How to destroy a movement.
Say you're a corporation with a desire to keep people tied to you. Now you see a movement coming up at the grass roots which threatens your agenda. Take the tiny house/minimalist movement for example. People not tied to stuff is bad for corporations.
First you sit back and study it. You don't get involved, you get equipped. You get your lawyers and researchers studying it, all nice and quiet. You need to let the movement mature a bit. It needs to raise up people who are really good at promoting it. You know, the Bob who goes into city council and slaps backs and cracks jokes and gets concessions. When these people show up, you start buying them to staff your new department which is there to help them promote their movement. Yes, you start out promoting your enemy. You're their friend. You are generous, helpful, useful, and interested. You buy as many of the leaders as you can and give them nice offices, income, power.
Those you cannot buy are discredited in any way possible. Whether you use skullduggery to take them out of commission, sling mud to ruin their reputations, or just sideline them with disrespect and/or stress, you take them out and put your guys up front. Now that you're in control of both the movement and the leaders of it, you're in position to start making dictates.
In the case of tiny houses, these will be reasonable things that people usually understand, especially the public and government people. Your trained dogs may object a little but they are yours now. If they refuse they can be cast out into the wilds, lose everything you've given them and get knocked down deeper than the ones who refused to take the salary. They probably know it, too, or you can just plain tell them, always while making it sound like your demands are reasonable. And they are, at first. They're demands like power and water and sewer hookups. Oh, we can't be having tiny house shanty towns, things have to be kept clean and sane and measured. So accessory buildings are great. The more shacks to stuff more crap into, the better. The more utility bills you receive, the better. Why not have 3 in your spacious mortgaged yard and all bought on mortgages? Sure, use 'em for airbnb and stuff storage. Spend money decorating them. Spend money equipping them. So your guys go into city council and the city begins to write rules. Now you can't have a tiny house that's a permanent residence, or that's off grid, or that has it's own land, or something. The beauty of this method is it all tailored locally for local situations. We are already seeing that tiny houses are getting expensive to buy, to build, to move, and to situate, even as they gain acceptance as accessory buildings. Even in cities that have had tiny houses since that was normal in the early part of the 20th century and earlier. My house is a tiny house, built in the middle of the 20th century over the course of a decade from scraps. It's quite legal, sits on it's own land, and is ineligible for normal financing and insurance because... it's too small. Yet there's plenty of others like it in this neighborhood. it wasn't always too small. it's legal because the city won't boot me out over something as stupid as interior space but if I don't maintain it well enough they'll happily shut it down and send an excavator over to crush it while I scramble for a rental. I cannot put another one on this site because the accessory buildings allowance is rated on the basis of square footage of the house. If I hadn't already had a garage I may well be unable to build one simply because the garage can't be bigger than the house. Yet the existing garage actually has more legal space! I don't know if I can replace it with exactly the same thing on the same location or not. We can't afford it so we just keep shoring up the old building.
so that's how you do it, you buy the movement and then gradually control it in small increments till it becomes another service to you rather than a threat. it's pretty easy. It's just expensive.
First you sit back and study it. You don't get involved, you get equipped. You get your lawyers and researchers studying it, all nice and quiet. You need to let the movement mature a bit. It needs to raise up people who are really good at promoting it. You know, the Bob who goes into city council and slaps backs and cracks jokes and gets concessions. When these people show up, you start buying them to staff your new department which is there to help them promote their movement. Yes, you start out promoting your enemy. You're their friend. You are generous, helpful, useful, and interested. You buy as many of the leaders as you can and give them nice offices, income, power.
Those you cannot buy are discredited in any way possible. Whether you use skullduggery to take them out of commission, sling mud to ruin their reputations, or just sideline them with disrespect and/or stress, you take them out and put your guys up front. Now that you're in control of both the movement and the leaders of it, you're in position to start making dictates.
In the case of tiny houses, these will be reasonable things that people usually understand, especially the public and government people. Your trained dogs may object a little but they are yours now. If they refuse they can be cast out into the wilds, lose everything you've given them and get knocked down deeper than the ones who refused to take the salary. They probably know it, too, or you can just plain tell them, always while making it sound like your demands are reasonable. And they are, at first. They're demands like power and water and sewer hookups. Oh, we can't be having tiny house shanty towns, things have to be kept clean and sane and measured. So accessory buildings are great. The more shacks to stuff more crap into, the better. The more utility bills you receive, the better. Why not have 3 in your spacious mortgaged yard and all bought on mortgages? Sure, use 'em for airbnb and stuff storage. Spend money decorating them. Spend money equipping them. So your guys go into city council and the city begins to write rules. Now you can't have a tiny house that's a permanent residence, or that's off grid, or that has it's own land, or something. The beauty of this method is it all tailored locally for local situations. We are already seeing that tiny houses are getting expensive to buy, to build, to move, and to situate, even as they gain acceptance as accessory buildings. Even in cities that have had tiny houses since that was normal in the early part of the 20th century and earlier. My house is a tiny house, built in the middle of the 20th century over the course of a decade from scraps. It's quite legal, sits on it's own land, and is ineligible for normal financing and insurance because... it's too small. Yet there's plenty of others like it in this neighborhood. it wasn't always too small. it's legal because the city won't boot me out over something as stupid as interior space but if I don't maintain it well enough they'll happily shut it down and send an excavator over to crush it while I scramble for a rental. I cannot put another one on this site because the accessory buildings allowance is rated on the basis of square footage of the house. If I hadn't already had a garage I may well be unable to build one simply because the garage can't be bigger than the house. Yet the existing garage actually has more legal space! I don't know if I can replace it with exactly the same thing on the same location or not. We can't afford it so we just keep shoring up the old building.
so that's how you do it, you buy the movement and then gradually control it in small increments till it becomes another service to you rather than a threat. it's pretty easy. It's just expensive.