Rushkoff's book is a battle cry not against capitalism, as many will misconstrue it, but against corporatism, and the actions of corporate America that bleed the common American dry of their culture and freedom.

Rushkoff brings up early on the very real idea that corporations attempt to blur the line between what is factually important in American life and what is manufactured. He states:

"This fundamental blurring of real life with its commercial counterpart is not a mere question of aesthetics, however much we may dislike mini-malls and superstores. It's more of a nagging sense that something has gone awry - something even more fundamentally wrong than the credit crisis and its aftermath - yet we're too immersed in its effects to do anything about it, or even to see it."

Have you felt this way recently?

Rushkoff is careful not to rail too much against capitalism in his book. In fact, capitalism isn't necessarily the issue. What many fail to do is separate the differences between capitalism and corporatism - for it's the corporations that are putting strain on the capitalist way of life through greed and manufactured needs.

"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."

Bringing up the map versus territory, Rushkoff invokes the thoughts of Alfred Korzybski, and in doing so, reveals a fatal flaw in much of consensus American (and World) thought - the fatal flaw of literalism, and not being able to separate a way of explaining a "thing" with the actual "thing" itself. We've done it with religion time and time again, and we're also doing it with the economy. Corporations became the keepers of this map as they manipulated interpretations not to better humankind, but to increase their bottom line.

Delving into the industrial age, Rushkoff declares that this era "gave corporations a new way to create the illusion of a preordained social order: the machine." The ideas of the industrial age and the philosophies of Descartes and his champions presented a mechanistic view of the world in which wheels and cogs and other pieces were easily replaced and interchangeable - pieces in solitude - to keep the whole healthy.

Thanks to Descartes, this mechanistic view became a model for society. People became the cogs - replaceable - disconnected from their original holistic position. Corporatism shaped the world into one giant factory.

"Cubberley modeled our public schools after 'factories, in which the raw product [the children] are to be shaped and fashioned... according to the specifications laid down.'"

Not even our schools are safe from this mechanistic view, despite the attempts of politicians to proclaim "no child left behind." Children are often educated to be drones in a corporate society.

People - through this misguided education - become both cogs and consumers conditioned to work the assembly lines of corporate America in order to do nothing more than spend their earnings to continue that flow - consumerism. Rushkoff portrays this as "citizens as consumers" and interjects that corporations use marketing to convince people that consumption is the "surest path to personal fulfillment."

All of this corporate thinking has resulted in a disconnected America - a disconnected community - that better serves the purpose of "divide and conquer" for the fulfillment of corporate gluttony and greed.

"The landscape of corporatism favors the selfish over the social, the brand over the product, and the central over the local."

The second chapter is one to use as a rallying cry for anyone opposed to predatory practices of certain marketing schemes. Rushkoff introduces us to people whose credit and equity have all but dried up, but who quickly charge up their credit cards trying to buy "systems" to make themselves wealthy. The irony that many of the people sitting and listening to seminars on how to take advantage of the failing housing market are people who are in danger of losing their homes because of these same marketing and speculative tactics is not lost on Rushkoff. The psychology of the sell that these human infomercials spit out is a clear indication of the sickening nature that marketing in America has taken just so people can make a quick buck.

I remember a commercial on television once (I forget what it was for), which parodied those late night infomercials about making money almost in your sleep. The slick guy in the chair looks at the camera and proclaims "Just send $50.00 for my book 'How to Get People to Send You $50.00 for a Book.'" It's funny, but sad at the same time, since this truly is what quick buck marketing does, and the Internet has made it worse.

It's not just the Internet though - even business books are getting ridiculous. Books that are supposed to be about creating start-ups or micro-ISV's or getting out in the world of consulting end up being nothing more than a book filled with common sense material and pages of interviews with already successful business people (who seem to be selling a product that relates to improving your business). If I didn't know any better I'd say that the interviewee paid for being interviewed so they could hock their product or service. It's a sad, sad thing, and I'm not even talking about the so-called business books in the "start your own business" section of the bookstore. I'm taking about the real business section and even the technology section (books published by O'Reilly and Apress).

