Corporations tend to have a hell of a lot more protection under US law than individuals. What's the one thing that will make them sit up and take notice? Money. These aren't companies that will change something because it's the right thing to do folks. Regardless of the ideals they might have had when the founder was alive these are not people that care about what's in your burger, where a shirt was made, the levels of toxicity in the plastic, or the quality of the manufacturing -- unless it will affect their bottom line.

Here's how things tend to work-

Thanks to a variety of insidious ad campaigns (don't get me started) your child wants a sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette for her birthday. You will do whatever it takes to make your child happy and even though it costs about 3 dollars in parts, labor, and shipping and now that toy costs 30 dollars retail to buy - you plan to get her one. Let's say you make minimum wage which is $5.15 an hour in most states right now. So you work about 6 hours to earn enough to buy your child that toy. Let's not worry about taxes and withholdings. You go buy that toy and give it to your child for her birthday. She's so happy! It's just what that ad campaign said a perfect life is all about having that sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette.

Two days later a wheel falls off and your child cries. Too damn bad the kind of terrain you were driving it on isn't covered under the warranty. Customer service blows you off because essentially their job is to get paid minimum wage to listen to you bitch about the length of the wait on the phone, how confusing the phone tree is to navigate, the cost of the toy, how cheaply built and useless it is, and other inequities of man without doing anything other than clucking sympathetically, lying about reporting your thoughts to the management, and getting you off the phone in under seven minutes. Trust me I've been that cs agent and if an agent tries to do much other than that they fire her for having long call times. You write an angry letter to the president of Mattelll - sparkly-eyed barb-e division. You get a form letter of apology with a coupon for a new sparkly outfit for your child's sparkly-eyed barb-e (cost to make? $ 1.50. cost to buy? $12.00.)

You're not satisfied and feel like the company is just blowing you off. You spent your hard-earned dollars on that toy and by god your child is going to have a working sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette. You write to a consumer rights group called, I dunno, sparkly-eyed barb-e is the bane of our existence or something. They collect information about a bunch of other sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette owners who have had similar problems and decide to start a media campaign about the problems people have been having with the wheels staying on. Not only is it a waste of money but there's a potential hazard there! People love hearing about potential hazards regardless of their legitimacy - that really makes them stand up and notice (right Mr Rumsfeld?) One or two local tv stations do a small story about what the consumer group is claiming. So the sparkly-eyed barb-e division of Mattelll releases a statement about how, to their knowledge, every sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette passes a quality control test and they don't release them from the factory without a cursory child stress test. The consumer group pushes harder and has people standing outside Toys? C Us with signs that say things like "I bought my child a sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette and all I have left is a small plastic wheel to throw at your head". That affects the sales a little bit but not enough for the Mattelll people to do anything about it yet.

The consumer group manages to get enough information and people together to file a class action suit with the sparkly-eyed barb-e division of Mattelll citing insidious pricing practices and substandard manufacturing or something. And each plaintiff gets a small sum awarded to them but it adds up to millions for Mattelll. Mattelll either stops making those stupid corbettes altogether or more likely sends them off to China to be manufactured by tiny hands so the wheels stay on longer and the cost of labor is even cheaper. Meanwhile your child has far outgrown any use of the sparkly-eyed barb-e corbette and is now studying for her calculus exam at the state university and you've lost your minimum wage paying job because of the time you had to take off work to go to court. Not an ideal outcome really but that's the way things tend to run here.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that while it may seem like we should take off the "birth control pills go in your mouth, you moron" labels and let Darwinism and high cholesterol weed out the population a bit some cases are legitimate and not everyone that sues a large corporation over something that might seem insignificant is a big crybaby. The process of being a citizen/consumer in the US is a frustrating one. And while the ultimate answer might be to stop consuming quite so much there's a long process and a lot of fighting that one has to go through to make decisions like that worthwhile. And not a lot of people take the time to wonder if shopping really is the patriotic anti-terrorist thing that some people tell them it is. All they know is they spent their hard-earned money on something that was faulty and it made their child cry.

Note that I spelled things like barb-e, corbette, and Mattelll incorrectly on purpose, I'm not a lawyer, and I didn't vote for Nader.