Yet another example of corporations putting profits ahead of the public interest
Nicholas Kristof wrote a summary article this past Sunday about a series in the Chicago Tribune showing how flame retardants came to be in furniture and other household products. This is yet another example of corporate interests putting their own profits ahead of the public interest, and it’s no surprise to anyone who has followed the tobacco industry (Brandt 2007) or the deniers’ disinformers’ tactics to derail climate science (Oreskes 2011).
Of course, I don’t object to profits (I love them as well as the next business person) but when companies force costs onto society that are not paid by customers of their products then society as a whole is damaged (even though the perpetrators make out like bandits). It’s both unfair and inefficient, and if we can avoid it, there’s no legitimate justification for allowing this to happen for climate, consumer products, or anything else. In addition, such behavior damages people’s faith in the free enterprise system, which is another systemic cost of such bad behavior. Of course the only way to enforce rules to correct such problems is through government, which is why I talk about “The central problem of governance” and “What kind of government do we want?” in Chapter 7 of Cold Cash, Cool Climate.
References
Brandt, Allan M. 2007. The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America. New York, NY: Basic Books.
Koomey, Jonathan G. 2011. Cold Cash, Cool Climate: Science-Based Advice for Ecological Entrepreneurs. Burlingame, CA: Analytics Press.
Oreskes, Naomi, and Eric M. Conway. 2010. Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming. New York, NY: Bloomsbury Press.
