In downtown Kingston, a spanking new Starbucks recently opened. Incidentally, they opened it two doors down from the Sleepless Goat, one of the city's most popular left wing extermist/hippie coffee shops, a move seen by many as being designed to incite. The first few weeks Starbucks was opened, irate hipsters presumably returned from the WTO meetings in Seattle a few years back and now bored, repeatedly shattered Starbucks' window panes.
What does this all mean?
I suppose what it means is that for better or for worse, people hate Starbucks. It's right up there with MacDonald's and Wal-Mart as being big symbols of corporate American greed. But really, why the anger at Starbucks in particular? Burger King is a few blocks up and nobody bothers them. Heck, even MacDonald's is not but a few more doors down and they're left alone as well. In Canada, we have a coffee shop chain called Tim Horton's that is just as ubiqutous as Starbucks in the US and nobody seems to complain about their presence.
See, this is what really galls me. People get all riled up by their "activist" roles that they totally miss the point of, for lack of a better verb, activating. Sure, Starbucks doesn't let their employees unionize. Sure, their coffee is grown off the backs of the poor and meek in third world countries but lets pause and take a moment to reflect. WHAT GOOD DOES IT DO TO GO AROUND SLUGGING THEIR WINDOWS?
I detest big business as much as the next person but there's a caveat to that. The point is that government has allowed these corporations to be unaccountable for their actions. Sure, individual companies are going to exploit situations to their advantage if there's no punishment but that's why society needs rules. Starbucks, MacDonald's and Walmart are merely acting within the specified rules of government.
Moreover, in many ways, big comapnies are now targets of "activist" groups simply because this is trendy. Take Super Size Me for instance. Do we really need an entire two hour movie to demonstrate that eating MacDonald's every day for every meal is not good for you? I mean, so it's not good for you. BIG McDEAL! We knew that already! I'm more concerned with MacDonald's hiring practises and lack of unionized employees and substandard work conditions in the meat packing industry, but here we have people threatening to sue Macdonald's for making them fat. The same thing is happening to Starbucks. I bet half the people who "hate" Starbucks in principle hate them because they are "everywhere." The idea of a Starbucks in Tianemen Square is so galling to people... but what is so bad about being "everywhere?" We live in an era of cultural homogeniety, and that's not completely a bad thing. We can take the best from different cultures and learn from them all. I'm now able to eat Thai food one night, Indian the next. Two hundred years ago, that wouldn't have been possible. And are we really not better off for it?
Now, I'm not a huge fan of Starbucks. Heck, I'm not a huge fan of coffee in general. I admit, the Iced Mocha Frappucino is a good drink on a hot summer day, but 5 bucks is too much to pay for a latte. What I really think is that the next time these activists get all up in arms just because a store is opening in their neighborhood, they should think more carefully about what and who they're protesting before they plant their fists into sharded glass.
