10 Corporations Control Almost Everything You Buy

Yeah, this is one of those infographics that have been circulating for quite a while. More interesting and in-depth are these stories where you learn about the interconnectedness of large corporations:

> "Three systems theorists at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have taken a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide and analyzed all 43,060 transnational corporations and share ownerships linking them. They built a model of who owns what and what their revenues are and mapped the whole edifice of economic power."

The 147 Companies That Control Everything

http://www.forbes.com/sites/bruceupbin/2011/10/22/the-147-co...

Original source, but site is currently down: " Revealed – the capitalist network that runs the world" http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21228354.500-revealed-...

Full research paper here (36 pages) http://arxiv.org/PS_cache/arxiv/pdf/1107/1107.5728v2.pdf

If I added up the sum of everything my family spends on every brand appearing in this infographic, I would be surprised if it exceeded 2% of our gross income. And by no means do we go out of our way to avoid BigCo's.

"Everything you buy"? Not even close.

EDIT: Worldwide revenue for these 10 companies was around $520B last year. Total U.S. consumer spending: Something like $11T.

Packaged sugar products, cosmetics, and toiletries, truly the linchpin of our economy.

When whoever made this finds out about Sysco they're gonna freak out.

A network analysis of the ownership relations among transnational corporations shows that 147 corporations (mostly banks) control the bulk of the other ~43,000 transnational corporations: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjourna...

Which is, probably, scarier than that other graph, though harder to understand intuitively.

> Nestle — famous for chocolate, but which is the biggest food company in the world — owns… clothing brand Diesel…

Not exactly, Diesel licenses their brand to Nestle to make perfume and has absolutely nothing to do with any of their apparel.

This chart is mainly about convenience food and fashion goods.

The real companies that 'control' the market are the behemoths about which you hear little;

- Tyco, Siemens GE that make the industrial systems that run manufacturing

- Plastics manufacturers behind packaging, $500 billion annual market in the USA alone

- Shipping brokers and agents that batch goods for efficient transport

- The sea-shipping companies that move the goods

GE does not own Comcast or NBC. GE and Comcast once jointly owned NBC, that changed and now Comcast owns NBC. GE has no relation to either.

The banking consolidation is far more concerning to me than any of the other groups listed. The article massively overstates the control that companies like Pepsi / Coke / P&G / J&J / Mars et al. have. In the US market, they're actually a small slice of the $10.6 trillion in consumer spending (3% or so perhaps).

It does not however overstate the control the financial giants have. BAC + WFC + C + JPM are sitting on $8 trillion in assets. The too big to fail group has gotten dramatically bigger in the last five years.

The list also curiously misses giants like Cargill, Monsanto, Exxon, Chevron, Berkshire Hathaway, and Koch Industries.

Energy cartels concern me a lot more than who controls the potato chip market, for example.

Also there are far better examples of market dominance by a group of companies. Take car insurance, where six companies control nearly 60% of the entire market.

Or there's always the AT&T / Verizon duopoly. They reign over a pretty massive market.

Four auto companies control nearly 60% of the US auto market.

This is a bold statement of fact. And while it's certainly incredible how many of the brands we see daily in stores and advertised represent the same economic interests, I don't think the assertion is born out by the article, as it stands. In particular, there is no data linking those brands to actual consumer buying. Or to put it more precisely, I'd like to know how much of the total market all of those brands command when you combine them all. I'd be looking for something like:

"In the US, total food spending in 2012 was 1T. The food brands in this list made 900B in revenue in the same year. Therefore, these 6 companies control 90% of everything the average American buys."

I'm pretty sure something like this is true, but without relating that brand chart to actual revenue and market size, you can't really say much about what the chart means.

P&G has some stuff listed that I buy. The rest of the list is a bunch of unhealthy crap.

One day, it's "the excess number of choices confuses the typical consumer", therefore corporations are bad.

The next, it's "consumer industries are consolidating into fewer, better capitalized players", therefore corporations are bad.

In reality, I just think people who aren't that successful like to make infographics.

Beats working, or, you know, actually risking anything to create something in the world.

By the way, in non-capitalist countries, how many different entities providing toothpaste, or home mortgages, do you think there are, and why would you prefer it?

Even with the massive consolidation that has created these megacorps, its kind of amazing how many of them fail to properly utilize their brands effectively in concert with one another.

I've seen this directly in the food service industry (including at one company in that graphic) where companies don't share suppliers, shipping routes, real estate, etc. where they could be having significant cost savings and simplified logistics.

I wonder how much of this pops up in other groups.

Yum is an independent company since spinning off of PepsiCo in 1997. While it has ties to PepsiCo, it's nothing direct and there are even Yum own restaurants that don't even serve Pepsi products.

This chart is enlightening for sure, but they leave a lot out. For instance, all your Keebler products are now owned by Kellogg's, and doesn't it look like PepsiCo is much more diverse in it's holdings than Coca-Cola?

Maybe I am very sheltered in my online media consumption, but if 6 companies own 90% of traditional media, it is shocking how little presence they have online.

Neither Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Tumbler, reddit or more traditional blogging sites like Medium, quartz.com, or the Huffington Post are (currently) owned by these 'big 6'.

With alcohol that's even worse, there'sit's similar: Diageo owns Smirnoff. Johnnie Walker, Baileys, Guinness, Moët, Hennessy, Captain Morgan, Gordon's, Zacapa,...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diageo

Why is A&W listed under both Kraft and PepsiCo?

And I don't think that it's because of the fast food stores - those are owned by one of the Berkshire companies I thought?

One last thing - are the little "$$$"'s everywhere really necessary?

Lipton appears twice on this chart. Did that slip past the editors? Makes you wonder if any other brands on the chart are in the wrong place. I don't have time to check them all.

Edit: I don't think L'Oreal is owned by Nestle either.

Almost every brand mentioned here has a generic equivalent. People don't rely on these corporations exclusively for these types of products.

It's not even accurate - Pringles is not owned by P&G anymore

Only if all you consume is heavily pre-processed.