BAD BUSINESS POLITICS

We once lived in a time when selling products and services was a symbiotic relationship between buyer and seller, however, today with the inclusion of both politics and "surveillance capitalism", that mutually beneficial balance, has been disrupted and corrupted.  

Businesses today want to voice a political opinion and thereby alienate a large portion of the consumer base in order to appease another consumer base, but that represents a complete nativity of politics. 

Politics is called a dirty business for a reason. Politics is messy because there isn't a one size fits all, issue container, to hold the various and varying views of an electorate. Moreover, people hold grudges against those that hold views that they perceive as divisive, say perhaps the devolvement of the 1st and or second amendment of the Bill of Rights?

Businesses that employ "surveillance capitalism" which is the monitoring and gathering of marketing information on consumers, have already blurred the privacy rights of consumers by making the simple act of purchasing a product, a license for business to spy, collect, and sell our buying habits as a commodity. 

The oligarchy has reached well beyond our 4th amendment rights as government seeking knowledge on a person, already has an avenue of access through the volume of business data collected and preserved without a need for a warrant. Meanwhile Congress does what it does best, when it comes to protecting the rights of the people, nothing. That's right nothing, because not only is the donor bribery between lobbyist and our representatives the string that makes the doll walk and talk, it is also the campaign cash that silences those in charge of preserving our constitutional protections.

So when some businesses want to publically lecture, and or admonish with prejudice their paying customers, Americans are I assume, suppose to lay down and buy it? Boycott or accept it? But what if they can't boycott because it is the only purchase option left, in their one horse community? Angry consumers might continue to buy what they need from your divisive business, but what your marketing data won't show is their begrudge factor, turning their impulse buying into impulse boycotting quickly and with long lived resentment.

Trying to win back customers is much harder than making an initial sale. Once you have angered potential business, it is difficult to walk it back and be forgiven. There is a reason for the motto "the customer is always right" and it has less to do with their argument, and all to do with winning them over, and keeping their loyalty to your business.

So why would you stir a stick into a mucky caustic puddle and alienate potential consumers? Well, I don't know, but I know, it is a very obtuse business move that never ends well. Which is why any astute business, never plays politics. Why corporations and businesses are breaking that rule today, and paying the price, shows either oblivion or arrogance. 

However, the fallout effect for businesses that poke the taxpayers in the eye, might even become worse than just a loss of sales, given that America has become a crony capitalistic environment, the retaliation by consumers could become devastating in the form of being denied federal and state subsidies.

Delta might be the first of these companies to see a quid pro quo retaliatory reaction to their dropping of NRA discounts by way of seeing state bill (HB 821)  to suspend the tax on jet fuel, getting defeated by the  Georgia legislature. That bill's passage would represent roughly 40 million dollars in tax breaks for Delta Airlines.

Some people complained that it would be unfair to penalize individual businesses and lead to government getting into the discrimination game when passing laws. Others, myself included, believe there is already discrimination in the crony capitalist game of lobby laws to serve particular industries. Small business and start-up companies should not have to compete for tax breaks and subsidies being handed out to large corporations. Corporate bail outs and crony capitalism is not the free market enterprise that built the nation, and it is high time we pull in the reins on corporate welfare.

Business is in politics, to lobby for and against taxes, regulations and laws that hinder their productivity, however, in the last century business has become so cozy with Congress, that more often than not, it is business lobbyists, that actually write the legislation that ends up becoming law (Obama-Care), showing  how entangled and corrupted our mixed market and government have become.

If Delta Airlines, Enterprise, Hertz, Wyndham Hotels, SmpliSafe, Metlife, TrueCar, United Airlines, Best Western, Avis, Chubb, Paramount RX, Starkey Hearing Technologies, Allied Van Lines, Symantec and the First National Bank of Omaha want to drop NRA discounts and alienate NRA consumers, than they should be prepared to not only lose sales but equally to lose their place in the crony capitalist handout line.

If these companies lobby state or federal governments for tax breaks, lower regulations or request loans from government, taxpayers should lobby their state and federal officials against any favorable advantage to these companies. Good for goose, good for gander. 

America needs to return to the promise that all entrepreneurs can depend on equal playing field of competition in the marketplace. So if the consumers don't give these businesses their hard earned money and equally lobby their representatives against legislation that favors these businesses, then it would be a genuine push back, to show the power of the people. 

Looking ahead, if business sues based on believing government is blacklisting them, then perhaps this would actually end up in court and maybe, just maybe, taxpayers might see an end to crony capitalism or at least an ebbing, in the bribery game between business and politicians.

Corporate welfare has polluted our free enterprise economic system, creating an elitist Congress that works only for donors and it needs to be thwarted both for our economic health and our constitutional security.