Companies make billions polluting every inch of the planet, but then they try to shift the blame to you because you asked for a straw with your drink.

Tyler S. Farley

There’s a clever trick the elites use to avoid any blame from the side effects of their insane wealth hoarding. It takes on many different forms in many different areas, but it always boils down to shifting the blame to you and the rest of the average Joes out there.

I bring up the straw example as a perfect embodiment of this tactic. As was well publicized, companies like Starbucks recently looked to bolster their image of being “eco-friendly” by not handing out straws unless a customer specifically asked for one.



What’s silly about this practice is that for over 20 years, Starbucks made billions and billions of dollars handing out single-use plastic cups, straws, and lids. But now, suddenly it’s the customer’s fault for polluting the planet if they ask for a straw with their next drink. It’s as if Starbucks simply washed their hands of the countless metric tons of plastic they sold over the past two decades and now the problem is simply the fault of the consumers. If they ask for a straw, simply blame them for ruining the planet.

As you can see, the blame goes to the individual, not the corporation doing the majority of the polluting.

The same is the case with energy conservation and climate change. Companies made billions through industry or directly from selling fossil fuel energy, but now suddenly the blame is shifted to the average Joe. If you leave a light on, or don’t switch to unhealthy LED light bulbs, suddenly you’re the cause of global warming.



It’s just another shift of responsibility away from industry and onto the backs of the average consumer who has no say in how most anything is run in the world. The blame always goes to the people who have the least amount of power to actually do anything to solve the problem

But it goes beyond just the private sector, many public sector issues are handled the same way.

A perfect example was the absurd “mask debate” we have had for the past year. Instead of blaming the public health system and officials who funded dangerous and unsafe viral experiments in China, the blame was shifted to everyday people who happen to not wear a mask or wore one incorrectly.

This was no different than the corporate trick of shifting blame, but in this case, much more sinister. It pitted people against each other so they wouldn’t stop to see who their real enemy was and who was the real cause of the viral outbreak.

China clearly lied from the very start of the pandemic, it was clear for all to see. But you would have never seen such sentiment on your evening news. Instead you saw videos of people fighting in grocery stores over silly mask rules. Such videos dominated the news cycles for days and even months, all the while the real perpetrators of the pandemic got off free and clear.



So be careful when companies or government officials start telling you it’s your responsibility to fix their problems.  What they’re really doing is dumping their problems on you and moving on to their next act of exploitation.