Eric, Welcome to the Lake.

Eli, Thank you for Hosting today’s Book Salon.

Welcome to FDL, Eric!

The first question that I have to kick things off is: Which came first, the world or the plot? And what was your process for creating that world?

What an interesting question.
The world came first.
The book was conceived in response to the world we live in, informed by the world Orwell created.
I tested a variety of plots in the world before settling in as I did.

So what’s healthcare like in 2044? Aside from those helpful corporate psychiatrists who prescribe free stimulants to anyone who’s having trouble keeping up with their workload?

(I assume that the implants that zap your leg when the boss wants you are installed for free as well.)

Good afternoon and welcome to FDL Eric.

I have not had a chance to read your book but I seem to recall some sci-fi books over the years that have had the corporations as the rulers in future earths.

Do you build on the current round of corporate overlords we experience? Without giving any secrets away, who wins? Microsoft? AT&T? Apple? Monsanto (doG forbid)?

Edit: One of the things I enjoy about most hard sci-fi is the optimism inherent with belief that we will eventually move off planet successfully before we kill ourselves.

I wanted a plot that activated the forces of the real world we live in, and the world I was creating. People versus Power. Monoploy versus free market competition.

And I wanted to avoid crime stories and regular run-of-the mill plots.

Does a scenario as laid out in Matt Taibbi’s recent piece in RollingStone about Goldman Sachs play out in your book?

Dave

Do you remember a movie from the late 70s/early 80s called The Formula, about a conspiracy to suppress the discovery of synthetic petroleum?

2044 kind of reminded me of that, where corporate interests trump an incredibly obvious public good.

Yup, the implant is implanted for free.
One of the things I like is that our hero hates the implant, and he keeps getting shocked by the office for trivia (more annoying than a bad ringtone) — but other characters like it. They can always receive calls and never miss anything.

Yes, health care is highly corporatized. Lots of tests.

Eric, I look forward to the book. It reminds me of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake, where the corps. Create diseases just to sell cures.

Sadly, I don’t know that movie.
But one of the capitalist myths is that aggregating all of the private interests adds up to the public interest.
Of course, accumulating private interests does many things well. But building libraries is not one of them.

I’ve long been amazed that the old-energy companies like Exxon don’t use their capital stock and market advantage to get a head start on leading the next generation of energy. But they don’t. It’s not just fiction. We can watch it.

I think the strangest thing in the book was Malcolm’s neighbor who loves babies and hates toddlers, so she keeps having the same baby cloned and then destroyed when it turns one. Is it safe to assume that the corporate cons have completely defeated the theocons?

Yes, there is a good deal of creating problems in order to sell solutions.
One of my main plot drives is creating fear in order to sell security.

A decade (generation) ago it was crime. Nowadays it’s terrorism. But some parties definitely have an interest in keeping us afraid.

Yes, the profit motive only does good by accident, or as a byproduct. Certainly there is a lot of innovation going on, but better cars, computers, TVs, or cameras don’t particularly make the world a better place.

The monied sector and corporate sector have abiding interests. The churchgoers can come and go. They were used for ground strength, but the people with real power aren’t really captive to those interests.

It’s worse than being modelled after existing folks.
I invented some really scary behaviors, designed to shock, and then learned that Walmart was doing it already.
My folks take a “Pledge of Allegiance” to Tentek corporation at the start of every work day. The American flag is in one corner, the corporate flag in the other.

Yeah, it’s bad enough getting fired, but it’s a hell of a lot worse when you have a 20-year non-compete agreement and have to start all over again from scratch.

Sorry, I’ve not read the book – implant? Some form of bioelectronic implant for communication and/or computation?

I’ve not seen this used outside of cyberpunk or post-singularity writing. your novel sounds like a good read, but more in the lines of a “The Sheep Look Up” or “Stand on Zanzibar” kind of dystopia.

The corporate pledge did surprise me, but now I am more shocked that Walmart is doing it already. Do you know of any other corporations doing that? Is this a new trend?

There’s a great quote by RFK. It’s more like a speech (several paragraphs) than a one liner. It’s about our use of GDP as a measure of progress. But GDP measures only economic activity, not things that really matter. Spending time with kids, going for a walk, reading a book, playing a game. The qualities of life that don’t measure nicely and don’t count towards GDP.

