Disney, World Wars and Mass Society

Grunge rock is older than the current iteration of the consumer/corporation world. The banks pumping out endless credits has made stuff like Disney owning every media company or WalMart building giant box stores everywhere possible.

The corporation/consumer culture is really an iteration of the WWI/WWII mass mobilization and propaganda. All that was probably possible because the populations of Western countries were homogeneous.

It's really pretty interesting that the attempt to sell corporate/consumer culture around the world takes place at the same time the Internet has already begun to erode and probably destroy the mass culture in Western countries. It'll be interesting to see if the new "global" facsimile of a culture really lasts very long at all. Will it really be possible to sell the same movies and TV shows to Chinese and American and Russian audiences, or will they be too stupid and bland to compete against native entertainment?

Another very interesting thing that's happening now is the cost of designing and manufacturing goods is getting much lower. The barrier to entry to design and manufacture products, especially electronics, and most of all pure digital stuff, is very low. The overhead of corporations is ridiculously high.

So maybe in a few years, the giant megacorporations will have a monopoly on a giant outmoded garbage pile while everyone else just moves on in a million directions all at the same time.