“That’s the ironic gesture, right? We’re absolutely concerned — “Oh, we’ve got to do something,” Right? And then, actually, […] it’s what you’re doing that’s creating the problem in the first place, and yet your concern, it masks that.

[…]

“How many of us sit in Starbucks and talk about the evils of corporations? How many of us drive fuel-consuming cars while listening to radio programs about the environment? We engage in this ironic gesture all the time, and we don’t experience it.

“Batman’s a perfect example. What does he do at night? He puts on this crazy rubber suit, and he goes out and he beats up criminals, right? Then, after he’s beaten up the criminals, the next day, he gets in his suit, and he goes and he works in Wayne Industries as Bruce Wayne. Now, what’s really interesting, is he’s doing this big stuff on Saturday night, you know, beating up on the bad guys, trying to to make Gothem City a better place. And yet during the day he’s working in an industry which makes so much money that he can fund a high-tech military campaign and nobody even notices.

“How much money is Wayne Industries making? Wayne Industries is making phenomenal amounts of money. And one has to ask, is it not industries like Wayne Industries, who are making such vast amounts of money without any social regard; is that not the reason that there are criminals that he has to beat up? He’s not made the connection that the very thing he’s doing on Monday to Friday is the very thing he’s fighting on Saturday night.

“He thinks the site of resistance is going out and beating up criminals, but he doesn’t realize that what’s he’s doing in his grounded daily activity is creating and generating the very conditions that means he has to do that.

[…]

“The very thing he thinks is the site of Resistance is the thing he has to do to in order to feel good about himself so he can get the suit on and go into work the next day.

[…]

“What you find out is that the very place you thought was the site of resistance […] is the very thing the system requires in order to continue to run smoothly.” (>>)

“They follow the news; they’re aware of what’s going on around the world- and of how terrible much of it is. But they’re also unwilling to stop working for these corporations, to give up their elitism and sports cars and fancy houses and $500 shoes. They are aware of their hypocrisy- painfully aware- and so they take small, baby steps to make up for the atrocities they are complicit in […]. They are aware, mindful, maybe, but ultimately will not radically change their way of living. They might even look down on the people who are eating fast food/processed food for not ‘being healthier,’ while deep down knowing these people cannot afford organic tomatoes and coconut water and fair-trade dark chocolate imported from some faraway place.” (>>)

” ‘You can set all the rules you want, but they’re meaningless if you don’t give suppliers enough profit to treat workers well,” said one former Apple executive with firsthand knowledge of the supplier responsibility group. ‘If you squeeze margins, you’re forcing them to cut safety.’

[…]

” ‘We’ve had this conversation hundreds of times,’ said a former executive in Apple’s supplier responsibility group. ‘There is a genuine, companywide commitment to the code of conduct. But taking it to the next level and creating real change conflicts with secrecy and business goals, and so there’s only so far we can go.’

[…]

” ‘You can either manufacture in comfortable, worker-friendly factories, or you can reinvent the product every year, and make it better and faster and cheaper, which requires factories that seem harsh by American standards,’ said a current Apple executive. ‘And right now, customers care more about a new iPhone than working conditions in China.’ ” (>>)

“Even af­ter his parachute opened, Tyler Stark sensed he was coming down too fast. The last thing he’d heard was the pilot saying, ‘Bailout! Bailout! Bail–‘ Before the third call was finished, there’d come the violent kick in the rear from the ejector seat, then a rush of cool air. They called it ‘opening shock’ for a reason.

[…]

“All the people who had been demanding intervention went nuts after we intervened and said it was outrageous. That’s because the controversy machine is bigger than the reality machine.” (>>)