More on the homogenization of America

I took Scott's recommendation and bought "Fast Food Nation." This passage fits perfectly into the previous discussion about the homogenization of the American landscape:

America’s main streets and malls now boast the same Pizza Huts and Taco Bells, Gaps and Banana Republics, Starbucks and Jiffy Lubes, Foot Lockers, Snip N’ Clips, Sunglass Huts, and Hobbytown USAs. Almost every faced of American life has now been franchised or chained . . . The key to a successful franchise, according to many texts on the subject, can be expressed in one word: “Uniformity.” Franchises and chain stores strive to offer exactly the same product or service at numerous locations. Customers are drawn to familiar brands by an instinct to avoid the unknown. A brand offers a feeling of reassurance when its products are always and everywhere the same. “We have found out . . . that we cannot trust some people who are nonconformists,” declared Ray Kroc, one of the founders of McDonalds, angered by some franchises. “We will make conformists out of them in a hurry . . . The organization cannot trust the individual; the individual must trust the organization.”

So not only are they dominating our cities and towns, they are trying to affect our private lives and personalities as well, making not only our infrastructure look the same but us as individuals the same and, worse, "afraid of the unknown." What is to happen to the entrepreneurial spirit? We will see fewer small and independent businesses and less diversity all around us. Only the fittest will survive, and the fittest will be those companies worth billions of dollars whose only concern is their profit margins.