So I'm reading this book called; 'From Death To Eternity' and the author brought up how Crestone, Colorado is the only place in the US where open pyre funeral are legal.

Doughty mentions that; "So why do these local governments continue to resist? The answer is as bleak as it is obvious: money. The average American funeral costs $8,000 to $10,000--not including the burial plot and cemetery costs. A Crestone End Of Life funeral costs $500, technically a donation to cover wood, fire department presence, stretcher, and land use."

In other words corporations have taken over the funeral business too, lads. From Death To Eternity is a very interesting read and so far this author has covered how corporations have sucked intimacy and care at funerals out of societal norms.

Also the author, Caitlin Doughty is a mortician so she knows about the business.

^Aghhh I love her!!

Yeah funeral costs are absolutely insane, and I'm all for alternative funeral options especially if they're not ridiculously expensive.

"The author has covered how corporations have sucked intimacy and care at funerals out of societal norms" Yeah I was also learning recently about this. Eg. How corporations are trying to sell you fancy "waterproof, airtight" $8000 coffins, using marketing tactics that exploit people at the height of their grieving process and basically guilt-tripping them into it.

Capitalism commodifies everything - even death, societal traditions and ultimately, people themselves.

Definitely would love to give that book a read, thanks for the rec

using marketing tactics that exploit people at the height of their grieving process and basically guilt-tripping them into it. And this is just evil. They are preying upon a very vulnerable group and using grief (and possibly even depression) to take advantage of people. It's evil. Almost as evil as McDonalds having an entire study on child psychology so that they can brainwash them into bad eating habits from an early age. Corporations are so predatory it's terrifying.

You're welcome, it was a fantastic and informative read.

@whoever is going to burry me in the future; feel free to build me a janky coffin out of planks of wood, just paint it with love or something. Honestly you can just burry me in the yard if you want lmao, no coffin required.

"Almost as evil as McDonalds having an entire study on child psychology so that they can brainwash them into bad eating habits from an early age" jfc is this actually a thing? It's sad that I'm hardly surprised

On McDonalds being evil: have you guys heard of the "greedy old lady got rich by suing McDonalds for her coffee being too hot" case? It caused a media storm of disdain towards her back in the day and people still use as an example of "frivolous litigation".

Everyone gets the facts of the case wrong.

So Stella Liebeck, a 79-year-old widow, is sitting in the passenger seat and orders McDonalds coffee from the drive-through. The driver pulls into a parking spot, and she puts the cup between her knees to hold it steady while she puts cream and sugar in. But the coffee spills onto her lap, causing second- and third-degree burns over 16% of her body, which nearly kills her. She has to undergo gruesome skin graft operations, loses 20% of her body weight and shrinks to 83 pounds (37kg), and her medical bills top $10,000. She then has to undergo two more years of medical treatment.

She contacted McDonalds to ask to be reimbursed solely for the medical expenses. McDonalds responded with an offer of only $800. After further attempts to settle out-of-court fail, Liebeck is forced to go to court to cover her hospital bills and follow-up care.

But isn't every coffee hot? Why should McDonalds pay her medical bills?

The court found that McDonalds manual demanded that coffee be served at 180-190°F (88°C) - much hotter than coffee from other establishments. They were aware that this abnormally-hot coffee could cause terrible burns, because they had received more than 700 reports of burns in the past decade. But although they knew that heating their coffee to this temperature was dangerous, they did it because it was saving them money: when you serve coffee that is too hot to drink, it will take much longer for a person to drink it, which means that McDonald’s will not have to give out as many free refills.

It's similar to that time that Ford decided to continue selling the Pinto even when they knew it could blow up - they calculated that it would be cheaper to pay out damages to the families of people killed when their Pinto exploded, rather than stopping the sale of the car. They crunched the numbers: given the likely amount of explosions compared to the cost of recall and repair, allowing the accidents to occur represented a net savings of nearly $70 million. Therefore a human life was mathematically proven to be worth less than fixing an $11 part.

Anyway, the jury sided with Liebeck and awarded her $2.7 million in punitive damages ( = equivalent to two days' worth of McDonald's coffee sales). She had only sued for $125,000, but the jury felt that punitive damages were necessary given that McDonalds KNEW they were endangering people.

A judge later lowered the damages to $500,000.

Liebeck became the centre of a media frenzy, with corporations calling for law reform and people ridiculing Liebeck as a "greedy old woman". Lawyers spent years running a disinformation campaign, holding up the McDonald’s coffee lawsuit as an example of a supposed epidemic of frivolous lawsuits. Large corporations afraid of being sued for making unsafe products created front groups like Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse to turn public opinion in their favour.

In reality, Liebeck had only wanted to cover her expenses + make McDonalds decrease their coffee to a normal temperature so it wouldn't happen to anyone else.

Unfortunately, she never regained the strength and energy she had before she was burned, and had to get a live-in nurse to care for her.

Lol I just wanna clear poor ol' Stella's name :/

link, link

"Corporations are so predatory it's terrifying" human society has moved past the need for corporations <3 <3

"Feel free to build me a janky coffin out of planks of wood" lmao same, or just stick me under a tree or something. Good fertiliser.

Yes! I actually did hear a out that. The media painted her out to be a customer™ when in reality the coffee is served obesely hot. I actually read about that a while back (but I didn't read the grittier details about her exact medical condition). I do remember reading about and being disgusted by how she was framed as the bad guy/just another whiney customer. Not only did she get physically hurt but she was then mocked and ridiculed so that the company wouldn't get smeared. Sounds like the corporation and the CEO's are the selfish ones to me.

