Posted on 07/26/2011 11:11:29 AM PDT by Tamar1973
What does Korean fried chicken and tomatoes have in common? Shrill protestors attempting to shame large food companies into overcharging consumers for their product in the name of either job protection for the smaller producers or increase wages for "underpaid" workers. Both camps showed a shrewd application of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.
Exhibit A: Back in December of last year, Korean food chaebol Lotte started selling buckets of Korean fried chicken in their Lotte Mart grocery stores for 5,000 won each. The Lotte Mart Korean fried chicken bucket quickly gained a good enough reputation that customers stood in long queues eager to get a piece of Lotte's Korean fried chicken for themselves. After all, the equivalent Korean fried chicken in most of Korea's popular Korean fried chicken chains cost 14,000-18,000 won.
Several very large and popular Korean fried chicken restaurant chains and scores of small restaurants and shops immediately complained. The Korea Franchise Association quickly threatened legal action against Lotte Mart with allegations of “fried chicken dumping" and allegations that Lotte Mart was engaging in anti-competitive behavior.
Even Jeong Jin-seok, President Lee Myung-bak’s senior adviser for political affairs had to say something and sent out a couple of Twitter comments criticizing Lotte Mart for selling cheap, popular Korean fried chicken that was so good and so reasonably priced that people stood in long queues to get some.
The white-hot media coverage on the issue, mostly slanted against Lotte Mart, compelled Lotte Mart to voluntarily stop the promotion after a week on the market.
Since when did competition become "anti-competitive"? Thanks to the whining of these Korean fried chicken shops, many South Koreans who otherwise could not afford to eat some Korean fried chicken, had an opportunity to try it and develop a taste for it. During a recession, these protestors viciously attacked a company working hard to lower food prices for their customers and offer them excellent value for their hard-earned money, at least the ones who still have a job.
In a small way, Lotte Mart ended up as the victim of Saul Alinsky's Rule #2:
Rule 2: Never go outside the experience of your people. This means you couch your argument in ways that your target audience will understand.
In this situation, the Korean fried chicken restaurants and their "union" used this rule to successful present themselves as the little guy being oppressed by the big, "bad" Lotte Mart.
The real little guy, the customers, were ignored by all sides. Lotte's customers, as many South Koreans, were still dealing with all the financial difficulties a recession brings on a people. Their interest in finding the best Korean fried chicken, or any other food, at the lowest price was squeezed out of the equation in favor of the restaurants who were charging 3 times what Lotte Mart was charging for their Korean fried chicken.
The protestors took advantage of Lotte Mart's typically Korean desire to "save face" by savagely attack them in public, bullying them and shaming them into taking the cheap and tasty Korean fried chicken off the market.
Now, to the other side of the Pacific, same song, second verse.
Exhibit B: A smugly self-righteous group calling themselves the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW) staged a protest in front of the Trader Joe's grocery store in San Francisco recently, trying to bully and embarrass them into raising the price of their tomatoes. A similar protest was held at the same time by the Jewish Labor Committee in front of a Trader Joe's in New York City.
The idea is that by increasing the price of tomatoes, those increased costs could be passed back through the chain to the workers on the ground who actually pick the tomatoes in the first place.
Never mind the fact that Trader Joe's stores in California, don't sell Florida grown tomatoes. We grow our own tomatoes and since Trader Joe's has a long commitment of buying local whenever possible, they buy most of their tomatoes for their California stores from California farmers. Yet these protests were staged in San Francisco.
The CIW also ignore the fact that Trader Joe's already is paying the “penny a pound” and have been actually doing so for some time now through its network of wholesalers.
That doesn't matter to these protestors. Can't let the facts get in the way of a good protest smothered with large doses of self-righteousness redistribution of some one else's money.
This falls into Rule #10:
Rule 10: "You do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments...."
Pretend that raising the income of Floridian farms is the overriding issue when their real target is capitalism, competition and free trade.
Food + politics ping! :)
Thanks for this post.
Can we not disperse the hippies with soap and water?
Very familiar tactics. Put someone out of business because they ARE doing well...so failures have a better chance. Makes Marxist sense if not common sense. Geeeeeez!
...and good to see you! :)
Anti-Alinsky rule #1.
Smack your accusers over the nose with a newspaper and they will go back to hiding under the porch.
Anti-Alinsky rule #2
If anti-Alinsky rule #1 doesn’t work, you are now hitting hard enough.
That should be “Not hitting hard enough”
If there were already a number of companies selling fried chicken for around $14-15,000, I would be suspicious of a company that could come in and undersell by a factor of three.
It is wrong for people to just protest the "unfair" (unfair to who?) price. But someone needs to investigate. Either this company is cutting some pretty large corners, or the other companies have set up an illegal cartel which needs to be exposed and eliminated.
BTW, there is nothing wrong with Saul Alinsky's methods. The only thing wrong was what he hoped to achieve with those methods. The right could learn a thing or two by studying his methods. Corporations have already learned many valuable things by responding to his tactics and Alinsky-proofing their buildings and business processes.
There is always some kind of meaningless protest in San Francisco. Those people have TOO much free time on their hands!
Yes, that's true.
If there were already a number of companies selling fried chicken for around $14-15,000, I would be suspicious of a company that could come in and undersell by a factor of three.
Lotte Mart is a grocery store chain, a very large one. Their main competition is other grocery store chains, not restaurants.
It is standard operating procedure for grocery stores to offer certain items at significantly below cost to bring customers into the store so they'll stick around and spend more money on non-sale items and boost the overall bottom line of the store. This is good for the store and good for their shareholders. There's nothing illegal or inappropriate about that.
What's inappropriate is the ridiculous over-reaction to it.
Actually, there's a big problem with his methods because they are all about the ends justifying the means, utterly amoral, which is who Alinsky lived his life.
There isn't enough soap in San Francisco to do that.
Yep, that's what the left does, put the producers out of business so the non-productive don't get their feelings hurt over the fact they can't produce anything anyone wants.
But not enough time in the day to take a bath. ; )
Good to hear. I have been shopping at TJ’s for 35 years.
Well, as Cartman indicates, there is always Death Metal.
Of course! That would take away their “patina”! LOL!
Good job..
I like the fact they offer several Korean dishes, like bibimbap. :)
The SF bay area is the current home base of Metallica so I don't think the metal music would scare these grungies away.
Pantina, I like my stinkin' pantina! *snicker*
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