“4/29/2008, 3:56pm EST”
No surprise: Corporate elements using green language for status quo exploitation →
An interesting article, but I’d take some issue with the last paragraph:
“Of all religions, the one to which Americans cling most tightly is the doctrine of the free market. No belief is more deeply held than the one that says markets will always satisfy people’s needs in the best and most efficient way. That belief persists, unaffected by the market economy’s repeated, spectacular failures to perform as advertised. If green energy and green consumption remain as they are — as sects within the religion of the market — they also are doomed to fail.”
The economy — American or international — is not a free market economy (FME) in the theoretically pure sense, in which competition is numerous and literal, transparency of information obtains, the agents subsumed in the system are equipped to use that information sensibly, and profits gradually fall to zero as efficiency reigns. These are of course the ingredients of an impossible fantasy. Unlike in a “true” free market, the decks are currently stacked in favor of influential special interests. (Despite labels affixed by its enemies, a serious all-inclusive environmentalism isn’t a “special” interest, since it benefits all, and not just human animals, to the greatest extent possible.)
In the market economy we know, externalities — genuine costs that are yet kept outside, or “external” to, the conventional calculus — are obviously not factored into economic costs. (Broad examples of common externalities include environmental effects, social ramifications, costs to non-human creatures and biodiversity at large, etc.) Therefore, these costs are not factored into the price we pay as consumers. But that price is indeed being paid by all life on Earth. Meanwhile, corporations are rarely held accountable institutionally for even a fraction of the harms from which they profit.
The deeper capitalist religion, intentionally obscured by ‘free market’ worship language, is personal profit and power (present and future bio-masses be damned). Corporate elements will usually say and do whatever it takes to keep the profit coming whether or not it actually conforms to free market principles, since this personally enriches them and constitutes their primary humanist-capitalist function as corporate overseers/employees. Both corporate figures and their consumer-enablers will usually rationalize endlessly to insulate exploitative lifestyles from serious appraisal.
In the absence of top-down responsibility (politically or economically), people have to be informed enough to hold businesses accountable. Of course, huge money is spent in order to thwart that possibility. The insidiously clever flooding of individuals’ landscapes with uncertainty, misinformation, and distraction tries to keep us happily plugged in.
Never leave home without it.
