The most depressing place I have been in my life was a casino in Portugal. Atmosphere like a morgue, groups of grim-faced people getting fleeced while playing boring games. So the big surprise for me is not the fact that Manchester has been awarded the right to open a super-casino, but the fact that it wants to do so. The city has made a remarkable turnaround since the IRA bombing, and it's hard to see why it would want to take on the problems that a super-casino will inevitably bring.
The Daily Mail (you don't find me typing those words very often) reported that the casino operator will be a "notorious" and "vulgar" South African. This being the Mail, that could mean Nelson Mandela, but no, it's some entrepreneur who has previous (casino experience) in Sun City and New Jersey. For all I know, this gent is as pure as the driven snow, and both the Government and Manchester itself are pledged to run a clean operation. The trouble is, where casinos go, crime tends to follow. (For an enjoyably chilling history of the role of assorted mobs and heavies in the development of Las Vegas, I strongly recommend "The Money and the Power" by Sally Denton and Roger Morris).
You'd think that an even bigger problem, from the viewpoint of a supposedly Labour government, would be the impact that the Manchester super-casino and all its little clones across the UK will have on the growing number of problem gamblers. The betting gene seems to be exceptionally strong in this country, as the boom in on-line poker, and more recently the appalling call-in quiz shows, clearly demonstrate. Yet the Government seems to have no qualms about feeding the frenzy, as long as there are taxes to be collected. It seems to think that a "destination" casino will mainly fleece -- sorry, attract -- high rollers. Maybe it will, but you don't have to spend much time in Vegas or Atlantic City to realise that most of the punters don't fall into that category. It's an old saw that lotteries are a tax on ignorance, but is that really the way the government should look to close its funding gap?
Gordon Brown has already let it be known that if he has his way, Manchester's will be not only the first but the only supercasino. I don't agree with the Presbyterian miseryguts about much, but on this issue, I think he's definitely right.
Wednesday 31 January 2007
Tuesday 23 January 2007
The colour of money
Can it be that we are already seeing a backlash against the "green frenzy"? Growing numbers in the media seem to be upset that (1) all this environmental stuff is going to cost money and (2) business will try to find a way to make money out of it. Look, Rachel Johnson and others, that's what business is there to do. You expect to get paid for sharing your opinions with us, and Tesco, Sainsbury's and the rest expect to get paid for selling stuff to you. In fact, it's the profit motive that will ensure that these and other retailers will get on board and stay on board with the whole environmental programme.
Companies make money by meeting consumer wants and needs. For example, in recent years consumers have declared that they want soft fruits and summer veg all year round. The supermarkets have responded with airborne argosies of green beans and strawberries from all parts of the globe. They washed them, wrapped them and put them into plastic trays because nobody could be arsed with the fiddly side of food preparation, like weighing and washing, any more. All this convenience came at a cost, and not just to the environment: the asparagus you buy in January is not cheap (and in a blind taste test would probably not be identified as asparagus either). But people wanted this stuff and paid up for it.
Now people want something different, something easier on the environment and more comforting to the conscience. The supermarkets are falling over themselves to comply, because they know that if they don't they will lose market share. And lo and behold, they are starting to be criticised for trying to figure out how to do it in a businesslike way -- that is , how to make money from it.
So here's some advice for consumers, and for the opinion leaders who are thinking of leaping off the green bandwagon (well, it's so last year). If you decide that going green is too much trouble and too expensive, you can be sure that it won't take long for businesses to reach the same conclusion.
Companies make money by meeting consumer wants and needs. For example, in recent years consumers have declared that they want soft fruits and summer veg all year round. The supermarkets have responded with airborne argosies of green beans and strawberries from all parts of the globe. They washed them, wrapped them and put them into plastic trays because nobody could be arsed with the fiddly side of food preparation, like weighing and washing, any more. All this convenience came at a cost, and not just to the environment: the asparagus you buy in January is not cheap (and in a blind taste test would probably not be identified as asparagus either). But people wanted this stuff and paid up for it.
Now people want something different, something easier on the environment and more comforting to the conscience. The supermarkets are falling over themselves to comply, because they know that if they don't they will lose market share. And lo and behold, they are starting to be criticised for trying to figure out how to do it in a businesslike way -- that is , how to make money from it.
So here's some advice for consumers, and for the opinion leaders who are thinking of leaping off the green bandwagon (well, it's so last year). If you decide that going green is too much trouble and too expensive, you can be sure that it won't take long for businesses to reach the same conclusion.
Thursday 18 January 2007
Reality TV gets a bit too real
I wish I had recorded it. A couple of nights ago I was surfing the channels and came across a Sky News debate on the future of the BBC. You can always count on an unbiased view of the BBC from the Murdoch-owned media, and this show did not disappoint. At one stage the host smirked that the audience feedback was running "100% against the BBC" -- Rupert must have been working his fingers to the bone on the old speed-dialler. Then some talking head, whose name I missed, started talking about Channel 4. He said that one of the arguments for the continued existence of BBC 2 was that it compelled Channel 4 to live up to its own commitment to quality programming. Who knew? Anyway, he then said -- and this is what I wish I had taped -- that there was no need for this to continue, as Channel 4 was firmly committed to hiring the best people and commissioning high quality shows.
