| Unfortunately, this is the way in which
| "market forces" fail us. When all motivations
| ultimately spring forth from ever-higher profits
| and market dominance, how can "doing the right
| thing" for society as a whole win out on a
| consistent basis?
- The people running the company will be selfish and want to minimize the future risks to their offspring/descendents.
- If the company uses a practice that is bad, all of their customers will just boycott / switch to a competitor.
Reality:
- The people running the company may not have any offspring and therefore not much riding on the future.
- Most of these companies all use the same practices, so it makes boycotting hard. Switching to competitors that don't use these practices are more expensive (i.e. organic), and food is something that people need.
- The detriments of certain practices may not be known right away, and stopping them later could lead to lower short-term profits (and maybe not even increased long-term profits, just betterment of society), and Wall Street doesn't like this because all Wall Street is concerned about is numbers going up or down (all other considerations are not considered).
- Most people have issues with long-term thinking. Things that happen slowly over long time-spans don't seem to register.