Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Simon Retallack: For me, brands are represented by the world’s largest corporations and, increasingly, the world’s largest corporations have significant power. Whether they have more power than governments or not depends, I think, on the government of the country in question and the circumstance. I can think of many examples in which big global corporations with the big brands have an influence over governments themselves and over consumers that is unrivaled when it comes to other stakeholders in society; certainly when it comes to the influence of civil society groups, for example, which, of course, in a democratic era is a glaring anomaly if you like. And, of course, the problem with it is that corporations, on the whole, have very narrow interests; they are obliged by the system in which they operate to deliver returns to shareholders on a quarterly basis that requires them to maximize their profits. And that’s fine, but they often do so in a way less constrained by government that does not necessarily promote the best interests or the wider interests and, I should say, the long-term interests of the poorest in the world or the environment. And, of course, that’s a problem. There are examples of the big global corporations having used their influence to block progress on social and environmental policy in different countries; and that’s it, so I have to stop.

by Simon Retallack

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Sohrab Mahdavi: By brands, if we mean corporations that are giving birth to them, brands need governments. They need the state to pool finances and resources so that corporations can benefit from them.

by Sohrab Mahdavi

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Song Kosal: Yes, because it [inaudible] makes more people know their products. For example, Coca-Cola Company has been known all around the world. Their products can cross the political border and are popular among the people.

by Song Kosal

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Stephanie Robinson: I think that a lot has been going on recently regarding culture in America and around the world that speaks to whether or not advertisement and branding; branding of organizations, branding of items, branding of even individuals. There’s been a lot of talk about how you perceive information and how you receive information. I would say that there is a lot of talk about branding. But the talk has become wildly overestimated. The idea and the power of branding has become overestimated. It is, I think, a mistake to think that branding can be more powerful than a sovereign nation, than a government. We still live in a world where governments are powerful. They construct the infrastructures that we live under, they are responsible for the global commerce, they are responsible for the economic markets, they are responsible for the regulations that control our environments and ultimately our lives. While I think that branding and advertisement and everything around that probably has become too power or more powerful than it should be I would argue that it is not more powerful, however, than government. It seems that many people think that other regional and subnational and transorganizations like NGOs and [taracels] or multinational corporations have become very power. I don’t believe, however, that yet the government is obsolete, is in any way passé. So my answer to the question is that governments are still more powerful than branding.

by Stephanie Robinson

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Steve Earle: Governments are brands.

by Steve Earle

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Sulak Sivaraksa: In this day and age, because brands have become more important element, governments go to work behind the scene. But unfortunately a lot of government also having brands advertising their work; advertising now is more prominent than anything else, and unfortunately most of them are not true, most of them are lies.

by Sulak Sivaraksa

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Susan George: I think it depends on which government and which brand and it depends on whether you measure power in money or in other ways with other attributes. Of course on the list of the largest economic entities in the world now, you would find – if you compared national, gross national product to corporate sales, there would be 49 governments and 51 corporations. So, in that sense General Motors or General Electric is larger and therefore more powerful, if you like, than Pakistan for instance or even than Saudi Arabia. Brands are also fragile because if they do something morally wrong, their sales can be immediately affected. So, they are very sensitive to public opinion and this is one way of keeping corporations honest. For instance, an attack against Coca-Cola or the boycott of Outspan oranges was very affective against apartheid. So, brands can vulnerable and this is a good thing for popular protests. But, life isn’t just consuming, life is not just about what we buy, what we – which brands we may or may not be loyal to. And, of course, power can be exerted in many different ways. So, I would never go so far as to say that brands are more powerful than governments, particularly the largest and the most powerful and most aggressive governments, for instance, like the United States. Brands cannot go to war, for example. They can go to war symbolically like Coca-Cola against Pepsi-Cola or things like that, but they cannot – only in exceptional cases, do they ever kill anyone literally. So, the power that is expressed in putting an end to someone’s life this is done by governments, and I would say almost never by brands.

by Susan George

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Swami Pragyapad: Answertext will be available soon.

by Swami Pragyapad

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Sydney Possuelo: Today brands confuse themselves with the governments. And this happens so often and in a way that it is practically impossible to know where the government begins and were the interests of the brands start. In a certain way we can say that in some cases the brands transform themselves into more powerful elements than the governments that feed their economical interests through these brands.

by Sydney Possuelo

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Takashi Kiuchi: Now I think the government is much, much stronger than brand. Brands they come and go. And brands are here for some selfish reason and I think it is a mistake to compare government with brands. Unfortunately all the governments we have are not to the level of satisfaction and that's why this kind of questions come up. But we must think the governments we need and governments we have now and I think we should stop comparing government with brands.

by Takashi Kiuchi

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Tamas St. Auby: I will compress my answers to the different questions into a few but basic terms. These terms are affluenza, oniomania, pleonexia, direct democracy, strike, subsistence minimum, immortality and SMI2LE. Affluenza is a term used by critics of consumerism, it is a [inaudible] word form to buy, the contraction of affluenza and influenza. Affluenza is a painful, bloated, sluggish and unfulfilled feeling, a contagious, socially transmitted pursuit of more. Oniomania is the compulsive shopping, the over-buying syndrome. It is an epidemic of stress over work waste and indebtedness caused by the dogged pursuit of the American dream. It is an unsustainable addiction to economic growth. Pleonexia is a clinical and biblical term of wanting to have more. That is gluttony, avarice or greed, an insatiable sort of greed. These ancient sicknesses are originating in mortal fear, in the badly conducted mortal fear. They have more or less the same symptom, the mania of accumulation. The repressible desire of having more. This drives them to fraudulence, extortion, covetousness practices and greediness, and these drive them to war. Plato viewed in the Republic that pleonexia was the heart of injustice. The Ten Commandments prohibit theft. Direct democracy, classically termed pure democracy, comprises a form of democracy and theory of civics that sovereignty is lodged in the assembly of all citizens who choose to participate. Depending on the particular system, this assembly might pass executive motions, decrees, make law, elect and dismiss officials and conduct trials [audio ends]

