Life Inc.

How Corporatism Conquered the World, and How We Can Take It Back

By: Douglas Rushkoff

Narrated by: Douglas Rushkoff

Length: 11 hrs and 28 mins

Publisher's summary

This didn’t just happen.

In Life Inc., award-winning writer, documentary filmmaker, and scholar Douglas Rushkoff traces how corporations went from being convenient legal fictions to being the dominant fact of contemporary life. Indeed, as Rushkoff shows, most Americans have so willingly adopted the values of corporations that they’re no longer even aware of it.

This fascinating journey, from the late Middle Ages to today, reveals the roots of our debacle. From the founding of the first chartered monopoly to the branding of the self; from the invention of central currency to the privatization of banking; from the birth of the modern, self-interested individual to his exploitation through the false ideal of the single-family home; from the Victorian Great Exhibition to the solipsism of MySpace–the corporation has infiltrated all aspects of our daily lives. Life Inc. exposes why we see our homes as investments rather than places to live, our 401(k) plans as the ultimate measure of success, and the Internet as just another place to do business.

Most of all, Life Inc. shows how the current financial crisis is actually an opportunity to reverse this six-hundred-year-old trend and to begin to create, invest, and transact directly rather than outsource all this activity to institutions that exist solely for their own sakes. Corporatism didn’t evolve naturally. The landscape on which we are living–the operating system on which we are now running our social software–was invented by people, sold to us as a better way of life, supported by myths, and ultimately allowed to develop into a self-sustaining reality. It is a map that has replaced the territory. Rushkoff illuminates both how we’ve become disconnected from our world and how we can reconnect to our towns, to the value we can create, and, mostly, to one another. As the speculative economy collapses under its own weight, Life Inc. shows us how to build a real and human-scaled society to take its place.

©2009 Douglas Rushkoff (P)2009 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

"Read this book if you want to understand how the current economic meltdown started 400 years ago, how so much of what you consider to be a natural evolution of daily life was carefully designed to profit a few, and how corporatism has so colonized every part of life that most of us don't even recognize how our lives and fortunes are channeled and manipulated by it. I love that Rushkoff isn't afraid to think big—very big."—Howard Rheingold, author of Smart Mobs

“Ever get the feeling that you're trapped on a hamster wheel of predatory "Corporatism"? An unwitting participant in a system that you didn't sign up for in the first place? What happens when the operating system of this corporate Moloch runs amok? Life Inc is a hopeful, timely call to arms to wrest control of our lives, our sanity and our children's futures back from the corporate agenda. Douglas Rushkoff's best book yet.”—Richard Metzger, author and TV host

“Hand wringing over the state of the global economy? Think again. Douglas Rushkoff explains why this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to remember what matters, and to rethink our economic system so it reinforces our human values. A profound and important call to action.”— Tim O'Reilly, Founder & CEO of O'Reilly Media

Must read!

Mr. Rushkoff put into words the processes that I have observed that are slowly robbing us of our humanity. Brilliant and remarkable.

For a particular kind of reader

What’s the most interesting tidbit you’ve picked up from this book?

The history of corporatization is laid out rather well.

Any additional comments?

I love Douglas Rushkoff's style. A lot of his books are very much products of their time but this one holds up quite well. I'm sure a Life Inc 2014 would have a different take than the original but the ideas here are still sound. I suggest reading it to help articulate and define your own view rather to read just to read something that shares your own worldview.

An unenlightening, oversimplified rant.

I had high hopes for this book. I'm politically sympathetic to the author's positions, it was reviewed well, and I was interested in the subject, particularly the "how to take it back" portion.

My hopes were dashed when I discovered an endless rant blaming every social, economic and political ill that the world knows on corpratisim. The views were comically one sided, not even bothering to present counterarguments in order to refute them, and the world is depicted in large, simplistic strokes using the sort of black and white morality favored by children.

The book is an enumeration of what Rushkoff doesn't like about the world (including but not limited to the banking crisises, worker exploitation, stagnent wages, new age spiritualism, and isolation) and how each of these things can be blamed on the corporate structure.

There were a few juicy historical tidbits scattered here and their and one interesting argument regarding the nature of centralized fiat currency, but they were rare gems in an otherwise dull slog of a book.

Most disappointing of all was the extremely light "what you can do about it" chapter, tacked on to the end as an afterthought. It can be summed up as "volenter rather than donate"

Skip this book.

He whines about everything

I have enjoyed Rushkoff's PBS Frontline specials in looking at American media. I was not expecting an entire book connecting every company to Nazi Germany. Buy a Starbucks... Fascist. Purchase a nice home in the suburbs, connection to Nazis.
He wants to demonize the corporation... and really all companies and promotes the idea of the State making those decisions for us for a more equal and Marxist way of life. He ignores that individuals have the choice to drink a Starbucks or a choice to drink tap water. He views all of life as an uptown New Yorker and thinks that all white people have the same values that he has had and he now feels guilty for being richer than those in the slums. Somehow, this is not his fault, it is the corporations that have brainwashed into beliefs that he would not have otherwise had.
This is the first Audible book that I have wanted a refund on in over three years.

Trivial and boaring

This is a multi-hour journalistic mishmash of history and ideology.