Review of "Life, Inc."

[Acrylicist]

http://thetyee.ca/Books/2009/06/26/LifeInc/

Money, root of all evil

It's a breathless narrative that veers dangerously close to conspiracy
theory in places. There's a determinism to his story that suggests an
intelligent goal rather than the "invisible hand" of the market.

Perhaps the biggest flaw in Rushkoff's book is the assertion that
before corporatism, society was more humane. It's the prelapsarian
assumption that once there was a perfect way of life and then somebody
had to eat that apple from the tree and ruin everything. It ignores
just how nasty, brutish and short pre-modern life could be. Every once
in a while Rushkoff takes a break and grudgingly allows that modernity
has its good points, but then he goes back to cataloguing the crimes
of corporatism. Much of this isn't really news to anyone who's ever
picked up a copy of Adbusters, watched the documentary The Corporation
or read other works of social-economic commentary like Barbara
Ehrenreich's Nickeled and Dimed. It needs to be said again,
particularly at this moment, but it doesn't explore new ground.

Where Life Inc. gets interesting and introduces ideas that haven't
already been covered in other critiques of late capitalism, is when
Rushkoff introduces the bold idea that money itself is the problem.

This does not mean that material goods are the problem. The problem is
the rules and assumptions by which money operates. We take money for
granted, like gravity; it can't possibly work any other way. Can it?

Rushkoff contrasts centralized currency, which is lent into existence
by state-chartered banks and is always draining away because of
interest, with localized currency, which is based on actual goods and
labour. One suctions value out of the periphery into the centre, the
other generates value from the periphery and keeps it there. Most of
every dollar spent at Starbucks goes to its corporate coffers, instead
of cycling back into the local economy.

Historically, market economies, as they expanded across the world
through colonialism, have vigorously absorbed or destroyed other
economies, such as barter economies or gift economies like the potlach.