GDP also doesn’t count the negatives or externalities. If the commercial activity flushes waste downstream, the commercial activity counts positive but the waste doesn’t count negative.

The office implants an electric shocker in people’s thighs. When it wants them, it rings.

Never off. Can’t sleep through it.
Hooray! Problem solved.

“The per capita income gap between the developed and the developing countries is increasing, in large part the result of higher birth rates in the poorer countries…. Famine in India, unwanted babies in the United States, poverty that seemed to form an unbreakable chain for millions of people–how should we tackle these problems?…. It is quite clear that one of the major challenges of the 1970s … will be to curb the world’s fertility.”

-GHW Bush

Are there any small or even medium-sized business in the future, or have they all been ruthlessly crushed or devoured?

The no-compete agreement was in very small font in the middle of the long employment contract. He didn’t know he had it, either. Not until he wanted to leave. Of course, it was broad enough that he couldn’t find work anywhere in his field.

Our hero could start over as a cook, maybe (but probably the restaurant is part of a chain owned by the same uber-corp at top — so maybe not.)

Eric, just curious as to what your take is on Alex Jones. I don’t quite trust him, and for all I know he’s CIA or something, but he seems to make a lot of great points about the ongoing gutting of constitutional protections.

Gotcha. It’s a management device appropriate for a more dystopian future.

have you read either of the two John Brunner dystopias I mentioned? I recommend both of them.

Brunner’s Shockwave Rider is also good.

Thanks for that quote. Didn’t know that one.
Decreasing fertility makes perfect sense of course … especially if done selectively.

One thing I tried to do in this book was keep it flavorless.
Of course, it needs to be interesting for the reader …
but the world is ordely. Everything stays in its place.

It’s not like Blade Runner or Brazil. It’s Walmart and Disneyworld.

Many people are happy in this dystopia. Much about it is great. Just be sure to buy red slacks when red is in fashion. (Actually, you won’t have much choice. Your old slacks are falling apart and only red is on sale at the mall).

Yes. As long as you stay within the parameters and want what the corporations (both as employers and as advertisers/media) tell you you should want, you don’t even realize it’s a dystopia. You believe you’re perfectly free and everything’s great.

Okay, here’s a heavy question:

How likely do you think this future is, and how can it be averted?

Sorry, Eli. The small and medium businesses all get crushed.

One of our heroes, Jessica, tells the story of her dad. He tried to strike out on his own, and got crushed.

Actually, he didn’t get crushed. He couldn’t even get started, couldn’t even get a loan. He was too small for the big banks.

“And what about the smaller banks?” Malcom asks.
“There were no smaller banks,” Jessica replies.

Or something like that.

How important do you — or perhaps Malcolm — think the lifestyle choices about what we buy are? I want the barcode tattoo and I want the pager implanted in my leg because they give me good “features” that I “want”, or at least that I’m led to believe I want.

I agree. It and the two I mentioned are Brunner’s best.

That sounds about right, but does this include anything resembling decent health care? Social Security? Bankruptcy and debt relief?

I’m less pessimistic than I was a few years ago.
I like it that Obama won. Not just that he won, but how he won.

It was supposed to be Hillary, remember? Small d democracy got in the way of that.

Your characters seem well educated, lawyers and programmers. Are the corporations in the business of education also?

I’m looking forward to reading it.

i apologize for the mildly off topic cross talk.

I think Peter points it out exactly. The lifestyle choices fit within a reality. We can’t choose the reality … but we choose our favorite food from what’s on the table.

When did you start writing the book? Was there any particular event which triggered it?

My heroes are people at the top of the ladder. Partly because it makes it more poignant when even people like that are trapped. (And partly because my target audience reader is more like that).

Some characters are farther from the top. Garcia, who works in security. Sayeh Kahn who plays the crucial role of discovering how to desalinate seawater.

I don’t say it expressly, but the educated lawyers and programmers have anglo names, and the support staff have names like Garcia. Draw inferences.

I hope you enjoy it.
It’s not too gray and depressing. It even has some jokes.

I noticed that there is actually corporate product placement in the textbooks (apparently the corporate cons have taken a page – so to speak – from the theocons). Wouldn’t that tend to inhibit the education process a bit, or does it tail off at the higher levels?

No triggering event. Just frustration at how things were unfolding.