A friend of mine once got involved with Primerica. Since he was my friend, I was obligated to help him out by sitting in on a meeting. The man in charge asked me if I knew anything about the program. I jokingly told him that I heard it was a pyramid scheme. He was slightly offended, but took it in good humor. During his speech he went on about the program telling about how people make money (at one point even drawing a pyramid on the blackboard. Hmm...). He then made sure to mention that people don't get paid for bringing others into the program because that! (he exclaimed coming over to me) would be a pyramid scheme. I'm sorry, but if you have to explain to me how your program is not a pyramid scheme, guess what? It's a pyramid scheme - no matter what the law defines. Luckily my friend only got suckered into investing into one of their life insurance policies. He soon got out of the whole game very quickly.

It is indeed a sad state of corporatism that we see in America every day, and the economic crisis seems to have done little to affect the corporations' actions or the actions of those using squeeze marketing tactics to prey on peoples' dreams. People need to realize that there aren't any get-rich-quick ventures - just get-rich-quick programs designed simply to abscond with your money, and chances are, the people making money off of you never made any money off of the very program that they're selling. It's all in the sell - not the substance.

I emailed Rushkoff recently about these same points and he concurred, concluding that:

"The people making money in business today are the people telling others how to make money - mostly through marketing."

"It's end stage capitalism. Truly end stage."

Chapter three of Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc is one that hits solidly home for me. Back in September I moved from the overcrowded state of New Jersey to the Western side of Virginia in the Shenandoah Valley - out to the country. Now I'm not that far from a metro-area. Harrisonburg (home to James Madison University) is 25 minutes away (with all it's strip malls and corporate stores). If I'm feeling especially adventurous, I can head over the mountain towards Charlottesville (home of Monticello and the University of Virginia), which would only take 45 minutes to an hour, depending on weather and traffic into the city. Both of these places are considered cities, but in reality they're well-developed metro areas - smaller than Richmond and Roanoke. I get to enjoy these centers of commerce, but by living out farther in the valley I get to taste what traditional American life was like.

The biggest impact my move had on me dealt with the mythological feel of rural American towns. There are large stretches of country between these towns, and even larger stretches between metro areas. You can travel 10-15 minutes (sometimes longer) without seeing much civilization. When you do, it's like traveling back in time. Random small buildings have nothing of note outside except old style Coca-Cola or RC Cola signs. Each town seemed to have a Tastee Freez (made famous by John Mellencamp) at some point. Downtown areas looked like miniature cities with maybe 5, 10 or perhaps 15 two story buildings tightly packed together. It was like I journeyed away from a corporately run and soulless New Jersey to finally find the heart of America - in all its myth and legend.

Unfortunately, the visual escape was nothing more than visual. Many of the franchised Tastee Freezes are gone with their buildings sold to other businesses. Those Coca-Cola and RC Cola signs are antiques attached to closed buildings that don't sell much of anything anymore. Meanwhile much of these towns' downtown areas lack any real business - just empty stores.

In Elkton, Virginia an old movie theater sits abandoned not far from an empty grocery store that used to be locally owned. Although businesses exist in its downtown square, the area isn't nearly as bustling as it used to be. Locals tell me that 10-15 years ago, it would take you nearly 20 minutes to drive through downtown and loop back around - too many people out walking and carrying on. Today is a different story.

The community feel still exists in these small towns, but much of it is peppered with trips to Harrisonburg, or the Walmart twenty minutes away; however, these aren't communities that have given up on their personal touch. These are places that have been beaten down by corporatism. These are local, family-owned and community-supporting businesses that get crushed under corporate prices, eventually leaving a formerly self-sufficient town dependent of corporations to feed, clothe and entertain them.

