Don’t drink sugary, carbonated drinks. But why? — you might ask. If you acknowledge the fact that you only truly like one or two soda brands above all other options, then you would only buy that brand or those brands because otherwise you would waste your disposable income on a product you potentially will not like and support the continuation of a company that you potentially will not like; therefore, you avoid buying other brands of soda. Through your established exclusivity within the soda market, other soda companies than the ones you purchase lose revenue from you, and assuming that the other people think similarly, then several soda companies fall out of business because people do not like their sodas. In hindsight, such an economic system seems ideal with the elimination of all potential bad soda options from the market with only the known good soda options left to fuel our consumption.

But what is the problem with this system? Let’s say that the soda companies that are left will naturally grow pretty large with less competition to take away potential revenues, and let’s say that these companies realize that they stand to make greater profits if they band together to form an oligopoly, or some sort of cartel. But let’s just say that the soda companies decide to merge together to form a monopoly called Soda Corp. Soda Corp then decides to unanimously and collectively raise their prices to a higher level. Seeing how soda is a non-essential good and how there are substitute goods for it, we as consumers won’t buy their products anymore, in turn forcing Soda Corp to lower its prices back down to a reasonable level; that is until Soda Corp buys out the cup companies. Now, that is an essential product because how else are we going to be able to drink stuff? Additionally, with the soda coalition’s greater revenue profits from our reliance on cups, they branch off into other industries like kombucha, iced teas, streaming services, milk, hot teas, delivery services, coffee, hot chocolate, pharmaceutical products, matcha, alcoholic beverages, those small little grocery stores that look like convenience stores, bottled water, and cold chocolate. Now Soda Corp is everywhere and is an active overseer of all your economic behaviors, as well as all your other behaviors. Soda Corp knows what you need and want and delivers what you need and want, even when you didn’t ask your Soda Corp at-home, voice-activated, virtual assistant Xerxes.

Since we very much value our individual rights and liberties instead of having them ruthlessly pushed aside for corporate profits, what can be done to prevent Soda Corp’s formation? There are three potential solutions. The first solution is that the government could enact and enforce antitrust legislation as long as it has the willpower to go through the months-long judicial process to do so without giving into corruption, if any. The second solution is that we devolve, or evolve, depending on the perspective, into an economy that doesn’t allow for such large corporations to form in the first place; a society where we are all equal, everyone is provided what everyone deserves, and everyone is happy, and potentially under a dictatorship. The third solution is that we realize that we don’t need soda in our lives, in fact, we don’t need a lot of things that we have right now in our lives; all we need is to realize that contentness comes from the fact that we already have what we need. Scratch that off, we only have two solutions. So let’s hope that the government is up to the task of saying “no” to a very profitable corporation, or else we start a revolution over soda. In the end, if you don’t want to be reminded of this depressing societal situation, don’t drink sugary, carbonated drinks; plus, they were bad for you anyway.

*This article is satire, and in no reasonable reality does William Oversvee-Choi hold such values to heart or think that such values would be appropriate for the use of the limited resources of Bothell High School’s underfunded school newspaper, the Catamount, other than for the uses of satire.