I remember Orwell, of course. One day I realized that he had it wrong. Government didn’t take over, it got taken over.

“Someone should write a novel,” I said to myself. “Call it 2084, or something like that, and make it a sequel to Orwell. But it’s the private sector not the government that takes over.”

The idea didn’t go away, so eventually I just up and did it. “Someone should write a novel” became “Just do it.”

There are corporate placements everywhere. The football team is the Tentek Titans.

The Beta Brothers action heroes figure in the kids’ textbooks, with coupons in the back for Beta Bars in a variety of flavors.

But there aren’t that many corporate names. The same ones appear again and again. That’s no accident.

Hi Eric,
I’m reading King’s Dark Tower series right now…just finished a bunch of Dan Simmons and found out that SF is now known as “Speculative Fiction”, I guess because so much of it has come true.
I mean, even Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine could have been written as SF. It prolly would have gotten a wider audience than just pointing out the naked facts of what has/is happened/ing.
People prefer to think that “it’s only just a movie,it’s only just a movie.” I think.
I’d say from your descriptions of your book that it is definitely “speculative”. Would you agree?

Possibly the most chilling line in the book, repeated a couple of times is, “They couldn’t say it if it wasn’t true.”

What happened to the bloggers and other progressive media? Eliminated, marginalized, withered away, suppressed, or just ignored?

In the future, the corporation’s money controls politics(?), does this mean the politicians have naming rights on them, like football stadiums?

Where 1984 was a bleak prison camp with guards and cameras and barbed wire, 2044 is a well-manicured lawn with an invisible fence

Wow, Eli, you sold me. Can’t wait to read.

Eric, Your bio on the back of the book says you’ve flushed every toilet in the D.C. jail. So my two questions are: “Why?” and “What did that experience bring to the world you described in 2044?”

I definitely try to keep it close to home. It’s not a future world cyborgs, space travel and Mars colonies. It’s a future that should feel very familiar.

Politically, this could have been written in a contemporary setting. Let it be a small farmer battling agri-business or (Eli comment 47) a blog trying to survive after “net neutrality” loses, or user fees increase to levels that only Gannett can afford.

But it all started with Orwell (see my reply to 44), which put me in the future. I didn’t go all the way to 2084 because that seemed too far away.

I write non-fiction for a living. This may not be the last time I fictionalize what could be a textbook…. (Naomi, want to conspire on Shock Doctrine, the movie?)

Stepford Wives. Fahrenheit 451. Invasion of Body Snatchers (the one with Kevin McCarthy). The Handmaid’s Tale. The Net. The Corporation (the documentary). All resonate. Great messages they have.

I’m very excited about reading this book.

I love these kind of future America books. Io9 website just did a post on the various future Americas.

One of the top vote recent themes is Corporate Feudalism

In my life I’ve found that taking on corporations as an individual is really difficult if you don’t have an understanding of the legal tricks and gambits they will use against you. (Having cost the ABC Radio Disney station KSFO millions of dollars in Revenue I know how upset they get when losing money is involved.)

One fear that I see in people’s lives that stops people from fighting corporations is that so many of us are IN them and we don’t want to lose our health care benefits. So we often are in positions of supporting the nasty things corporations do because our jobs depend on it.
I think of PR people, corporate lawyers and marketing people pushing, various polices that are bad for everyone except their company.

This ability to stand up to corporations is something that we will see more of if health care is decoupled from employment.

One theme I’ve noticed that addresses this decoupling need is in recent TV shows (Leverage, Burn Notice) is how the little guy can fight the corporate powers without using lawyers.

I was counsel in a lawsuit that said people locked in cages need access to a functioning toilet. Yes, it took a lawsuit to establish that and yes, constant monitoring to see the court order was enforced.

Some scenery is informed by time I spent in prisons and jails (voluntarily). The visiting line outside of the jail is informed by morning’s in DC. The useless, gratuitous belly chains grow out of a prison in Virginia. Some of this I mention in the acknowledgements (one of my favorite parts of the book).

Well, 1984 came and went and we just began to see the shape of what was going to happen with Reagan in office. And it was chilling. The description of your book seems pretty prescient to moi.
a progressive’s nightmare, indeed. Look at how long it took us to get it together to fight Bush and then, now, look what we got for our efforts!

John Grisham’s Street Lawyer is really good too. It’s fiction, not science-fiction. But it has a clear social message and is well grounded in research. It probably sold a lot more copies than a report or an ope-ed.

