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The Yes Men!
How do you fight an organisation like the WTO? By pretending you’re them.
That’s exactly the way the yes men figured out.
What’s it about? Some time ago I accidentally bumped on a documentary aired on the Dutch television called The Yes Men. These guys are hosting a website called gatt.org which is more or less a copy of the WTO website. Sometimes (and that’s what they hope for) people mistake them for the real WTO and invite them as speakers and so on.
The yes men jump on these opportunities, call themselves WTO executives, but bring what’s in their mind the real thoughts of the WTO.
Example: the WTO is supposed to be a supporter of 3th world countries, global trade and economics .. but it seems they only care about the Western/rich countries. So in stead of helping people who really need it, they kind of make things worse for them.
The Yes Men is a kind of positive protest to this. A clever form of protest, and a more subtle one. But one that might really change peoples minds and hearts.
I’m not going to describe the actions they did, would lead us too for. In stead I would like to invite you to see the docu yourself. It’s on Google video! (turn of the Spanish subtitles if you wish)
Basically, what the yes men are doing is marketing. If you want to beat your opponents (which is a strong sentence in this context, but after all it’s about winning/selling/gaining .. whether it’s products or minds) there are 2 way: or you position yourself over your opponent, or you position your opponent below you.
The yes men are doing exactly this, except they do it on what one might call ethical grounds. They also do it by not presenting their opponent as inferior, they do it by expressing their opponent’s true thought. Let common sense decide!
But then again, it’s quite scary to see how people living in “the system” swallow almost everything, no questions asked.
BTW: The Yes Men is about much more then the WTO, but the documentary is centered around this topic
Just watched the first 30 minutes. Both extremely funny and frightening at the same time.
I have been postulating about the idea of Business Akido. In Akido, one overcomes an opponent by leveraging their own force against them. In business, all business, that force is a combination of profit and greed. Therefore, the way to change a business is not to counter those forces head on, for instance by saying that greed or profit is wrong. But rather leverage them, yet twist them in the direction you want it to go. So if the WTO is all about profit, then you leverage that. You use their weapons of marketing, just like the Yes Men, but show them that by behaving in ethical ways, they can in fact, make even more money. Which is true in terms of third world exploitation. The most money made by businesses are in fast growing, healthy and stable economies where the average wealth is pretty high. SO the best way to make money in third world countries, is to help them grow into successful economies. The WTO is acting for the most part, out of stupidity and incompetence if they don’t actually focus on this objective. And are instead continually shooting themselves in the foot.
WTO is a leverage instrument of some powers