The Choices we Think we Have!

I have been putting together some thoughts about our current situation as a society and lack of choice which we face. We must agree that we are currently experiencing a hidden lack of agency and our choices are perhaps more influenced than one might argue. It is perhaps easy to assume that today we have more freedom and control over our lives than ever before. However, for instance, the 10 biggest corporations (measured by conglomerate not revenue, Forbes), which means, those which have more impact and power on our daily lives and play the biggest roles on our choices, are on top of nearly 80% of every industry on the planet, which includes food, shelter, universities, health sector, finance and media.
The strategy of taking over smaller corporations allowed them to grown to a scary size that in some cases if one collapses it could potentially cause the collapse of the entire industry. This domino effect is more likely to happen than we previously thought. The government in such case has no choice but to step in and rescue such companies using taxpayers contribution, otherwise, taking the let it bankrupt and face massive job losses.
Moreover, those conglomerates also do not allow independent companies and smaller companies to survive as they cannot compete against such large companies, therefore, continuing to take more space in the market.
The main issue is that nearly all those 10 public corporations are owned by investors using the same hedge fund companies (investment companies) such as J.P. Morgan, Capital Group, Vanguard Group, Black Rock and few others.
Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible to find out who are the main investors in those companies as every time one takes a look it seems that names, numbers and rules are getting obviously more complicated. Making extremely confusing to understand who owns who or who and how much is invested in those companies. Obviously, more transparency must be demand in order for one to be able to clearly see the main players.
For instance, the biggest arms company in the world is Lockheed Martin, it main shareholder is a company called College America, part of or connected to Capital Group, founded by Jonathan Bell who invested heavily in an oil company called Shell. Not surprisingly, after the Iraq war, both Lockheed Martin and Shell broke a sales record.
This is just one of many other manipulated events which constantly take place in our lives.We live in a world today with a fake idea of democracy, one might argue that we have finally achieved the real life scale of Monopoly.
Globalisation and corporations were created to make our lives easier and fairer so we could focus on other issues and improve our lives and society. Unfortunately, fat cats targeting profit at any cost managed to redirect this aim and as a result, the gap between the rich and the poor are bigger than ever. Surely there are many more issues that have result in such scenario, in addition to that, the whole scenario is not as simple as mentioned in this short article.
However, one could agree that those fat cats are the real terrorists, those who aim profit above faith, love, fairness, wellbeing and equal rights and quality of life for all.
This is just a small thought which came to me while choosing an item at the supermarket, reflecting how much choice do we really have and how often we simply choose to ignore what is ahead of us.

I left the shop empty handed...