(This post originally appeared in May 2008 but was lost when the server was hacked in 2015. This is a recovered version.)<\/p>\n
I was in a supermarket yesterday, on my way back from other errands, buying a few staples. In my hand was a really well made cloth shopping bag from another company, not the sort of thing that chain provides. I noticed the security guard flag and follow me, and indeed, whilst I was checking out there was Mr. Friendly. \u2018We provide baskets<\/em> for our customers, you see, and as that’s a bag from another store<\/em>, ya ken, then you really shouldn’t use it in our store.\u2019<\/p>\n Sigh.<\/p>\n I suppose it’s a natural extension of the privatization of the bazaar. Herewith the sorrow I felt when reading the Cathedral and the Bazaar: there are few, if any, bazaars in state capitalist countries, only malls where privately hired goons crush all public dissent. Try setting up a stall recruiting for an anarchists’ picnic club in your local shopping mall – even just in the carpark, or on the pavement nearby… A wonderful tactic: walking meditation in a shopping mall. Not useful here, though.<\/p>\n I contemplated a number of responses on the way home. I could ask them to provide decent bags; I could hack the bag so that it carried the name of a nonexistent competitor; I could paint the bag black; I could put two different logos (both false?) on either side of the same bag.<\/p>\n Or I could just get on with setting up the Cunning Plot, about which more later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" (This post originally appeared in May 2008 but was lost when the server was hacked in 2015. This is a recovered version.) I was in a supermarket yesterday, on my… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[31,18,33,29,30,3,32],"class_list":["post-26","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recovered","tag-aberdeen","tag-capitalism","tag-hacking","tag-logos","tag-marketing","tag-recovered","tag-resistance"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2DSYH-q","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26\/revisions\/27"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tending.to\/blether\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}