The recent release in the US of adverts sponsored by the corn
industry to promote high fructose corn syrup as being 'not that bad' has
sparked much discussion about the ethics of marketing unhealthy
products to the public.
These adverts were deeply misleading and
obviously designed to capitalise upon the ignorance of consumers. Yet to
anyone who knows the facts they were so wide of the mark they could
almost have been a joke. When I watched them I nearly spat my breakfast
onto the laptop.
This is, of course, nothing new, although the
weasel tactics employed here do mark a new milestone in treating the
consumer with contempt. Big business has been lobbying for, and
marketing products which are patently bad for us for years. Slick
advertising and well-groomed, plausible front-men have become the modus operandi for companies peddling ostensibly unacceptable products to somehow acquire for them a veneer of acceptability.
Big Business
The
sugar lobby are amongst the worst offenders. When you see the roll-call
of garbage-peddlers who were in league with the Sugar Association as
they tried in 2003 to strong-arm the World Health Organisation into
withdrawing healthy eating guidelines, it's not hard to see their angle.
The story was reported in guardian.co.uk in April 2003, entitled 'Sugar
industry threatens to scupper WHO.'
The tobacco industry, after
all these years, still wheel out wheezing spokespeople in times of
crisis to advocate 'freedom of choice'. One can't help feeling as if
these self-confessed smokers and advocates of choice are in some way
being exploited, in spite of their clear complicity.
Pharmaceutical
companies are the toughest bunch of all because their products are
ostensibly acceptable. Perhaps this is how they managed to ease
themselves into a position of almost unassailable power. For so long
everyone just assumed they were the good guys - we took our eye of the
ball. Now, when find that they are funding lavish trips for doctors to
acquire influence
(guardian.co.uk/society/2008/aug/23/health.pharmaceuticals), we have
become aware of their true might.
The bigger the business, the
greater the power and the slicker the machine. Provided someone in a
well-cut suit with a good haircut can keep a straight face whilst saying
advocating moderation and groundlessly refuting compelling and damning
evidence then somehow, by sleight of hand and sheer chutzpah they get
away with it. We are hypnotised by the gibberish, mesmerised by the
gloss.
Not Fundamentally Evil
Naturally, it
is tempting to brand these people and the companies they work for as
bad, or even evil; but the uncomfortable truth is that these people are
probably no more or less evil than you or me. They are just doing their
job and too lazy, broke or ignorant to confront the fact that their job
indirectly causes suffering.
In my line of work I am indirectly
involved in the promotion of some of the products I rail against in this
blog. Shame on me, you might say. Why don't I quit my job and get new
job planting trees? Money. Security. Ambition. Hypocrisy, perhaps. But I
promise I am not a bad person.
Likewise, the companies cannot, by
definition, be evil. They are simply a collection of people, policies
and processes that have evolved under the system we know as capitalism.
The company is owned by the shareholders but run by the employees. The
shareholders want the company to continue making profits because this
pays their bills. To keep the shareholders happy the employees must take
whatever actions are most likely to keep the company making profits so
that their wages continue to be paid and they can pay their own bills.
Even
the shareholders are arguably no worse than the employees themselves.
You could question the ethics of their investments but I am guessing
that for the most part they are not bad people.
The Corporation as a Sociopath
In
the film The Corporation, the way companies behave was examined in the
context of psychiatry. The conclusion was that when examined in these
terms, companies exhibit the traits of a sociopath. In other words,
someone
...who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience
I
believe this is fundamentally at the root of many of our problems with
big business pushing products that are bad for us. A collection of
people with no particular desire to harm others, when assembled into a
group under the corporate system, end up conspiring to do so. The sum of
the parts is greater than the whole.
The majority of the time,
this is not a problem. Most companies are making products that people
want to buy. We have regulations that ensure those products meet certain
standards and laws to enforce those regulations; and even in the worst
companies (such as tobacco manufacturers) there will be a presumption to
favour the consumer's wellbeing when there is more than one choice but
no effect on profit.