By the way, one of my strategies for de-funding RW radio is to play one set of corporations against another. I pointed out to the advertisers that the right wing radio hosts are tainting the sponsor’s brands with their violent rhetoric.

Having worked with some corporate sponsors of race car drivers I was astonished to read the 30 page detailed plans for how to deal with a crash that involved the corporate logo car and a driver or audience member. The key? Get the logo out of the picture as soon as possible, nobody wants a dead body associated with the Tide car.

Why can I not remember her name? Ms. Magazine, but Gloria Steinham?

Her name isn’t in my memory but her answer to a question after a lecture has stuck after all these years (she’d probably prefer it that way).

It was a discussion of what was bad.
Someone in the audience asked, “What can I do?”
The answer was. “Nothing.” Then she continued. “But you and all your friends, together you can make a difference.”

All the way back in the intro, Eli observes that unions are nowhere in sight. That’s no coincidence.

That’s really interesting.

Another similar point is TV advertising during the news. Advertisers don’t want to follow bad news. Crime has it’s place — like bad weather — because threats will keep you tuned in. But we get lots of stories of kittens and entertainment because advertisers want it that way.

I now remember one of my early scenes. The broadcaster talks about sunny economic times and shows Microsoft stock heading to the roof. At the commercial break, a different voice intones, “This news broadcast was brought to you by Microtech.”

Letty Cottin Progrebin. But you don’t need the name to get the point.

Of course. The Firm hit home, too, when I read and also saw the movie. Was a film years ago called the Borgia Stick with Don Murray and Inger Stevens that was truly chilling about corporate baddies.

Also just caught a rerun of The Truman show. Yeah, this is a BIG theme and needs to be addressed so profoundly by our literary soul-saving activists! Like what Arthur Miller devoted so much of HIS heart to.

Corporate Investment in pr spinning, style not substance, shallow level ostrich life. Do you have the media involved like it was in Fahrenheit 451. Kind of pseudo interactive with people (kinda like reality tv and American Idol type shows now are, etc.)

So was there anything that you really wanted to include in the book but just couldn’t fit, either for space reasons or cohesion/focus reasons?

And are there still Rush Limbaughs in 2044? Does the right still use hate and fear and personal attacks, or are they no longer necessary?

I also got the impression that there was probably not a lot of partisan rancor between the political parties, or if there was, that it was largely for show.

Is there a distinction made between a bad crash and a fender bender wrt logo prominence? Seems a fender bender allows for sigificantly extra camera time and thus might be a good thing for the corporate sponsor.

I have people as passive recipients of the media.
They’re busy. They’re tired. They’re hurrying home from work.
They sit swaying in front of a TV for a few minutes. Then a food cartridge, a sedative, and bed.That’s reality.

But look at all those channels and flavors of food cartridge! Life is good.

Hey, how cool to see/hear this all online, while I’m at work.
Though I haven’t yet finished the official version of 2044, there are some major changes in the beginning of the book– namely it’s Malcolm’s father who is the “bioterrorist” that gives Malcolm the fresh water, not some random guy on the street. Why did you change it? To make the characters more pathetic in their isolated, lonely lives?

Eli mentioned The Formula, and interestingly I just rewatched it on NetFlix Instant View (It has Brando in it!).

I like your concept that it isn’t corporate thugs but the invisible fence.
In Michael Clayton, the George Clooney character says, “I’m not the guy you kill, I’m the guy you pay off.”

I don’t think people understand the multiple ways that corporate players can make their problem people go away that involve PR, legal and vague threats that they never have to act on.

Being threatened by a multi-billion dollar corporation that they will “take you for every penny you got” was terrifying to me. It is also why I’ve kept my pseudonym, although it goes against my outgoing nature.
Corporate libel and slander is hard to fight especially when the people you are fighting have deep pockets and own the air waves like Disney/ABC Radio does.

There’s no rancor anywhere. Just disagreements over trivia. The two parties are effectively in cahoots, loyal to the same corporate sponsors with the same underlying interests.

“Where 1984 (sic) was a bleak prison camp with guards and cameras and barbed wire, 2044 is a well-manicured lawn with an invisible fence.”

Which elicits an excellent Aldous Huxley remark from a letter to George Orwell congratulating him on the publication of Nineteen Eighty-Four.

