I’m going to be publishing online my new book, working title “The Industry Playbook: Corporate Cartels, Corruption and Crimes Against Humanity” chapter by chapter, with the plans of officially compiling it into a book and publishing it down the road.
I originally started this project just as a plan to dive into Big Tobacco and their shady tactics, as a means to understand the history for what we see in other industries today. (And a big shout out to those donors who funded me to kick start the idea!)
Fortunately, or unfortunately depending on how you look at it, I tend to be thorough. And so, this project grew and grew. As it stands now this project is ambitious in scope. But I felt it was necessary for people to understand to breadth and depth of these strategies across industries.
To have a narrow lens and see just a bit of this picture can stop you from seeing how the game is truly played. As such, this book is divided across seven parts.
- Part 1 – The Tobacco Playbook
- Part 2 – Breaking Free of Big Tobacco
- Part 3 – Other Industry Examples
- Part 4 – The Monsanto Playbook
- Part 5 – The Pharma Playbook
- Part 6 – The BIG Players
- Part 7 – The People’s Playbook
The Tobacco Playbook dives into the history of the cigarette companies. Their rise to power including how they were pioneers in the space of controlling scientific opinion, PR, advertising, infiltrating legislatures and regulators, influencing journalists and much more.
This details such sections as monopoly power, smear campaigns, advocacy front groups, legal defenses and more. The aim is to give you a clear outline of the many strategies employed by Big Tobacco in increasing their profits at the cost of human health and wellbeing.
The next part, Breaking Free of Big Tobacco, shows the flip side. Big Tobacco did ultimately lose some of its power. What caused that to happen? The playbook as used by industry does not guarantee an outcome. Here we explored the crucial battles and strategies of the people against the companies.
In Part 3, Other Industry Examples, we quickly explore a number of other industries to show the widespread prevalence of use of the playbook. This section covers asbestos causing cancer, water fluoridation, lead in gasoline, various chemicals and pesticides, telecom, oil and more.
Here you’ll see the industry playbook is aptly named as it is used in virtually every large industry that exists. The problem is systemic. The result is a sociopathic drive towards profit at the cost of human health.
Part 4 covers Monsanto, which was frequently rated the evilest corporation in the world. As you’ll come to see, their nickname of Monsatan was quite well earned. With this deeper dive you’ll find how the playbook has specifically been updated for the 21st century and use of the internet.
Part 5 covers the pharmaceutical industry. This part is the largest in the book and is based on much of an earlier project I engaged in called Medical Monopoly Musings. Several books can and have been published on this topic alone, but I’ll do my best to summarize the most critical understandings. The industry has been around a long time so many examples from the past will be shown. But there will be a focus on more contemporary examples, with the playbook used at an even larger scale. Big Tobacco lost power eventually. Big Pharma has continued to gain.
Then in part 6, I switch gears. There’s a question worth asking. Why does industry after industry use the same playbook? Here we explain the profit motive and sociopathic systems at play. And we dive deeper into the main players, those who move between industries, the PR firms, the lawyers and the lobbyists. If we liken the playbook to football, these big players are the coaches and quarterbacks. It is every bit as important as understanding the plays, to understand the players.
This section will also dive into the regulators, those that supposedly protect the people from nefarious industry efforts. Unfortunately, you’ll find the revolving door in full operation leading to these being predominately captured agencies.
Finally, in part 7, I continue the work only started in part 2. I call this The People’s Playbook. It is not enough to know what the industries engage in. It is not enough to be able to point to the players. We must accurately perceive what is ultimately successful in fighting against them. What actually works? And who is currently doing good work?
There is a flow from one part to the next. But you don’t have to read the book in the order it’s laid out. Feel free to skip around as you best see fit.
In addition, I’ve designed this large book with skimmers in mind. In our world of social media and short attention spans, I’ve done the best I can to summarize the findings here. Each chapter concludes with a short section on Key Takeaways.
Even if you plan to read the whole book (thank you so much for lending me that much attention!) I’d recommend the following. Read once through all the key takeaways before reading the rest of the book. This will give you the big picture framework and insight to see how all the sections fit together. It’ll help you to understand even better when you dive deeper into the details.
[Online publishing edit: obviously, the skipping around or viewing all the key takeaways first cannot be done at this time. But I left this part available here to give you an idea of what is coming.]
Please leave any comments or questions below. Feel free to share it with anyone you’d like.
Links to all published chapters of The Industry Playbook can be found here.
You can also support this project with a tip.