Get this: Not only do ocean-floor-scraping fishermen ruin whole marine ecosystems; governments pay them subsidies to do it, because it otherwise would not be economically viable!
This is criminal conduct on behalf of the fishermen, the fishing companies and the governments involved. There is no excuse for it. People who make their living based on such disregard for what they are destroying, do not deserve to make that living.
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Comment on Jan 2, 2007 at 12:53 by boris kolar
Capitalism fails to address cases, where the balance between demand one product excludes supply of another. For example: demand for ecologically responsible behavior excludes supply of certain fish and products. Another example: demand for society free of abuse excludes supply of rape drugs.
That leads to situation where socially irresponsible behavior is actually rewarded. There will always be enough meat eaters for meat industry to be successful. There will always be enough rapists for rape drugs manufacturers to be successful. What can you do if you oppose these industries? Not buying their stuff doesn't really matter. In essence, customers have a "yes" vote (buying their product), but no real "no" vote (not buying their product because you oppose it is not any different to not buying their product because you don't like it). In effect: customers only have a "yes" and "abstain" vote.
Traditionally, this problem has been addressed by outlawing anything we see as undesirable. This approach won't work, because there will always be legal but socially irresponsible behavior.
I propose the following solution: give people a real "no" vote. Give them the ability to anonymously "steal" from companies they don't like. How about the following rules:
- the total amount of money a person can "steal" from corporations is limited by a fraction of his personal tax liabilities
- tax liabilities of a corporation are (1 - k * ci / (ci + ts)) where k is an empirically determined constant, ci is corporate income, ts is total amount "stolen" from corporation