a style of conversational dialogue rather than that of a migraine inducing thesis.

As per Joe Bageant:

"Most of us live anecdotal lives in an anecdotal world. We survive by our wits and observations, some casual, others vital to our sustenance. That plus daily experience, be it good bad or ugly as the [...] end of a razorback hog. And what we see happening to us and others around us is what we know as life, the on-the-ground stuff we must deal with or be dealt out of the game. There's no time for rigorous scientific analysis. Nor need."

Read this book, or you may be missing something from your currently held conceptual beliefs.