From: Alexander 'Sasha' Chislenko (sasha1@netcom.com)
Date: Mon Dec 14 1998 - 15:43:29 MST
Joe E. Dees writes:
> "My individually refusing to do business with a polluting company will
> not deter them from polluting in the process of manufacturing
> products to sell to those who do not share my squeamishness."
>
It's very hard for a company to have several manufacturing processes
for the same goods, directed at different social groups. Most likely,
they will adopt manufacturing practices that satisfy some compromise
between production efficiency and public squeamishness.
You can also refuse to buy anything from anybody who deals with any
company that you disagree with, or you can make contributions to the
causes offsetting the negative influence of the company that you deal
with every time you make a transaction with it (the lists of all such
companies, their estimated secondary and tertiary influences on your
interests, and recommended offset payments may be calculated by your
trusted interest groups and downloaded into your PDA at minimal
transaction cost).
Besides, you can buy voting shares in these companies, or buy
resources that you would like to see preserved, etc.
If none of these seems sufficient, it means that the rest of the
society is not as scared of pollution as you are, and wants to
spend a larger share of resources towards other goals.
Using free value exchange and the power of persuasion looks like
a decent way to reach a peaceful balance between conflicting goals
of different social agencies. Coercion doesn't promise such
balance, and also requires lots of resources to establish and
maintain that could be put to better use.
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Alexander Chislenko <http://www.lucifer.com/~sasha/home.html>
<sasha1@netcom.com> <sasha@media.mit.edu>
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