...ucks’ public image campaign won them at least one loyal customer, and maybe my holding out on them until they proved themselves less of a villain won one of their employees an all-expenses paid root canal. The idea of ethical consumerism, that a consumer can and should choose what to buy with regard to the ethical implications of the purchase, is not exactly novel, but the practice of ethical consumerism has exploded in recent years. The consumpt...
...lators lacked the necessary tools to allow large, complex banking and financial institutions to fail in an orderly manner, giving rise to the “Too Big to Fail” syndrome and an oversized banking system. Inadequate execution of consumer protection provisions and a flawed incentive structure for financial firms only added to the mess. Liberals, conservatives, populists, and academics all seem to agree that financial institutions were under-capitaliz...
...t,” China’s foreign aid and economic policy is undeniably driven by its need for natural resources, with Chinese interests placed first and foremost and African concerns placed at a distant second. Already the world’s largest consumer of coal and steel, China increasingly depends on imported petroleum, aluminum, copper, and other raw commodities as its growing domestic consumer forces expand production. In the past 15 years, China’s mineral oil i...
...iven the troubled job market, irritating the workers and patrons of the chain only alienates the intended recipients of the protest’s message – those voting for the chain with their money. Though they may not be aware of it, consumers vote every day with their wallets. And as with any other election, voters must be educated so that they can make the best possible choice. While a number of Chick-fil-A customers may be drawn to the restaurant by i...
...ers to “self-regulate” and take public opinion into account when determining state policy. Corporations generally lack such direct mechanisms, as they are only directly accountable to their shareholders, though to some extent consumers can hold corporations accountable by “voting with their wallets,” choosing to selectively buy products from companies whose policies they support. If a particular clothing manufacturer mistreats its foreign workers...
...onstration of the President’s cynicism and the ultimate condemnation of his performance in office – when you have to run away from the things you’ve done in office, rather than run on them, you know you’re in trouble. And on consumer protection, environmental protection, and financial protection, Obama is running away from his record. Theodore Roosevelt was many things, but above all he was a genuine man of ideas, not simply a candidate of conv...
...arly the extremely limited democracy of the US two-party system. The health insurance industry is a behemoth. In 2011, its executives’ median pay was the highest of any industry in the country—more than oil, finance, telecom, consumer goods, etc. For the past three years (the depths of the Great Recession) health insurance companies have made record profits. Not just profits, record profits. In a capitalist democracy, all this translates into ext...
...in any way by the PPACA), but it is also one of the least competitive industries in the nation, a situation which realistically is fairly impossible to rectify. Because insurance operates most efficiently when it has a large consumer base, any new company would require either immediate access to a large slice of the population or a truly massive amount of venture capital to be competitive. As a result, the healthcare insurance sector is dominate...
...Obama hard on his energy policies, policies they claim have led to higher prices for gas and electricity. Therefore, Obama has a perverse incentive to authorize an SPR release in order to reduce gas prices and maybe give the consumer economy a fleeting shot in the arm solely to improve his image for reelection. Frankly, the SPR is for emergencies, not for political pandering, and not for market micromanagement. The oil industry should not have t...
...to healthcare anathema, suggested in 2005 that the health insurance market is marked “by information gaps, monopoly suppliers, unequal bargaining power, and other deficiencies that are far less prevalent in markets for other consumer goods and services.” In other words, the average citizen is largely unaware of the intricacies that make the healthcare market incapable of governing itself in a traditional laissez-faire way. However, she still rec...
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