These 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

Got to love the competitiveness of our current Capitalist system.

A chart we found on Reddit.com today shows that most products we buy are controlled by just a few companies. It's called "The Illusion of Choice."

Ever wonder why you can't get a Coke at Taco Bell? It's because Yum! Brands was created as a spin-off of Pepsi--and has a lifetime contract with the soda-maker.

Unilever produces everything from Dove soap to Klondike bars. Nestle has a big stake in L'Oreal, which features everything from cosmetics to Diesel designer jeans.

Despite a wide array of brands to choose from, it all comes back to the big guys.

These 10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

Check out the chart in the story. A regular octopus indeed!

Years ago I was a pizza delivery driver for a major chain. In my home town, which is a "college" town, a new family pizzeria showed up and started offering darn good pizzas at an amazingly low price. So what did our chain do? (Betting you can guess.)

We immediately added more cheese to our pizzas and matched their price. They soon began to struggle and shortly afterward closed their doors. We then raised our prices to the old price and cut back on how much cheese we used.

The franchisee knew he could wait them out since he had more resources and that's exactly what he did and it worked. To the detriment of consumers and to the family that had a dream and saw it crushed even though they did everything right.

Viva competition!

Its really hard not to support certain companies if they are owners of the company that you want but don't want to support the parent corporation.

Wow! Reminds me of all the creepy info in the movie Food Inc.

Wasn't like 80% of all US beef, comes from 1 of 4 different US companies? And your fast food burger's beef was just standing next to the brand name beef in the supermarket a week before?

reply to post by Hessling


I really wish we could have back a prevalence of small businesses and get rid of all the huge box stores. The products were better, the service was better, and we all contributed to our local economy instead of stockholders and other countries' economies. We are, however, too spread out and too addicted to convenience. It's a darned shame.

Originally posted by Cyprex
Wow! Reminds me of all the creepy info in the movie Food Inc.

Wasn't like 80% of all US beef, comes from 1 of 4 different US companies? And your fast food burger's beef was just standing next to the brand name beef in the supermarket a week before?

I cannot recall the exact number, but yes. Production was heavily concentrated among a very small number.

I watched about 15 minutes of that movie and just couldn't bare to watch it any more.

Great comparison! Thanks for that.

Originally posted by gwynnhwyfar
reply to post by Hessling

 

I really wish we could have back a prevalence of small businesses and get rid of all the huge box stores. The products were better, the service was better, and we all contributed to our local economy instead of stockholders and other countries' economies. We are, however, too spread out and too addicted to convenience. It's a darned shame.

Amen to that thought!

I manage a retail store and our biggest competitors are Wal-Mart and Costco. Even though our prices are just BARELY above theirs, people still drive distances to save those pennies. (Even at today's gas prices.)

I try to explain that in a sense we are actually cheaper. At least in the long run.

When they make a profit, the money leaves the state at lightning speed. When we make a profit, we open a new store, hire new employees and contribute to the local economy.

Just ticks me off no end.

This reminds me of GE general electric , they make alot of great household products.

They also make aircraft guns and weapons systems. "we bring good things to life" . . indeed.

And the media incest not much different either. Just look at Murdoch and his empire.

These are the companies having secret little meetings with your elected to get laws passed to give them tax breaks.

This is one of the reasons we NEED to have the economy crash, and one of the reasons why it's being artificially inflated to prevent it.

We need to get out of this spell, destroy the power those gargantuan monsters have over everything and start again from scratch. This is why I look forward to seeing the chaos and collapse when it finally can't be held off any longer, we have to press the reset button.

Originally posted by Treespeaker
This reminds me of GE general electric , they make alot of great household products.

They also make aircraft guns and weapons systems. "we bring good things to life" . . indeed.

Reminds me of Bae Systems - weapons contractor in the UK. It used to be GE Avionics, GEC Marconi, Marconi Avionics... It's all a corrupt little game to these people.

Now lets make that picture even more disturbing.

Trace it back even further, and the profits from those 10 companies still filter down to only 3 or 4 people. It gets deeper and even narrower than what that picture illustrates. That is only the tip of the iceberg.

it's even more disturbing if you see who owns those big companies. you'll find that both coke and pepsi are owned by the same man, warren buffet (through his company "berkshire hathaway").

i'm sure if you did more digging, you could narrow it down from ten corporations to a handful of people.

www.yelp.com...

Oh how I wish there was a way we could tell just by looking at the packages.

The result being that there is no competition, no influence by the law of supply and demand, and therefore we no longer have a market economic system, and not much of a democracy as well.

To bad these threads don't get the attention that the hate Obama threads get.

Here a similar theme although a little more detailed

An analysis of the relationships between 43,000 transnational corporations has identified a relatively small group of companies, mainly banks, with disproportionate power over the global economy.

The Zurich team can. From Orbis 2007, a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled out all 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them. Then they constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions. The top 20 included Barclays Bank, JPMorgan Chase & Co, and The Goldman Sachs Group.

• The top 50 of the 147 superconnected companies 1. Barclays plc 2. Capital Group Companies Inc 3. FMR Corporation 4. AXA 5. State Street Corporation 6. JP Morgan Chase & Co 7. Legal & General Group plc 8. Vanguard Group Inc 9. UBS AG 10. Merrill Lynch & Co Inc 11. Wellington Management Co LLP 12. Deutsche Bank AG 13. Franklin Resources Inc 14. Credit Suisse Group 15. Walton Enterprises LLC 16. Bank of New York Mellon Corp 17. Natixis 18. Goldman Sachs Group Inc 19. T Rowe Price Group Inc 20. Legg Mason Inc
  

Full listing and story at link

New Scientist - Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world

Thanks for posting this. I like pictures like these. It's an easy way of informing the people about the most powerful, rich, influence etc..

If you go on and on about these problems, people will usually think you're crazy and it has an adverse effect. Pictures like these make people understand it all very quick.

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

Add Cargil to that list.

wiki

Cargill declared revenues of $116.6 billion and earnings of $3.33 billion in the 2009 fiscal year.[4] Employing over 140,000 employees in 66 countries,[2] it is responsible for 25% of all United States grain exports. The company also supplies about 22% of the US domestic meat market, exporting more product from Argentina than any other company and is the largest poultry producer in Thailand. All of the eggs used in McDonald's restaurants in the US pass through Cargill's plants. It is the only producer of Alberger process salt in the US, which is highly prized in the fast-food and prepared food industries.