by Tamas St. Auby

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Tania Bruguera: The products, the industrial products and the cooperations have turned into [inaudible] governments exactly because they have turned into a system that can and have therefore all of the infrastructure of a system of power if there are created almost even parallel governments, with structures of parallel governments to the political, [inaudible] governments or constituted in a specific territorial area. They have for example the same structures, they have security systems, they have intelligence systems, that means industrial espionage, they have even [inaudible] structures, they analize and regulate themselves like the system of power and they see which things function or not. And it has also happended that the economy has turned into something that has replaced politics in a lot of cases. It has been like a kind of metapolitics and we have also even some of the same problems which can have the governments if we have some cooperations [inaudible] of dictators, some which...; this is exactly the same structure that can have the political governments. And therfore it is so [inaudible] to replace the governments in the sense of that they have developped much faster and they renew in a faster way than the political governments. A political government could need five, ten, fifteen years or twenty years to change its system while a brand, a product or a company renews in three years. This means that it is a much faster system and much [inaudible] of change in its own structure of renewal and that is what I think what makes it more powerful in the sense of good or bad effective than some governments.

by Tania Bruguera

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Tavis Smiley: Are brands more powerful than government? I guess the answer is yes and no. Brands can be more powerful than governments if those of us who make up those governments, as we would say in my native country, the United States of America, "we the people." We the people make up the government. If we the people surrender that power to government to be more powerful than brands, then of course the answer is yes. Quite frankly, those of us who are this “we the people” are the most powerful brand in any particular country. It is the people who have the power. It’s not easy to get people to understand that, but people have the power. And so brands need not be more powerful than government. Government need not be more powerful than brands. The question is whether or not "we the people" use the power that we have to exercise who’s in control.

by Tavis Smiley

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Tegla Loroupe: Answertext will be available soon.

by Tegla Loroupe

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Thenmozhi Soundararajan: I do not think that brands are actually more powerful than governments. But, I think what is really important is to look at the rising role of corporations and how they have increasing power than the governments. When you look now at the 100 largest economies in the world, 51 are corporations and only 49 are countries, and that to me shows a profound shift of power from the nation-state back to the corporation. What’s interesting though about the notion of brands is that brands are the mythology that corporations use to cover the iron fist that they host in their velvet glove. I think we need to really question the way that brands have supplemented mythology and really have helped to continue the privatization of our public space. I think brands are a way that we privatize our inner space. In some ways, I think we need to really be able to confront that brand hegemony head on as part of our struggles against corporate globalization. I also think that what is really important is to look at the way people are resisting branding, because I think that’s a powerful way that people are reclaiming that inner space, the social space, the cultural space and the mythological space; whether it's through culture-jamming like some of the work that you might see in the like Adbusters magazine, or just any time people take back public space. I think that’s a powerful way to really show that whatever the mythology that corporation creates around the inequity that it does that we don’t buy into the lie. We don’t buy into that vision for the world that they are creating. So, I don’t want a Kleenex moment. I don’t want to live in a Disney World. I want to live in a world where I have self-determination and the relationships I have with the people that I buy services from, that I have products and that I, in turn, also get employed by are just and equitable.

by Thenmozhi Soundararajan

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Tu Weiming: Many brands are perhaps more powerful than governments but in general, the governments are still extremely powerful and because the governments still have the control of the military of the politics. However, brands are the symbolic power which is emerging because of the globalization and the globalization of economy. In fact, many of the brands now are much more powerful than some nations. In fact, it is the idea that brands increasingly penetrate the masses and become receiving by increasing number of people, especially people in the Third World, and the overwhelming power of the brands indicate the power of the multinational corporations and these multinationals and these corporations eventually overcome the power of many of the governments. I was involved in a meeting organized by Denmark and I remember very vividly that the former Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau made the observation that one of the major concerns of him in the 21st century is precisely the power of various kinds of national corporations that have totally undermined the effectiveness of government organizations to be sure some of the major governments are still extremely powerful in extending their inference. Nationalism is still one of the most powerful ideologies in the world and yet the various kinds of brands that become totally strong ought to be considered seriously.

by Tu Weiming

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Udi Aloni: Wow, that's a weird event. I think that corporations and governments are collaborators. It's we're to divide the powers. Who is more powerful? The relation in power is very interesting. --Excuse me. Do you have something to put in the ears? I think it's wrong to put the brand as opposite to the government. They collaborate off each other and they support each other. And the movement between one to the other doesn't really change the use of power. So I would ask more, I think, how corporation and government are reinforcing each other, or repowering each other. And more how they also trapped into the same system, they created. And also there is something we act to them, like an organic creature. While each one of them also have it's own characteristic. In a way all this answer is my first answer and it's more practice than the true answer.

by Udi Aloni

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Valentina Melnikova: Nowadays the power of money is stronger than power of a government which is chosen by people or which they accept but since business works only for its own interests it supports everything what it considers an advantage and rejects what it considers bad. If people could elect such a government which would take in consideration both business which contributes to the prosperity of the society and people who demand social justice then the balance between the power of business and the power of people would be kept. It is up to people’s activism and comprehension how far they are free and independent and strong in their power. If it is a really democratic state social power will be stronger than business or governmental power.

by Valentina Melnikova

Sep 9, 2006 10:00:00 AM cite

Vesna Pesic: Answertext will be available soon.

by Vesna Pesic