VUG Media

This post is in response to this article

Amongst some of my friends I'm known to hate Corporations (aka. "The Man"), an assumption that is very far from the truth. Corporations are not fundamentally evil by any standards: they exist to provide us with valuable goods and services, build equity for shareholders and employ people. All of these are great things. However, the downfall of corporations is that they are not hardwired to look at the big picture of overall stability, well-being and efficiency of nations. Racing after the elusive consumer dollar has led to these unfortunate realities such as pollution, sweatshops, obscene levels of ads and unfair political sanctions against small countries.

I agree with this article that the current situation of corporate regulation is not working. Business' are much better with pursuing innovation (and money) than doing things by the book:

We, like Sisyphus, are caught forever pushing the damn rock up the hill and that really sucks. When we finally decide to get out of this losing situation, we will work on changing the economic logic so that corporations pursue a different kind of profit while better respecting natural capital.

The point I took from this articles is that we need to help create a free market that has some component that would cause companies to focus on making society better as a whole. I do not know what this would look like but for the sake of argument I am going to propose that the government taxes junk-food and subsidizes fruit. We know that junk-food causes obesity, which in turn causes health problems, hospital visits and so on. Poor health is a burden on our health care system and ultimately costs taxpayers money. The "apple eater" on the other hand is regularly a healthy citizen and doesn't need to go to the doctor other than regular checkups. In effect, the healthy eater is subsidizing the glutton.

In my mind, this is not a "free market" at all. What I think is that we should calculate the True Cost of junk-food food and fruit. If junk food costs out health care system $.50 per a bag of chips pass the cost on. Likewise, if an Apple saves us $.50 then it should be subsidized. This leads to a market that is suddenly drawn to producing healthy food choices for a healthy public. The net result for society is increased health, cheaper food (if they choose correctly) and a better health care system.

To me, the concept of true cost is a slam dunk for all parties involved. However, I know it is idealistic on my part to dream of a day when similar policies are implemented on a wide scale due to problems of implementation. First, for people to buy into the idea you need to convince them that they are greedy, un-rational consumers. While I have come to terms with my own failure to make wise decisions about most aspects of my life, trying to tell the Canadian people that they aren't cognizant enough to make their own decisions is a massive turn-off. Simply put, we are all human and can only base out decisions of of the limited knowledge that we acquire, with expertise in a handful of fields (see the Wisdom of Crowds Wikipedia entry). The last time I picked up McDonalds I was thinking more about the price convenience and the sheer pleasure of eating that Big Mac, not the cost of its well being. Same goes for my last fill-up of gas. In hindsight, I know that these were not ecologically sound purchases but I made them. And I will continue to. Only the most concerned and disciplined consumers will self regulate their purchases without the true cost of goods built into the sticker price.

Another issue that I see is the sheer impossibility to produce accurate True Cost estimates, as well as the implementation of such a complex system. Further, there would be outcry from people "forced" to consume expensive goods. If we doubled the cost of gas and made transit service free (reflecting true costs) the outcry from motorists who "must" drive would be enormous. Never-the-less, I think such a system would produce the desired results even though the political party that implemented it would be tossed out of government in a hurry. It's really unfortunate because they'd get my vote: the long term benefit of this kind of strategy is enormous. As a final side-note, despite my distain for much of the Conservative Party's platform, their recent announcements of tax credits for to subsidize transit use and children's sports are a step in the right direction. You see, I'm not really that biased at all.