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My Letter to Budweiser

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Please, oh please, did you actually deliver this to the Giant? It was written in a beautiful way that makes the commercial they made seem so small.
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After their super bowl ad. Even though funny. Budweiser has to realize craft beer has so much more flavor and is cutting hard into their profits. I.e. thats why they keep trying to buy all the microbreweries up.
 
So, what's this thread all about? I just couldn't read it all.

OP made a funny.

Some folks got offended. Some others got offended at the prospect that they were being offended. People got sandy. People got offended that they thought they were being sandy when they just were really offended. Folks got offended again at the mere suggestion from other offenders that they were being offended.
 
Hey, the smoker we drink, the player we get. :D It just seemed funny that Bud bought the brewery making the craft beer they were poking fun at.
 
Man, my feeble attempt at humor in the original post has become the catalyst to a discussion regarding corporate greed vs. social responsibility, investor motivation, and the desirability of capitalism as a whole. Thankfully, I have read many books and attended many classes on this subject and can respond intelligently. Luckily, I also have enough sense and experience to pass on engaging in this is a sisyphean discourse.

This actually reminds me of a time when I first got to college. My roommate and I were bored in our dorm room, so we decided to fill out a Mad-Lib we had lying around. Being young college kids, we decided to use the word "@ss" for every space, regardless of whether the page called for an adverb, noun, place, ect. The result was hysterical, with gems like "a vacation is when you take a trip to @ss place with your @ss family" and "when parents go on vacation, they spend their time eating three @ss(es) a day, and fathers play golf, and mothers sit around playing with their @ss" We tried to fill out another, but somehow ended up in a debate over the validity of the trickle-down economics theory, which devolved into a debate about politics, which then further degraded into a heated discussion about the oppression of people and government, and ended with us dividing everything in the room and putting a tape line right down the middle.

The point of my short story here is that when someone starts off with a funny joke, sometimes its better to just take it for what it is and have a good laugh, or you may find yourself trying to convince someone of something which they are fundamentally opposed, and the only progress made was that each of you showed you @ss.
 
Man, my feeble attempt at humor in the original post has become the catalyst to a discussion regarding corporate greed vs. social responsibility, investor motivation, and the desirability of capitalism as a whole. Thankfully, I have read many books and attended many classes on this subject and can respond intelligently. Luckily, I also have enough sense and experience to pass on engaging in this is a sisyphean discourse.

This actually reminds me of a time when I first got to college. My roommate and I were bored in our dorm room, so we decided to fill out a Mad-Lib we had lying around. Being young college kids, we decided to use the word "@ss" for every space, regardless of whether the page called for an adverb, noun, place, ect. The result was hysterical, with gems like "a vacation is when you take a trip to @ss place with your @ss family" and "when parents go on vacation, they spend their time eating three @ss(es) a day, and fathers play golf, and mothers sit around playing with their @ss" We tried to fill out another, but somehow ended up in a debate over the validity of the trickle-down economics theory, which devolved into a debate about politics, which then further degraded into a heated discussion about the oppression of people and government, and ended with us dividing everything in the room and putting a tape line right down the middle.

The point of my short story here is that when someone starts off with a funny joke, sometimes its better to just take it for what it is and have a good laugh, or you may find yourself trying to convince someone of something which they are fundamentally opposed, and the only progress made was that each of you showed you @ss.

*your :p
 
Good letter, I hope you sent it. But this horse has been beaten enough.

At what point can we consider this dead horse completely flogged? I don't care what anyone on this planet thinks of me, my passion for delicious beverages, or how I enjoy them. A goofy ad campaign by a company that has lined their pockets slinging the lowest common denominator of said beverages has no sway with me.

For the love of all that is holy, let this thread die...:drunk:


This thread can be dead for you as soon as you stop reading it...:mug:
 
"It would have been more accurate to say they hadn't maximized efficiencies."

I'd hardly call reducing the ABV maximizing their efficiency. Maybe reducing their hop intake, but I'm uncertain why they cut off the farmer they did. But I doubt AB was just buying up a whole farm's worth of hops just to do so.

"With craft beer exploding, and more breweries in North America than at any other point in history, I think hop farmers will be OK."

But how many of these upstart American breweries are buying their Hallertau from Germany when we tend to use mostly our citrusy/piny hops. Regardless, how long does it take for a farmer to go under when he suddenly finds himself with his whole year's work sitting in a barn with the buyer backing out? And what of the workers and their families that do what until then? And I'm no "bleeding heart liberal" or socialist.

"I admit I'm just going by what I can Google up, but are you sure that's the case?"

My Google-fu says that I am mistaken, and the info I had then was incorrect unless I assumed that the move meant they closed it, which is possible.

"Again, Beck's was hardly a small-town, labour-of-love craft brewery, so your comment is a little misdirected."

My point was that they changed the water and didn't care about the beer as it was. The same goes with Budweiser.

"What's the alternative? Socialism? Communism? Got a better system? Greed is a powerful and necessary motivator."

I believe capitalism is a great thing. But when your business practices reflect much more than doing the best you can to relying on underhanded tactics to take out the little guy that will doubtfully ever, himself, see the levels of success you do is reprehensible. There's nothing you can say that can justify what they've done. Miller/Coors certainly didn't do those things, yet they do fairly well these days. Greed is exactly what it is and nothing less.

"I still don't know what they do/did that's so "underhanded." They've acted like any other business of their size would/does. Have they broken any laws?"

You should watch a few of the documentaries. In one case the claim is yes . Beer Wars is the one that comes to mind now, but there's another I cannot recall now, and I no longer have Netflix.

"AB-InBev isn't "greedy." It can't be. It's not a person."

But the people in power run it the way they do. And they've done several under-handed things. As I said you'd need to watch the documentaries. The same with them claiming this "mom and pop" brewery is what it is. I don't recall the brand, but when you go to the address it takes you to a Budweiser facility.

"I've seen "Beer Wars," and the only thing I found shocking/disturbing about that movie was the idea that the US is still clinging to some kind of bizarre, antiquated three-tier distribution system, and how clearly corrupt the politicians in that film are. I don't blame the brewers for working within the lobbying system to maintain an advantage afforded to them by the law - I blame the system that allows your lawmakers to continue to be so transparently manipulated by rich lobby groups."

This was one of the main points in which Bud ensured they took up all the room on the trucks so that the little guy couldn't put his on there. And then what is he supposed to do? Just fold his hands and go out of business while Bud breaks the law? Incredible!

I'll keep the rest to myself before it gets out of hand. But I will say that greed is a terrible thing, especially how it steps all over the little people who just would like a sliver of the pie.
 
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