this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2025
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One single plant, cloned thousands of times. Easily devastated by disease.
If you live in a northern climate, you have to rely on a very complicated and expensive delivery system that will supply you with this fruit that can only be grown in the tropics. And the only way to keep it economical is to create an economy where food prices are artificially kept low because first world countries systematically suppress developing countries that grow bananas into becoming stable economies that would actually provide better wages for farmers and workers who would raise the price of bananas.
We have cheap bananas because we don't mind living in a world where we abuse farmers and workers to work for pennies to supply us in the first world with cheap bananas.
And just to rub salt into the wound, someone created a clothing store named after the political corruption imposed on those countries to accomplish this: Banana Republic.
I can't think of what an equivalent would be in terms of offensive marketing, Starving Irish brand potatoes? A Saudi demolition company named after September 11th? A clothing store inspired by antebellum southern US clothes? I guess some companies still use imagery of indigenous people for tobacco products. That seems like it's in the same vein.
Generally, I try to focus on how beautiful life can be, but damn if there isn't a crowd trying to make it ugly for others.
Well I think I just realised why they do it. There's this longstanding conspiracy theory that whenever a politician does a fuckup they conveniently say keywords associated with the fuckup but put it in a different context (like say, scandal related to trains, so they get into a model train hobby), and they pay advertisers to market that changed context HARD, so if people search up their name plus trains what shows up are articles talking about their new hobby.
Just thought of this because I was searching up "Banana Republic" in the context of neocolonialism (while reading my country's history) and besides the Wikipedia page being the first result, the next results were that store. And I remembered this reply.
I had never heard of that tactic. Thanks for sharing. I'll be looking for IRL examples now.
Nixon should have started a hobby in hydraulic engineering specializing in the design and production of water gates, specifically for the Potomac River, including one near that hotel/office/apartment complex that's name I forget.