A) Will SOMEONE please tell me how these companies are "taking advantage" of anyone?
B) AGAIN, as has been mentioned, the fact that there are now 2100+ breweries seems to indicate that their evil plan to destroy something isn't working. If anything, it might well be growing the market, which means that anyone who has any share in the market ends up with a slice of a bigger pie.
C) If it comes down to some philosophical notion that big companies are always bad/wrong, well, that's lame. And I suspect that is the main point of most of these arguments.
D) People who drink certain popular beers aren't "lemmings," anymore than people who refuse to drink them or only drink local or only drink small or whatever are lemmings of a different color. There are people who genuinely like those products, and those who don't. And people who like all of them.
E) I'm glad someone mentioned the days when Coors was regional. It was probably in the 80s when it showed up in the East. (Of all the light beers, Coors is the one that I would probably pass on most of the time, except in cases of extreme thirst. The Banquet or Original, though, that's good stuff.)
It's really a more complex issue than it seems. The OP has taken a lot of crap, but he DID say that he could have destroyed the rep in front of everyone.
A) How are these companies taking advantage of anyone....Well lets see, they take advantage of consumers ignorance, that is why cold is a flavor, triple hopped is supposedly amazing and unique, we have terminology like "cold brewed" (wtf does that mean), and "drinkability" (??), wide mouth bottles/cans, speed pour tabs (shotgunning anyone), and all of the other BS they have been dumping on the consumer that has no actual bearing on the beer, or the brewing process.
They take advantage of liquor stores all the time. I actually work for a distributor, and see this all the time. If a store doesn't give them X% of wall space for advertising the case price goes up. If a store doesn't order X amount of cases of brand X they will not be allowed to purchase brand Y. If the store does not allocate a certain % of cooler space for their brands, case price goes up. They offer tickets and passes to every event imaginable if you order X amount of cases (totally freaking illegal). I can go on and on if you like.
B) Yes now there are over 2100 breweries, and it is wonderful. And because of this that is why BMC are putting out so many beers to compete with the craft brewers and being completely dishonest about it. They know that there are Hundreds of thousands of people that want to support small/local breweries, and not them. That is why their labels are so deceiving, they try to make it look like a small brewer made it. That is why the BA is fighting against BMC
http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/media/press-releases/show?title=craft-vs-crafty-a-statement-from-the-brewers-association .
C) Not all big companies are evil. Just the ones that practice evil in all of their dealings. How many lawsuits has BMC thrown at small brewers, just because they can. They know that they can afford to wage frivolous lawsuits, and the little guys cannot always afford to fight them. That imho is evil.
D) Never called anyone a lemming (I prefer sheeple). Hey, if you like bud, cool, if you like sam adams, cool, taste is up to the consumer. However what is wrong with educating consumers? I think that if you removed deception in advertising and actually educated about your product instead, you would see a huge shift in what the supposed #1 beer in America is.
E) Yup, Coors did used to be regional, and they used to be a responsible company, hell my father used to work for them, they used to be one of the best employers in this state. That is no longer the case. Just like so many other companies, success attracts some less then savory elements. Their wages have gone down, at the same time that their profits are going up, imagine that. Their merger with Miller only made it worse. There is a reason that Monopolies are supposed to be illegal.