This is Ronald McDonald to ground Control

The McDonald’s corporation has some of the brightest, intelligent and resourceful people in their marketing and research divisions. They have gone above and beyond, doing everything they can to make their money and acquire more power of influence on the people. For this, I can only commend them. If only the McDonald’s corporation would use their power to, at least, do some good for the community instead of working toward their own gains which is the all mighty dollar. It never ceases to amaze me what extraordinary feats people are capable of when it comes to making money. The McDonald’s corporation knows that in order to run a successful business chain it must strategically build it in a certain area.

In Eric Schlosser’s book “Fast Food Nation” there is a section in the third chapter called “Space Mountain”, in which he goes on to say in the second paragraph of page 66 “McDonalds has perfected the art of site selection”. But first, he describes a bit of the history of a town called Colorado Springs in Colorado. Schlosser writes of this town going through a severe depression and then after WW2 the military seized the opportunity to buy large quantities of land dirt cheap. Large Air Force bases and facilities were built in this town because of its specific location which was as Schlosser says on page 61 “beyond the range of soviet bombers”. It is here in Colorado Springs where the air force has built a space command station in its mountains and is also where satellites, which are used to analyze data from space via imagery, are built and launched. McDonalds has adopted this strategy. When the technology finally was invented they began to use satellites and its automated site selection computer program Quintillion to map out its targeted locations, used information from already existing McDonald’s franchises, as well as many other forms of data analysis. Schlosser quotes a marketing publication, in which the name of it has not been mentioned in the reading, that says “[McDonald’s businessmen are permitted] to spy on their customers with the same equipment once used to fight the Cold War”. Just let that last sentence marinate in your mind for a minute.

I am astounded at the McDonald’s corporation’s efforts, but at the same time I am not surprised at its methods. It is a known fact that McDonald’s has no problem violating the rights of its workers (being a former employee of McDonald’s many years ago I have seen this first hand) and we also know that they can find patterns in what the customers buy and how often they visit a McDonald’s, but will they eventually resort to secretive methods that will violate the rights of its customers? In these recent years we have witnessed the power of the corporation and its influence on the people in our government and our society. I think as people we can influence our government to cut the strings corporations in general pull and regulate the methods used by corporations such as McDonalds, if the people are well informed enough. Them using satellite technology just goes to show what they are capable of. What else are they capable of?