Open letter to Anheuser Busch...

I heard on the news recently that you are closing the Rolling Rock Brewery in Latrobe, PA and moving the production to New Jersey.

I know that US manufacturers have been shipping manufacturing jobs overseas for decades to cut production costs. They have effectively convinced our impotent government to create every conceivable piece of legislation to aid in this effort and have sold US citizens on the idea that this is required to compete effectively in the production of goods. Anyone who knows anything about the economics of this argument knows the reality, US companies are interested in producing product as cheaply as possible to improve their bottom line and show their stockholders an increase in profits every quarter. Period. They have no concern for the future of their nation or citizens or any of that jingo flag waiving garbage. They only waive the flag when it suits the sale of another idea to improve their bottom line or to make others look like the “bad guy”.

This is evident today. Our impotent government (driven by corporate created “trade” associations and “think tanks”) points to China as the bad guy (like Japan 25 years ago) because of our huge trade deficit with them while conveniently leaving out the reality that every day hundreds of US companies are hiring China manufacturers to produce their goods so they can import them to the US and elsewhere at cheaper costs. China has never been accused of having innovative original thoughts in today’s modern economic reality. They have a central government policy that requires various jurisdictions around the country to import manufacturing and export goods. That is about the extent of it.

In your case we are talking about BEER, a product made from WATER and under no threat from cheap Chinese imports! Your company does not have to follow the model of other manufacturers. You can produce your product in the US and maintain jobs in areas around the country where products have been produced for decades. But it seams you follow the Coca Cola philosophy. Buy, destroy, replace.

When I was a youngster I went to Latrobe frequently. My mother’s side of the family was from the area. Although I don’t remember anyone working directly for Rolling Rock, I do remember the beer as being a local brew consumed by the local people. I have no idea how widely distributed it was back then but I assume it was not very large. The locals however had stories about their beer, jokes about it and generally treated Rolling Rock as part of their “family”, something that hung through the booming industrial years earlier in the century to the post industrial years and was richly integrated in their society.

When I returned to the Washington, DC area from a four year stint in the USAF in 1987 I went to a restaurant / bar downtown with my friend Joe. The first thing the waitress said as she approached the table was “I am sorry but we are out of Rolling Rock today.” I will never forget that moment. I almost fell out of my chair. Was this the same Rolling Rock I remembered from my child hood days in rural parts of Pennsylvania? I could not believe the beer had become so popular.

In the nearly 20 years since the popularity for the brand has waned in the DC area although it is still widely available. I don’t have any statistics on market share or any other measure of the sales of the brand. However I do know to shut down the plant where the beer has been produced for nearly 70 years is to kill Rolling Rock and all it stands for.

Your company obviously follows the same mentality of other conglomerate manufacturers. You have no affinity for history or tradition. You have no respect for the citizens or workers of America. You have no interest in cultural values or real affiliation with products or brands. Your company is run by number crunchers with blinders and all incentives are tied to the bottom line. Your marketing arm will create the “Anheuser-Busch commercial truth” in all of it’s products and blatantly disregard any true history or affiliation with its products.

American companies don’t understand the damage they have done to their own businesses by removing any pride an American worker can have in the production or consumption of goods. They have destroyed all attachment by citizens to the production process, turned us into consumers of products made in humane less factories in foreign nations run by autocrats, dictators and communists. American conglomerate companies are starting to look like mini Socialist Societies essentially carrying out the dehumanizing aspect of capitalism discussed at length by Karl Marx.

You are missing a major point of society, that human thought is partly determined by social and economic forces, particularly those related to the means of production. You are treading on thin ice and will play an important part in the destruction of your own society. I hope you get very rich very fast and figure out how to convert your mass wealth into something other than dollars because the time is near when the reckless acts of American corporations for the last ½ a century are going to bite all of us in the ass and there will be NOTHING to stop it.

You make BEER. Your main ingredient is WATER. You have taken a product with proud production and rich community history and dehumanized it. You may try to “rehumanize” it through some kind of marketing campaign but you cannot deny the destruction of a social and historically significant part of the lives of the people in the Latrobe Pennsylvania area and the history that made Rolling Rock.

I will go out of my way to never consume a product produced by your company again.