Corporations are people, and everything is a product.

My husband is employed by a for-profit university (no slings and arrows, please. It's the best job he could hope to have in this economy). Essentially, his employer is Goldman Sachs. At team meetings, the staff are encouraged to refer to the students as "customers" and their classes as "products." An education is, apparently, a "product." Although my husband is a highly skilled professional, he's a "customer service specialist." The university cultivates a culture of "customer satisfaction."

In other news, I received a letter from my health insurance provider. Announcing a premium hike, naturally. The greeting of the letter thanked me for purchasing "a XXX product."

This is really a rhetorical question, but I'd really like to hear from people. How the heck do these intangibles, these concepts, undergo concretization and become "products?"

I'd also like to hear other examples.

Those terms have always been used by management and accounting types, as a way to analyze operational and financial systems.

But they were kind of locked away in the closets, because publicly businesses wanted to be seen primarily as providers of goods and services.

However they started becoming buzzwords in the late 70's and early 80's. After the economic problems of the 1980's, there was a greater emphasis on efficiency. Also as the Corporate Right-Wing hijacked the agenda, the idea that everything existed for the sole purpose of profit became a point of pride. So these terms became acceptable as well as trendy.

That bug even infected the non-profit sector. Now museums refer to their visitors as customers, and content and identity has become "branding."

It's very annoying.And it is part of the overall twisting of values towards a right wing Profit Over All mentality that devalues humanistic goals.

So at your husband's school, the emphasis on them is to make sure all of the staff knows that the school is not there primarily to provide an education, and students are really just sources of revenue.

Hence the current backlash (entirely justified) against for-profit universities. My husband's school isn't even the worst offender, but there have been complaints that the credits don't transfer, and the admissions people are worse than time-share salespeople.

It's not a great place to work, and he's looking to get out before one of the lawsuits takes the place down.

She loves the actual work with students but can't stand the way the school itself does things.

but this trend has disturbed me greatly. The corporatizing of America and its people is an ugly thing to behold.

They are huge things that business dreams up to justify draconian bean counter cutting measures.

True, they do lead to more efficient operation, but they also allow a manager to rationalize doing anything they need to do in order to promote the good of the whole. In this case they are applying the corporate model to a university and you see that more and more at all levels of government.

My question of it is this, these business' that LOVE that sort of thing were big factors in the crashing of the economy, and yet there is NOBODY questioning that philosophy that led there. In fact, people want to apply MORE of this sort of philosophy to government to 'fix it'. Scares the hell out of me, its using a hammer when you should use a wrench... just a bad idea.

I am a business man, and do know the importance of running things smart, but I also know that business is first and formost about people, me, the clients, etc.. they are people. I may not be the most cruel and efficient business machine, but I think I am happy being that way.

That is one mis-guided strategy if ever there was one. It has almost destroyed our manufacturing capacity, and it actually put two companies out of business in our area.

The cult of LEAN is unforgiving, all things must bow before them, humanity, ethics, tolerance, all things shall pass away before it!

healthcare providers. I happen to find a text book from Blue Cross in our thrift store. It was teaching employees new terminology to change the landscape of health care. Doctor's egos were mentioned as something to look out for when discussing with them the "cook book" treatment expected of them for their patients. This is of course the "representative" who never went to medical school.

We are goners.

The insurance company KNOWS what medicine I should be on! Without ever meeting me. It told me that the medicine my doctor prescribed was wrong because they don't cover it. They suggested another medication. Wasn't that thoughtful of them? Maybe I should just call the insurance company when I get sick, and they can just prescribe something over the phone. Such service, such compassion, such humanity.

:sarcasm:

their products directly to the "consumer". I've always hated the idea of the patient asking the doctor for a particular drug that they saw on tv or in a magazine or heard about from a friend.

Physicians become mere service workers just like servers at McDonald's. Just as there are ten options for sandwiches, and the worker need only push a button, they will enforce a menu of pre-determined services for each ailment for the doctors to provide.

When doctors are no more than service providers working from templates, why should they be paid so much...or given much respect?

It reminds me of the attempts to script and micromanage teacher behavior in the classroom (and enforce the scripts with checklist evaluations) that are being promoted now by the school reform crowd, too.

When I go to my local Petsmart, I am always annoyed that all of the cashiers greet me with the same canned friendly questions about my purchases. It is very obvious that their behavior is scripted down to their social interactions with me. They are cogs in a wheel who are not trusted even to have a simple social exchange with a customer...and their pay reflects the lowly robot status they are given.

The corporate Masters are busy trying to do the very same thing to doctors and teachers.

It is fascist propaganda.

but both are not human, just one, and they are fucked up defects who should be removed from power immediately.

You can form an LLC on-line in a matter of minutes for +/- $40.

In order to live a person must apply their abilities and/or skill-set to natural resources or products of natural resources to create physical products. Or, as with the poet or philosopher, one creates intellectual products in order to sustain their lives.

In this respect, products and property are synonymous; as are corporations and individuals .

systems of death. They engage in a kind of necrophilia. They've lost the capacity for the sacred. Everything is s commodity...human beings are a commodity. The natural world is a commodity. And they exploit these commodities to exhaustion or collapse.