Tag Archives: Free market

Business, C

Why Corporations Want You to Confuse Your Rights with Theirs

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When the New York City Council approved a ban on sales of soft drinks in containers larger than 16oz, ban opponents used some ideological sleight-of-hand. It was so subtle that I noticed it only now!

Big Gulp cup--32 ounces
The issue should have been whether corporations should be allowed to tempt people to use too much of an unhealthy product, not individual liberty.
Photo Credit: Majiscup – The Papercup & Sleeve via Compfight cc

By framing the ban as an issue of individual liberty, they obscured a crucial fact: the ban would have regulated the behavior not of individuals but of businesses. Individuals would still have been able to buy all the soda they wanted.

Therefore, the real issue was whether irresponsible corporations would still be allowed to tempt customers to use too much of an unhealthy product. All the talk about government overreach, the nanny state, and personal choice was really about the City’s treatment of corporations, not people.

All the talk about government overreach, the nanny state, and personal choice was really about the City’s treatment of corporations, not people.

This case demonstrates what corporations gain from confusing the rights of individuals with those of corporations and the harm this confusion can bring the public. It will be very difficult to ban harmful products if the bogus individual-liberty frame is allowed to define future debates.

However wise or foolish this ban proposal may have been, governments have a responsibility to regulate commerce within their borders and also a responsibility to protect the health of the community. In similar future cases, Framologists should name who is really affected by the proposal and identify the real issue as corporate responsibility, not individual liberty.

Do you know if soda-ban defenders used this approach? I’d love to hear about it!

F, M

Framing Markets, Part 2: Who Decides? What Do We Want?

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How should progressives respond to the extreme conservative mantra,  Let the market decide!?

This slogan comes from the inaccurate view that markets justly mete rewards and punishments like the fundamentalist, strict-father version of God.

As noted before, from a progressive perspective, markets are tools to be used by Us the People for our benefit. If we were to let markets make important policy decisions for us, we would be like Don Quixote on his first sally. Seeking adventure, the would-be knight rode out of town and then let his horse decide where to go. The horse returned him to his barn, of course!

But at least his horse got him safely home. If we abandon ourselves to the judgment of “markets” without clear, consistently-enforced expectations for fair play and fair treatment of workers, customers, communities, animals, and the planet, the corporations that tend to dominate markets could be far crueler.

The effect of letting the market decide too often means that the two or three (sometimes only one) companies that dominate an industry decide for us what our options are. Insisting that the government, as the people’s servant, set rules to structure markets for our benefit, increases confidence in business and helps markets function in our interest.

Therefore, when extreme conservatives say to let “the market” decide, progressives should reply,What do we want markets to do for us?

But what do you think?

F, M

Framing the Free Market

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In a 1999 essay in The Atlantic titled “The Market as God,” Harvey Cox brilliantly discusses  ways in which some Americans treat the idea of the free market as if it were a god. The problem is that, while markets certainly can be very influential, they are not gods and do not necessarily have people’s best interests at heart. In fact, they can seem heartless sometimes. But that doesn’t mean that markets are bad–just that deifying them is unwise.

A better understanding of markets came to me from an unlikely source: a book about parking. Donald Shoup’s excellent book The High Price of Free Parking argues for using market forces as tools to better manage parking.

An example is charging more for on-street parking during peak hours and charging less for parking in garages at the same time. That will encourage more drivers to park in the garage, leaving more on-street spaces available for those willing to pay extra for them. He proposes a goal of making one parking space available on each side of each block at any given time. That would allow motorists to park without having to cruise for spaces, saving time, fuel, pollution, and stress.

The details of Shoup’s proposals aside, instead of thinking of the market as god, progressives should talk about the market as tool. Therefore, the question should never be whether markets are good or bad but what markets are good for and bad at. How should we use markets, and who should benefit from them?

For example, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act attempts to use market forces to improve Americans’ access to quality health insurance. The government creates standards of quality and fairness and marketplaces for buying and selling insurance, and the insurance companies do the rest. It is an attempt to use markets to advance the health and wellbeing of Americans.

When extreme conservatives complain about government interference in the free market, progressives could reply (if they can say so truly) that government is providing the market structure that both companies and customers need so they know what behavior is and is not acceptable. This allows them to do business with confidence that they are being treated fairly and not ripped off or harmed. This confidence makes business possible. I think progressives should frame this as market-confidence building.

How do you think progressives should talk about markets?