Corporate Power

by Matt DeNoto

According to economists, one ingredient crucial to a stable, capitalistic society is a strong set of property laws.  If consumers don’t feel confident that they own what they buy, they won’t bother buying at all.

This was somewhat interestingly demonstrated recently when Amazon started messing with its customers’ Kindle e-book readers without their knowledge or permission.  When a publisher decided to pull a couple of books off the virtual shelves (George Orwell’s Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, appropriately enough), Amazon deleted the books even from customers who had already bought them, refundin g the money that had been paid.

While this is clearly an example of a corporation overstepping its bounds, it does provide a somewhat stumbling segue into how the Green Revolution must make us re-evaluate the concept of what we ‘own.’  Just because we’re paying for the water that comes out of our kitchen faucet, that doesn’t make it okay to leave the faucet on all night, regardless of whether or not we can afford it.  We are, at best, renting or borrowing much from the Earth, and we will have to reorient our thinking to reflect that.

This goes double for large corporations, who seem to be in the habit of assuming they own pretty much everything except the waste that they dump into your backyard.  That’s your problem.

But even that may be changing.  Wal-Mart, that paragon of consumerism, has been making small but significant strides towards becoming a more responsible company, at least insofar as its carbon footprint is concerned.  It looks like it is getting ready to take a much bigger stride.  Starting soon, products on Wal-Mart’s shelves will begin appearing with ‘sustainability scores,’ which will take into account all parts of a product’s manufacturing, transportation, etc.  This will give customers more information on which to base their shopping decisions.  It’s a great, bold move, and we can only hope other retailers follow Wal-Mart’s lead.

See?  Corporate power can be used for good.