Balenciaga & the democratisation of corporate influence

You know, I talk a lot on my channel about corporations, the power of corporations, and the disproportionate influence they have over public policy, over politics, over government, and obviously over economies. And people often say, well, what can we do about it? You know? They're so powerful. They have so much money.

They have politicians in their pockets. What are we supposed to do? Money moves upwards. The money from the poor, the working class, the middle class, and the upper middle class, all of that money just goes up the steps to corporate power. They don't just have money, by default, by osmosis.

They have your money. Money doesn't trickle down. It is vacuumed up from the population. They're controlling your money because you gave it to them in exchange for some goods that you probably don't need. So I wanted to talk about what we're seeing now with this TikTok and Twitter led, mostly TikTok led campaign against Balenciaga because it's a thing of beauty, and it's stunning.

Because of people's popular rejection of a Balenciaga ad campaign, and what it was promoting, Shops Balenciaga shops around the world are empty because their customers don't wanna be associated with that brand anymore. Now I personally, I don't see why anyone buys these things in the first place, but the point is people do buy them. And if they stop buying them, these companies are decimated. No shareholders, no combination of shareholders, no asset management company, no politician has more power over these companies than their customers. If customers refuse them, they die.

This is why I've always said that, to a certain extent, it's much easier to influence policy when you know that policy is being controlled by profit driven corporations because you control their profits. That's your decision. So if consumers start placing moral or political conditions on a company and the way it uses its influence, not just what they put in their ads, but what political agendas they finance, fund, and promote, then you are effectively in control because that's the system, and whoever can disrupt the system controls it. Customers, consumers are the most critical element for the success of these companies. And the success of these companies is then used by those companies, the people at the tops of those companies, the shareholders of those companies, that influence of the of the corporation is used to drive political policy.

They can't have any power unless you give it to them. By your consumer habits, your consumer choices, You give them power. So every time you buy from a company, you are endorsing their use of their political power. You are endorsing the positions that those companies promote socially and politically and economically. You're endorsing that.

That's a vote of confidence in not just the brand, but the way that company uses its economic, social, and political influence. You know, there's that there's that slogan, eat the rich. You don't have to eat them. You just have to stop feeding them. And you can apply this principle, this strategy across the board precisely because there is such consolidation of ownership and control that even noncommercial companies, companies that are whose whose only clients or whose only customers, for example, are the state or governments, they're all under the management of, say, BlackRock or Vanguard or State Street, and they're part of a conglomerate, a a a system of an interconnected set of interests with commercial companies that you have influence over.

You can target for activism and protest other companies that are owned by those shareholders, by those same shareholders. I mean, it just proves that at the end of the day, there is no power in any system or any society greater than the people. We think that we are spectators, and the only teams on the on the field are governments and corporations, governments and the rich. But we are on the field, and the only way governments and corporations can win is by making us think that we're spectators. But we're not.

We're the biggest and the strongest team if we just open our eyes.