Corporate Cronyism!

Well, you've heard about planned obsolesence... where companies design a product to "fail" before it really should...

www.stuff.co.nz...

Just another phenomenal example of the fleecing of the world by corporations and the governments that continue to allow them to do business this way. Why, as a civilization, are we so complacent to allow this crap to continue? Why do we continue to sit by while governments and corporations extort money from us?

We are all well aware that politics is money and money is politics, right? It's simple really, the corporation buy the politicians (By supporting their "re-election campaigns") and the politicians "return" the money to the corporations by legislating (Or a lack thereof) in the favor of the corporate bottom line. When did we shift from a capitalistic Democracy into an oligarchy? Why did we let it happen? Is it too late to do anything about it?

I, for one, am sick and tired of it. Last year I pledged an oath to only do business with small, independently owned businesses whenever possible and to avoid corporations at all costs. I am interested in hearing from other posters about their experiences with planned obsolesence, corporations and how they feel that we might be able to deal with this continuing extortion.

Well, based on the overwhelming response to this thread I see that most of you are perfectly ok with the notion that you are being fleeced by corporations and the government.

Remember the tobacco industry and how they rigged the alleged "testing" of the health effects of tobacco use on people? About how they rigged the dosage mechanism to get people addicted? All of this for the sake of profits? You ought to really love this one; this is the new tobacco industry of the modern era...

www.electric-words.com...

They have concrete evidence to support the dangerous nature of the product yet NOBODY is attempting to legislate or regulate it's consequences. Why? Profit!

Please, post your own examples. Maybe when people see how corrupt capitalism really is and how it is designed to make 1/10th of 1 percent of the people on this planet rich at the expense of the rest of us, people will get fed up enough to try and do something about it. Let's make ATS the beginning of the end of profiteering at the expense of innocent consumers!

Those things must be set to expire after a long period of time then. Just tried an ink cartridge I bought in Jan of 02 and it still works fine.