Do you believe you have a choice in life?
Walk into any grocery store; you see an array of products.
Oreo’s, dozens of cereal brands, cookies, Chips Ahoy!, RITZ Crackers, gums, etc.
And if you look at the parent company stamp, you are purchasing from either Coca Cola, Nestle, Mars, General Mills, or Kellogg’s.
This is a grocery store, mind you.
People often talk about eating “healthy”.
We talk about eating “clean”.
When only a half dozen companies own the means of producing all the food we essentially put into our bodies, those statements lose all value and meaning.
The fact that you can turn over the product to see the nutritional label is a testament to the illusion.
What you see: hydrogenation (essentially trans fat, when most things are labelled as zero trans fat) and high-fructose corn syrup.
In literally everything.
Everything doesn’t end at the grocery store. Let’s move into a department store in your local mall.
You’ll find all sorts of stuff.
In the fashion industry, you’ll find clothes and bags that are by Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Marc Jacobs, Thomas Pink, etc.
You’ll find Bvlgari watches among Hublot watches among Tag Heuer watches among Zenith watches.
Perfumes spanning Givenchy, Dior, Kenzo, Kat Von D.
Maybe outside the department store in the mall, you’ll find a Sephora.
And you’ll be reasonable to think that these are all choices you can make.
But you’ll be wrong because they are all owned by Louis Vuitton.
Maybe you’ll get some alcohol for a party. You’ll buy some Hennessy, or some Chandon, or some Belvedere.
Which is all also owned by Louis Vuitton.
Department stores and malls, in general, have been designed to spread all these subsidiary brands to fool people into believing that they are picking one over the other.
Wherever someone turns, they are essentially placing money into the pockets of the same people.
A company called Luxottica makes almost all the sunglasses or eyewear in the world.
They own Alain Mikli, Arnette, Oakley, Persol, Ray-Ban.
They make eyewear for Giorgio Armani, Brooks Brothers, Burberry, Coach, Chanel, Dolce & Gabbana, Michael Kors, Polo Ralph Lauren, Prada, Tiffany & Co., Tory Burch, Versace, Valentino. The actual list is probably longer than what I have listed.
Let’s look at an example of the auto industry.
Let’s take Volkswagen.
They own Audi, Bentley, Bugatti, Lamborghini, Porsche, Skoda, SEAT.
They own Ducati.
They make commercial vehicles under their brand, TRATON.
Of course, some try to say that they don’t make similar cars just because a car company owns others. You are buying a different brand, of course.
Then you look at something like the Lamborghini Urus.
And I take a look at the recently released Audi Q8.
And I can’t help but feel that you are purchasing the same car, except for a few changes within the motor and some differences in the curvature.
The greatest illusion in this world is the illusion that the market welcomes the competition.
That the market welcomes choice.
In a world where very few giants own pretty much everything, it is hard to tell people that the market is free.
The greatest illusion is the illusion of choice.