Thursday, July 21, 2011

Production As Activism

The other day I started thinking, hey why not DISSIDENT vodka? Since DISSIDENT vodka is illegal, there will be a lot of room on the label and there could be nice little political messages there instead of those admonitions that pregnant women who get their drink on never read.
How about something like:
This vodka is illegal! How can you say you live in a free country?

Okay, maybe the health and safety propaganda would keep a lot of the drones from having the eureka moment, but you know what seems to work pretty good? Raw dairy. Yep, it's gateway contraband, and the average republican begins to slouch towards libertarianism. I don't know if raw dairy does quite the same thing to democrats- they seem to be able to violate stupid laws while simultaneously advocating other stupid laws. They do seem to respond well to branding though, being early adopter of organic, free trade, local, etc- pity about level of falsehood in all of these trendy labels.

If, however, your product is illegal, then labeling it as such wouldn't be falsehood. Further, if there was a sensible way of establishing some standards, perhaps a reputation, possibly by fingerprinting the label and using a anonymous website where you can build a reputation without giving away your identity, then you could distribute the message of freedom with all sorts of stuff.

Of course, cigarettes, what with tobacco being dirt cheap and all, spring to mind as a pretty lucrative possibility. A more politically current possibility would be 100watt incandescent light bulbs. I suspect, sans the appropriate regulators snooping around your facilities, baby toys would be highly illegal. The possibilities are endless. If only we could teach our activists capitalism/production as a strategy for change rather than all that revolution nonsense...

1 comment:

Mrs. Deering said...

Psst. Want some illegal milk?

It's kind of fun. Simply because it's illegal? Perhaps.