Honestly it was a mistake to pass laws giving corporations human rights. 1. They ain't human. 2. Even if they were, they're souless so they aren't actually human. 3. But since we're treating them like humans can they be put on trial for crimes against humanity.

And yeah I read about it in the Fast Food Nation book. There was a whole chapter on how they did behavioral analysis on kids. And how they determined the five common ways kids nag their parents and had studies done to find out how best to get the kids to do the nagging for them--in other words, how to turn the kids into billboards. Copy and pasting from my good reads review; Pretty much all of page 44 is hella disturbing. It talks of how advertisers have broken down the psychology of how children nag their parents and aims to get the children to advertise the food for them. "The aim of most children's advertising is straightforward: get kids to nag their parents and nag them well." They have entire studies done on how to best manipulate kids. "They study the fantasy lives of young children, then apply the findings in advertisements and product designs.

"Pepsi, Dr. Pepper, and Seven-Up encourage feeding soft drinks to babies by licensing their logos to a major maker of baby bottles, Munchkin Bottling Inc. A 1997 study published in the journal of Dentistry for Children found that many infants were indeed being fed soda in those bottles. " Literally targeting babies.

I would be fine with becoming a tree lol.

Was just about to sleep so will reply more fully tomorrow

"Honestly it was a mistake to pass laws giving corporations human rights. 1. They ain't human. 2. Even if they were, they're souless so they aren't actually human. 3. But since we're treating them like humans can they be put on trial for crimes against humanity." <--- but fuckin yes to all of this

I sat through 6 months of corporations law thinking "wow this was all a terrible idea in the first place" lmao

Was also planning to make a poll about the Citizens United case this week. Which decided that corporations have "free speech"?? And that they can express this "free speech" by throwing obscene, unlimited amounts of money to politicians in order to influence policy???

Corporations are literally a "legal fiction" (actual terminology for it), they are an ABSTRACTION. Why the FUCK do they have more say in the political process than actual living people??

I cannot

gonna either get post-capitalist dreams or capitalist-dystopia nightmares now

lol g'night

"then mocked and ridiculed so that the company wouldn't get smeared" yeppp they literally dedicated resources to attacking her, it's disgusting. I suppose people's sympathies would intuitively fall with the innocent old woman battling against the (willfully harmful) fast food megacorporation, so they had to engage all the propaganda machines at their disposal, like lobbying groups and the corporate mass media. Which is basically how corporations and the 1% "manufacture our consent", for well, everything. Noam Chomsky's link.

"But since we're treating them like humans can they be put on trial for crimes against humanity" lmaooo pls. Our laws against corporations are so fucking useless. A maximum fine of $100,000? McDonalds and Apple are just gonna laugh that off and factor it into the cost of doing business. McDonalds makes $1.35 million per day just from selling coffee (that was in the 90s so it's probs a lot more now). Property development firms in Melbourne are illegally demolishing heritage-listed buildings coz they know they'll earn millions of dollars in profit even AFTER the fine.

But yeah "privatise the profit, socialise the costs" is pretty much the MO of corporations in our current system.

"It talks of how advertisers have broken down the psychology of how children nag their parents and aims to get the children to advertise the food for them... they have entire studies done on how to best manipulate kids. um this is mildly horrifying. Advertising fast food to kids should be banned IMO.

. Which decided that corporations have "free speech"?? And that they can express this "free speech" by throwing obscene, unlimited amounts of money to politicians Yeah see this is really absurd too. Corporations shouldn't have louder voices than the people. They shouldn't have voices at all.

yeppp they literally dedicated resources to attacking her, it's disgusting/ Oh I agree, that's sickening. She should sue them twice over for the smear campaign and for mental distress. I don't see how anyone could possibly side with McDonald's. Hell, even if she was just being dramatic about hot coffee I'd side with her over a megacorporation lol.

A maximum fine of $100,000? McDonalds and Apple are just gonna laugh that off and factor it into the cost of doing business. Tbh that much is probably gonna do about as much (or less) damage as (then) a single penny coming out of the pocket. It's not even a slap on the wrist. Like they need to up that to actually do some damage/deal real consequences. They do all of this unethical shit because they can get away with it.

And I would agree on that too. Leave the children out of this and let children be children. Literally studying children and child psychology for the sake of manipulating them (and forming terrible eating habits early on) is terrifying and disgusting.

"Corporations shouldn't have louder voices than the people. They shouldn't have voices at all." YEP. Corporations literally only exist to make money for themselves. They are amoral. They are not inherently valuable like humans. It's total bullshit that they have "freedom of speech". They're a legal fiction - they only exist because our current laws bring them into existence and protect their existence.

Human society has moved past the need for corporations and they are now a hindrance to further development. Workers should own them.
- my newly-socialist ass

"She should sue them twice over for the smear campaign and for mental distress" agree. Unfortunately our legal system exists to protect property rather than individuals and it's pretty damn impossible for one person to have enough funds to sue a corporation. Also I'm pretty sure she died defamed and disliked, with chronic pain from her burns. I wish all McDonalds execs a very unpleasant day.

"Tbh that much is probably gonna do about as much (or less) damage as (then) a single penny coming out of the pocket.". Literally lol. They don't even feel this shit. I'm a big fan of making corporate fines a % of global revenue, rather than a hard maximum of a few hundred thousand dollars that megacorporations brush off like a fly.

Literally studying children and child psychology for the sake of manipulating them boring dystopia