In the third chapter of Life Inc, Rushkoff talks about the destruction of these American communities that effectively desocialize individuals in an almost divide and conquer way to make us slaves to a corporate run society. The community and social feel of the American culture - still slightly evident in the Virginia towns that I travel - has been replaced by a "New Urbanism" warped by corporations in an attempt to usurp that American myth and turn it into a commodity, an environment that can be used for marketing purposes. He uses Birkdale, North Carolina as an example - a corporate built and sustained town that on the surface looks like Old Town America, but beneath is nothing more than a corporate sponsored experiment.

The American dream is being replaced with the corporate motto. Corporations have declared war on the American community and are destroying that which they cannot receive an ROI from. This will result in American towns being dependent more and more on corporations for their needs and sustainability - an entire American populace at the mercy of a corporate greed that is just looking for more cogs to keep the wheels spinning.

Chapter Four of Douglas Rushkoff's Life Inc is where things start to fall a little bit in disarray for me. Rushkoff begins by attacking the ideology of the Secret, but this is the same guy who wrote Club Zero-G as a graphic novel primer on the idea of designer reality. He's a man who believes that stories shape reality and we are ultimately the architects of our world. I'm no defender of the Secret by any means, but it's hard to be critical when so many of your own ideas support some of the same ideology.

I don't think Rushkoff's gripe is with any system of designer reality. Really he's just bashing the marketers that are making millions off of cookie-cutter self-help exercises and cliches, while taking advantage of people who are looking for any means to build a better life for themselves. Rushkoff equates the Secret with the culmination of a society bent on self-promotion - on selfishness - while also exhibiting an inability to want to work for your "wants." I can agree with this wholeheartedly.

Rushkoff goes back to the Renaissance to show the emergence of the individual out of the collective of the community. To him, this individualism is what corporations want people to seek out. To view yourself apart from your community is to seek out wealth, knowledge, etc. on your own, without concern for your neighbors. To Rushkoff, this divisiveness is a breeding ground for corporations to destroy local communities, while the individual turns a blind eye. It allows the corporation to supply a person's individual needs, while slowly making them another cog in the machine.

From individualism to industrialism, Rushkoff shows how corporations from the dawn of the Renaissance have destroy a local sentimentality in favor of a corporate identity. The diminishing of local libraries, town halls and community centers (or at least the vacancy of them due to some other highly promoted, yet less locally interactive activity) allowed for industrialism to take root.

"In the kinds of towns [Alexis] de Tocqueville visited, human relationships dominated the local economy. If you needed oats, you'd go buy them from the general store - just one step removed from the mill - or maybe even from the miller himself. If the oats were bad, you'd know where to find the man responsible. You knew his face and his wife's. His kids might have gone to school with your kids. If his oats were bad, he'd lose more than a customer, for you lived and worked in the same town as the miller. You might fix wagon wheels, or even work as the local chemist, mixing his wife’s medication. If you ate bad oats, you wouldn't be doing your job as well, either. The miller might end up with a dangerously assembled wheel or, worse, an incorrectly dosed prescription. If the miller supplied a bad product, he had more at stake than your business. You were more than just one another’s customers; you were interdependent members of a community.

The Industrial Age brought factories capable of making oats faster and cheaper than the local miller could have ever imagined. (And where industry couldn’t succeed in creating economies of scale, lobbyists were sure to tilt the playing field in their favor.) So now, instead of buying oats from a human being you knew, you’d get them from a big factory several hundred or several thousand miles away. It would come in an impersonal big brown box. There was no miller to be seen."

Instead of identifying with the makers of your products, you now identified with the brand. Your relationship to a brand took over for the lack of a relationship in a local economy. Mass marketing and mass production desocialized consumers, further separating them from their community - further solidifying an individual that was that much easier to divide and conquer from his neighbor. This is how corporate culture is slower eroding the things that made America great. This is Life, Inc., and Rushkoff wants us to take it back.