Maze of Death One out of every 143 people in this country are in jail. Seven hundred more every week. A higher percentage of the population than any other country. Soon every American will be in jail and the streets will at last be safe. Jail will be where the production of goods takes place, bringing those manufacturing jobs back to the USA. Jail will be where the consumers are; the regimentation of prison life making it easier to target advertising campaigns. It’s the new economy. Finally one that may be stable. But that, my friends, is the future; and I need a new lawn mower now. So I went out to one of the local big-box-corpo-deathstars to see what was available to non-imprisoned Americans in the last days of the old economy. I bought nothing. You see, I was too put off by the security precautions the store had erected in order to protect itself from customers like me. Cameras, Security, and Detectors, oh my! You enter the doors and it's a whole new world. There are doors that you go in and doors that you go out. Is this a garden center or a slaughterhouse? You enter through a door that you cannot exit by. As you are herded through the carefully constructed and spacious isles you cannot help but notice the “Excellent Prices.” Must Save. Must Save. The whole store is designed like a rat maze; with prizes and punishments. It is a trap. It is an abattoir, a slaughterhouse, and there is but one exit. An older term for a slaughterhouse is a "shambles." And it was a shambles. I saw a security guy yacking on his radio- "suspect is medium build overweight." The corpos are their own fiefdom, have their own cops. And you ain't a customer, motherfucker, you's a suspect. He’d tagged him one. No one is innocent; everyone is a shoplifter, or a suspected shoplifter. The sales ads will soon look like the old publisher’s clearing house letters: “You may already be considered a criminal!” It’s the hot trend in sales these days, criminalizing the customer. The big record companies have even gone so far as to band together in order to sue their customer base. Soon the music industry will sue me for not listening to them; I have already paid a blank tape fee. It’s true, you are taxed when you buy blank media; the money distributed to the big record companies regardless of what you used the blank media for. In a rational world this would ensure you a right to tape whatever you want; a right you paid for. We do not live in a rational world. They have made money from me recording my own voice. Where are my residuals? I’m at about the same place as the artists they claim to represent. I have not received a penny from the recording industry. They lament the lost sales from “piracy” as if every person who copied something would have actually gone out and paid for it. They have gone so far as to actually say Americans are “actively not buying music.” It’s zen; it bends your mind. It’s like the time I didn’t buy that car, and so had to pay the car manufacturing consortium $120,000 for hitching a ride. “Actively not buying,” is making nothing into a verb; making something from nothing. Even science has failed at that. They make lousy music, but they are on the cutting edge of nothing. Oh, well. If I really want to actively not buy, I guess I would observe “Buy Nothing Day.” But I just can’t. The only thing worse than being told what to consume is being told what not to consume. Besides, anti-consumer consumers are the most loathsome consumers of all. They’re the ones buying most of the bumper stickers. The definition of “consume” used to be “to destroy, use up, or waste” as in “the infidel was consumed by fire.” Today the definition of consume is “to invest in consumer products.” They do want you to think of every purchase as an investment. They ask you to consider an investment in a new car, computer, or home improvement. Though these consumer goods tend to depreciate instead of gain value. It doesn’t matter; things are made to break. If products lasted you wouldn’t need a new one. There’s no profit in that. Stores also desire loyalty- from the employee and the customer alike. They know that in the end there can only be one hyper-mega-deathstar-bigbox-chain. If you are alert as you walk the isles you may see industrial spies hard at work for god, country, and employer. Employees from one store enter another to check prices. They do this on the sneak. They use a device to scan the barcodes of the consumables on the shelves. The devices are built to look like cell phones. If someone walks near them they pretend to talk into them. Spies are everywhere. They must destroy the enemy. Because there can only be one hyper-mega-deathstar-bigbox-chain and they own the customer. Soon we will all work for them. As an employee you are issued a uniform, you attend happy, happy mandatory meetings with group chants, and you do as you’re told. If you put them in prison could they really tell the difference? David Raffin is the editor of Vision? Nary! magazine. A writer and a performer, he may be contacted though his home page. This column is available by email. If you are interested in running this column as a regular feature in your publication, contact here.