Yeah, you know, I don't think I will hesitate to recommend this book to anyone because it's important and I barely see this issue treated, but damn, its introduction just touched me where it hurt me today.

But have this, I like it:

At around this same time a new kind of corporation began to rival the traditional all-American manufacturers for market share; these were the Mikes and Microsoft’s, and later, the Tommy Hilfiger’s and Intel’s. These pioneers made the bold claim that producing goods was only an incidental part of their operations, and that thanks to recent victories in trade liberalization and labour-law reform; they were able to have their products made for them by contractors, many of them overseas. What these companies produced primarily were not things, they said, but images of their brands. Their real work lay not in manufacturing but in marketing. This formula, needless to say, has proved enormously profitable, and its success has companies competing in a race toward weightlessness: whoever owns the least has the fewest employees on the payroll and produces the most powerful images, as opposed to products, wins the race.