The fact that the concealment of information is the backbone behind certain industries such as the meat industry makes Posner’s theory invalid. Most thriving businesses thrive because some aspect of their business is a secret. If the secrets of the meat industry were revealed, then it would probably plummet. One of the reasons, it is so easy to be a carnivore is that most people don’t know where and how the animals are prepared on an assembly line. Americans and the economy can benefit from ignorance, on certain issues. If some people knew how chickens were treated and tortured, then less people would eat it. A few years ago, 20/20 did a special on the poultry factories and how the chickens were tortured, unnecessarily and the poultry industry took a major hit in profits. On an episode of The Oprah Show, Oprah revealed some of the processes beef go through and publicly declared that she was giving up beef. So many people followed her example that the beef industry in
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Secrets and the Economy
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I agree with this post in the sense that every business has to have some things hidden. Ignorance does make people happy in this country, and everywhere, because a lot of people really just cannot handle the truth. If people find out and the businesses lose profits, then that is their problem and they shouldn't win a lawsuit because they're more or less gambling on the fact no one will know what they do. Win or lose they have to deal with it.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with this post. It is obvious that the media has a large impact all industries in our generation. With an increase in technology information is made more readily availbale to those who seek to find it. When selatious reports come out and cause a stir around a certain company, they are likely to find that they are going to suffer, whether it be for a short time or cause permanent damage. When information came out surrounding the Nike company and their use of sweatshops in third world companies to produce their shoes/apparel, the company took a slight hit for a few days. But, because of the popularity of the brand and how quickly people seem to forget about things these days, Nike didn't suffer tremendously from the developments surrounding their production practices. This does happen, but the chances of large impacts on large companies is very low these days.
ReplyDeleteI agree with this post along with the 2 comments. I think that every company has some skeletons in the closet. I agree with Brandon because as the saying goes "ignorance is bliss", what we don't know doesn't hurt us. Also, I agree with the 2nd comment because big companies could get into a bad situation but people will quickly forget because they still want to buy their products.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above posts. I personally believe that every business corporation in the United States have secrets that their consumers should know about but refuse to tell their consumers because they don’t want to lose profit on their products. For example when cigarettes companies knew smoking was bad for people they didn’t tell cigarettes smokers the risk of smoking until the government step in. Today we have many people dying from cancer because of smoking cigarettes. Now the issue today is about Biphenyl a (BPA) exposure from polycarbonate plastic bottles. study from Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) researchers found that participants who drank for a week from polycarbonate bottles the popular, hard-plastic drinking bottles and baby bottles showed a two-thirds increase in their urine of the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA).According to research manufactures companies knew this was harmful to humans to eat or drink out of but still decided to make plastics out of it. The FDA is trying to ban making plastics with Bisphenol A.
ReplyDeleteI agree with the above post because concealment of industry practices that Posner suggests is not the right avenue to go. Once people realize that the product there buying is being made by children in sweat shops or that there eating chicken that are injected with steroids it will steer them away from these products. Being honest with the customer will allow for smoother business and have less of a risk of losing business. In addition, this is shown in the book the Jungle by Upton Sinclair. He talked about the disgusting processing of meat and how they stilled chopped up and sold the diseased cows. His book hit the stomachs of America hard causing FDR to develop the Food and Drug Administration to make sure that factories were following health codes
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