“Within the next generation I believe that the world’s leaders will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging them and kicking them into obedience.”

BTW, not to put too fine a point on it but strictly speaking Nineteen Eighty-Four is the title of Orwell’s famous novel but 1984 is just a number. (/nitpick)

But just imagine how strangely that sentence would have read…

(And I did actually contemplate mentioning Brave New World, which 2044 probably has more in common with than it does with, ahem, Nineteen Eighty-Four. Pacified population, “Year of our Ford”…)

Nice nitpick! Please don’t read 2044 with a red pen in your hand.

Been Done

The Syndic: C M Kornbluth

Spin outs and fender benders? I don’t know about and that part is probably like you said. I don’t know the details about that part, the part that I was most aware of was the car crashing into the stands and killing or injuring the audience.

I also followed the issue with Michael Vick and Nike closely. I wanted examples of when people that sponsors used to push products did things so bad the sponsors decided to walk away. And like Eliott said above, Advertisers don’t want to follow bad news. I pointed out to one advertisers how the host, Lee Rodgers, talked about cutting off someone’s cohones right before he read the commercial for the sponsor.

Another thing that I know is kind of BS, but still is used by corporations is their internal ethics statements and laws that they say that they believe in and follow (diversity, no-sexism) and then point out that they are supporting people who call for people’s death, are against Muslims and are blatantly sexist. Using their own mission statements and HR guidelines I pointed out to them the incompatibility. The CEO might think that those statements are just window dressings, but the HR person probably wrote them and wants to believe in them. That was the person I wanted to reach and ask him to the right thing.

More importantly, this dystopia is less deliberate than that. The corporate titans didn’t set out to take over the world. They set out to minimize costs and maximize revenues. That’s just their job, right?

And the next corporate biggie had the same incentive, and the next one too. Sometimes corporate success included a takeover, merger or consolidation. Sometimes it included non-competitive pricing or campaign contributions to against pesky regulations.

Everyone had the same incentives. Everyone did the same thing. Next thing you know, there’s only a few choices left.

Very similar to present circumstances. Your book represents a logical progression from where we are now pending total destruction of the environment by global warming or nukyular annihilation.

I’ve followed your story. Excellent work.

What *is* the state of the environment in 2044? The lack of fresh water was not exactly encouraging.

And yet, the world of 2044 is not as nakedly dystopian as that of 1984. The corporations rule through manipulation rather than overt oppression -

You mean, pretty much like NOW! I mean, if you are not a third world country. Though the banksters are giving us a taste of that now.

People identify with brands. Individuals feel cronyism with corporate brands. Advertising personae.

They say people got enthralled with actor celebrities when they appeared on the big screen, and the fans looked up at them on screen like a BIG OL’ MOMMY or DADDY parent, and the “baby viewer” was enthralled with that throwback to infant experience of being in arms of a powerful caretaker.

Mass “infantilization” of a society. Demonization of messengers who call the corporation-as-emperor on nakedness.

As we come to the end of this interesting Book Salon,

Eric, Thank you very much stopping by the Lake and spending the afternoon
with us discussing your new book and the future.

Eli, Thank you for Hosting this Book Salon.

Everyone, if you haven’t bought this great book yet, here is a link.

Thanks all.

Thanks, Bev! And thanks, Eric – I enjoyed the book and the chat!

The environment is ungood.
There’s a scene late in the novel. Malcolm, Jessica and her son David are in flight. They’ve made their breakthrough and the corporate police are after them.
They drive through an area that’s been destroyed. Mining, plowing, dumping … I don’t remember.
But it’s ugly.

Earlier they went through farmlands with it’s own distinctive corporate homogeneity, but at least it was green. This part is ugly.
Little David gets in a bad mood during the ugly part and starts to whine.

Read the book to see how it ends…

Eli and Bev,
Thanks for having me.
These Salons are terrific.

Thanks! I fed the techniques to other groups that used them successfully against Michael Savage and Anne Coulter. It uses the right’s beloved “Free Market” against their own media. It also doesn’t let the hosts cry, “You are trying to silence us!” The host’s beef becomes with their sponsors. They have to convince the sponsors to keep supporting them and their sick calls to kill the sponsors’ potential customers.

