Inspired by That’s it I am done with movies, in which it was lamented that there is nothing, nothing whatsover so offensively stupid and insipid that Hollywood won’t produce it if it’ will make a profit. So what, in the name of making a profit, was the single most insane, immoral, short-sighted, or inhuman thing ever done simply because as automatically as water flows downhill, people pursue whatever will deliver a short-term profit? I am pre-disqualifying overly broad or vague answers such as “global warming” or “dumbing down culture”; you have to name something specific. My contribution might not be the winner but I think it would have to be in the top hundred or so: marketing baby formula to poor third-world mothers who don’t have access to a safe water supply.
ETA: my second contribution would be continuing the practice of adding antibiotics to cattle feed, even AFTER it’s widely known to contribute to antibiotic-resistant microbes, so that cattle producers can make a penny a pound more profit.
The slave trade?
Winner
Except that for a long time, slavery was not seen as wrong or was the fate of the vanquished, etc.
I nominate the dumping of toxic waste when it was known the materials were incredibly toxic and yet fouling underground water and surface cesspools near residential areas was nothing compared to not having to pay for proper disposal.
I’m not sure that matters, and even so, how many people have to disagree with them before it’s considered reprehensible? There was a period where america was divided on the subject, with a substantial percentage of the population asserting their disapproval.
I’d say circus peanuts, but I think runner pat beat me to it.
I don’t care what people thought back then, I’m looking at it with a modern perspective. I suppose we could clarify it as “chattel slavery,” which was probably worse than older forms, but it’s still pretty bad all around.
And I’m not sure how the deliberate dumping of hazardous waste is a failure of markets. If laws against dumping waste exist, and someone dumps waste in violation of the law, even if they have great incentive to do so (because proper cleanup is expensive, etc.), how is that the market’s fault?
Um, the practice of destroying “excess” food/crops to keep prices high while millions starve?
I nominate the Back Street Boys.
I think the slave trade is likely the winner, considering the terms in the OP.
I will nominate Rescission in the US health-care system as what I would consider a rather immoral business practice pursued purely within the guidelines at the time in order to maximize profits.
Also the various business decision made in Nazi Germany during WWII, particularly those involving labor from Jewish workers, or contracts fulfilled re: the “Final Solution”. I would perhaps rule this afoul of the OP’s guildelines, as the market wasn’t really “free” in Nazi Germany.
What do we factor into “the market”? Do we get to count laws as a market force? What about capacity of the labor force? Culture? I mean, BP isn’t doing too well selling gas right now, but is distain for a brand a “market force”?
Of course popular disgust is a market force. Otherwise marketing and brand-building wouldn’t exist.
Laws are not a market force, as the OP laid it out, I would say. Doing something that is against the laws in force at the time would not be “the free market” doing something.
We’re looking for a corporate (or industry) decision that was made entirely withing the legal framework in place at the time but that is (or was, depending on how you read the OP) considered highly immoral, insane, or outrageous.
One could argue that mass-deforestation of island nations, for example, is highly insane from a long-term nation-viability standpoint, but could very well have been the “correct” decision for the short-term profitability of the companies doing the cutting.
Really? I would say that a market decision made specifically to stay in compliance with the law would be unfree, as it was limited by the law, but a market decision made in defiance of the law is uncoerced in that regard, and thus free. Which is to say that I think that black markets would be considered free markets in the economic sense of the world - perhaps the only free market if the country’s market is otherwise run by mandate from above.
Which would put the activities of drug smugglers in the running for worst atrocity - though I think that slave traders still win. Possibly with an added bonus to those who trade in sex slaves specifically.
This is sometimes done b/c the government pays farmers to do so. When farmers do it on their own, it is usually because there are tariffs in place that allow farmers to disregard potential foreign competition. Also, it usually only happens if the cost to harvest the crop is higher than the price it will bring.
Let me throw in child labor at the end of the 19th century and the practice of locking workers into their workplaces, which was the cause of the large number of deaths during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. I believe WalMart was locking people in overnight not that long ago. I’m not sure I can say these are worse than slavery or dumping toxic waste, though. There are so many choices!
How was the slave trade a function of a free market?
The question isn’t well formed. Human beings do reprehensible things. The “free market” is an abstraction. It’s like asking “what’s the worst thing religion ever did?” Religion can’t do anything. Neither can democracy, true love, racism, or hatred.
Maybe, “What’s the most reprehensible thing people did solely to make money, that was legal at the time?”
Blaming the free market for slavery should raise some questions. Like, if someone is forced to work at the point of a gun, whether slavery is legal or not, in what way is that the operation of the free market? If you bribe a government official to do his job, is that the operation of a free market? How about when you pay soldiers to murder your enemies? How about when I point a gun at you and demand the contents of your wallet, is that the free market? After all, we’re trading something you value–me not putting bullet holes in your internal organs–for something I value–your money.
It seems to me that just because money changes hands in a certain circumstance (such as the buying and selling of slaves) that doesn’t mean there was a free market in operation.
Pretty much the question I was going to ask. I think people equate ‘free market’ as being the same thing as ‘making money’ or ‘business’. It’s not the same thing at all. AFAIK, there WAS no ‘free market’ during the slave trade days…far from it.
I think that’s exactly what the OP was getting at. They just tossed in ‘free market’ to take a swipe at the concept (that seems to be ever popular around these parts), and because perhaps the OP and others really don’t see the distinction.
Exactly.
As to the OP, if we go with ‘the most reprehensible thing people did solely to make money, that was legal at the time?’, I’d say that slavery was certainly at the top of the list. The worst, however, was I think getting scalp money for every Indian killed, and paid on actual scalps, or the Nazi’s selling off the cut hair of Jewish women killed in the concentration camps (or selling the gold fillings)…it doesn’t get much worse than those things, IMHO.
-XT
The contracts to build death camps like Auschwitz? The life insurance policies the Swiss sold to European Jews where they refused to pay off? The slave trade? Next to these, even BP ruining the Gulf and Goldman Sachs welfareizing the destruction of AIG and the housing market pale.
“Free market” is shorthand for a system that provides for the voluntary exchange of goods and services between buyers and sellers. If you’re engaged in productive enterprise, you can purchase the labor services of a willing individual. Or you could purchase a draft animal as property, train it, and utilize its muscle and energies in furtherance of some task. Or you could treat an individual as property, purchase the individual, and use him as you would a draft animal. In all three cases you have buyers purchasing goods and services from sellers.
Let’s not make the use of the phrase “free market” out to be a loaded or provocative use of the term.