Savage and the RW hosts get supported by the left if anyone ever even hints at limiting their “free speech” (even though it is commercially sponsored speech). But if you say, “They can say it, but they don’t have to get paid to say it.” then it throws it back to media giant against the corporate sponsors paying the bill and they can’t be defended by crying, “Free speech!”

As long as GOD is in there somewhere, you betcha!
Speaking of distraction ala Palin..just look at what we’ve gotten while Congress distract US form what they’re doing with “healthcare”…Sanford ( wooo! Wookit the BAD Republican!) Micheal Jackson, who nothing gave qa tinker’s damn about ’til he took a ride. Then even Maddow was preempted for a “look at his life”. Now Palin and her shuddery speech and endless coverage

2044? It could just as easily have been titled 2009. But then it wouldn’t be science fiction, would it?

Isn’t that the epiphany especially of future sci fi. The haunting deja vu feeling or recognition. Aha! We are here already. Though we don’t always get it immediately, do we? I thought Bradbury and Heller were being hyperbolic in Fahrenheit 451 and Catch 22. Catch 22 sounds like Bush-Rumsfeld-Cheney fiasco LITE compared to what further insanity was going down.

Though I’m thinking I blamed Bushco too much (can’t believe I am writing this) in that I have overlooked the horrifing momentum of military industrial complex even with the supposed progressives in power. Little accountability and transparency. Imperialism. Drone civilian deaths. Black ops and detention continues. Military bases and embassies absorbing taxpayer dollars. Evil inertia to stay in motion. Oy vey.

Now that I’ve read more of the thread;

It’s interesting that John Brunner’s novels were mentioned, because I thought of them right away reading the description of 2044. There were actually four novels in the series.
Stand on Zanzibar was the best-known and I think it won a Hugo.
I liked The Shockwave Rider the best and thought it would have made a great premise for a TV series – Nicky Haflinger as a futuristic version of The Fugitive’s Richard Kimble.
The Sheep Look Up was also mentioned, but The Jagged Orbit was omitted.

What was great about these novels (written in the early seventies and set between about 1995-2010) was that they didn’t go too far into the future. I think this puts more of a burden on the author than something 500, 1,000, or 10,000 years from now, when technology could be presented as something indistinguishable from magic with no explanation of how it came to be. The Shockwave Rider for instance, was centered around the existence of something not too unlike the internet – though the real thing is much more advanced than Brunner anticipated. Not so much speculative but extrapolative fiction.

I’m looking forward to reading 2044 for that reason.

“More importantly, this dystopia is less deliberate than that.”

I would think from context that you might have used a different word than deliberate – malicious perhaps. If you set out deliberately to maximize profits without regard to the ’spinoff’ negative consequences (predictable or otherwise) you are no less responsible than someone who proceeds to do intentional harm. I guess it shows that being immoral or amoral makes no difference when measured by outcome. Collateral damage and all that.

BTW, have you ever seen The Corporation, a documentary by Joel Bakan, Jennifer Abbot and Mark Achbar? It explores to some degree how quite often the directors of corps that do a lot of harm see themselves as just running a company in the best interests of their stockholders.

The eternal needs & fears of the human body leads to the holy grail of corporatism: a consumer who doesn’t know why he desires a product and can’t stop from buying it for an outrageous price even if it’s clearly bad.

Just like selling drugs…that’s modern corporatism.

sort of like ethnic cleansing

How typical of the rich (and the Bush family is rich) to think of limiting other people’s rights (including life) in order for the world to somehow be better (especially for them).

Those are very sick people and the public was never told before they voted.

Wow, is this still open? Very cool and I hope so.
Yes, you are right, aptly named “SadButTrue.”
“Deliberate” was maybe not the best word. The corporations are behaving deliberately. They are consciously focusing on this tiny sliver of short-term profit maximizing behavior. Everything else is a side effect. They don’t care about that.

Henry Ford is said to have said that he had to pay his workers enough that they could afford to buy his cars. Today’s mega-corporations think differently. It’s all short term and all profit. No social contract.

My book skates it to the conclusion. Hopefuly it will help wake people up to the downside.

And yes to the next two questions:
Yes, it can be done differently. Business doesn’t have to behave this way. Some successful ones do not.
Yes, they don’t have to win. Democracy isn’t dead yet.

This book is part of our collective wake up call. Let’s get people talking …! http://www.2044thenovel.com