As, of course, we have all seen this week. If a case needed to be made for the continuation of properly-funded public broadcasting, Channel 4 has certainly done the job this week. Given the falling ratings for "reality" shows, it was probably inevitable that the race to the bottom would gather pace. However, the events on Celebrity Big Brother almost defy belief. The selection of the contestants is always aimed at producing conflict, which I suppose is fair enough, although personally I can't see the attraction in watching neanderthals grunt abuse at each other. But Channel 4, or its partner in crime, Endemol, edits the broadcast footage in order to get the kind of show that they want. (The US version of the show explicitly credits a "storyline consultant"!) So C4/Endemol could have kept the rantings of Jade and her regiment of monstrous women (apologies to John Knox) off the air, but chose to go ahead, no doubt in the belief that the ratings would gain.
Wonder of wonders, it looks as if C4/Endemol have badly misjudged the public mood. Carphone Warehouse has had enough of being associated with this stuff and has suspended its sponsorship of the programme. This may force Channel 4 to shape up. Remarkably, they have a mandate to produce programming of special interest to ethnic minorities, which they apparently interpret to mean white trash.
Hertfordshire plod are looking into the possibility of bringing charges. Even if they decide not to, who is going to want to hire Jade or any of her equally useless pals again? It's all up to the public: if people have any decency, any news editor who serialises Jade's "own story" here -- and you can bet the chequebooks are already out -- should be rewarded with a nice fat fall in circulation.
The big winner here can only be Shilpa Shetty, who hardly anyone in the UK had heard of before CBB began. She is likely to wind up as the winner of the last-ever CBB -- and her "own story" may actually be worth reading.
As, of course, we have all seen this week. If a case needed to be made for the continuation of properly-funded public broadcasting, Channel 4 has certainly done the job this week. Given the falling ratings for "reality" shows, it was probably inevitable that the race to the bottom would gather pace. However, the events on Celebrity Big Brother almost defy belief. The selection of the contestants is always aimed at producing conflict, which I suppose is fair enough, although personally I can't see the attraction in watching neanderthals grunt abuse at each other. But Channel 4, or its partner in crime, Endemol, edits the broadcast footage in order to get the kind of show that they want. (The US version of the show explicitly credits a "storyline consultant"!) So C4/Endemol could have kept the rantings of Jade and her regiment of monstrous women (apologies to John Knox) off the air, but chose to go ahead, no doubt in the belief that the ratings would gain.
Wonder of wonders, it looks as if C4/Endemol have badly misjudged the public mood. Carphone Warehouse has had enough of being associated with this stuff and has suspended its sponsorship of the programme. This may force Channel 4 to shape up. Remarkably, they have a mandate to produce programming of special interest to ethnic minorities, which they apparently interpret to mean white trash.
Hertfordshire plod are looking into the possibility of bringing charges. Even if they decide not to, who is going to want to hire Jade or any of her equally useless pals again? It's all up to the public: if people have any decency, any news editor who serialises Jade's "own story" here -- and you can bet the chequebooks are already out -- should be rewarded with a nice fat fall in circulation.
The big winner here can only be Shilpa Shetty, who hardly anyone in the UK had heard of before CBB began. She is likely to wind up as the winner of the last-ever CBB -- and her "own story" may actually be worth reading.
Monday 15 January 2007
Buildings don't teach kids....
Much press coverage today of the Government's failure to deliver on its repeated pledges to renew and rebuild the UK's secondary school. Apparently the programme has been consumed by so much red tape that funds allocated to it are going unspent. (All the more for Blair to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan, then).
At the risk of putting on the grumpy old man hat once too often, I wonder how today's schools compare to the one I attended in Tottenham in the late 1960s. I have a very large secondary school literally at the bottom of my garden, and it is a great deal better than anything I endured. One of the buildings at my grammar school had supposedly been condemned as unfit for use in the late 1930s, but was still in daily use thirty years later. Somehow the staff managed to send a steady flow of students to university, year after year.
Just after I left, the school moved to new, purpose-built premises in a leafy suburb. Many years ago it converted to a comprehensive, and although it's still doing fine, academically it's not what it was.
There's nothing I'd rather spend public money on than education -- as the old saying goes, if you think education's expensive, try figuring out the cost of ignorance. But education is about more than just fancy premises and right now, I think the Government is getting just about everything in this area wrong.
At the risk of putting on the grumpy old man hat once too often, I wonder how today's schools compare to the one I attended in Tottenham in the late 1960s. I have a very large secondary school literally at the bottom of my garden, and it is a great deal better than anything I endured. One of the buildings at my grammar school had supposedly been condemned as unfit for use in the late 1930s, but was still in daily use thirty years later. Somehow the staff managed to send a steady flow of students to university, year after year.
Just after I left, the school moved to new, purpose-built premises in a leafy suburb. Many years ago it converted to a comprehensive, and although it's still doing fine, academically it's not what it was.
There's nothing I'd rather spend public money on than education -- as the old saying goes, if you think education's expensive, try figuring out the cost of ignorance. But education is about more than just fancy premises and right now, I think the Government is getting just about everything in this area wrong.
Your own personal CPI
The personal inflation calculator (PIC) introduced by the ONS may do more harm than good. In fact, I wonder if concern over the blizzard of misleading inflation calculations that will feature in every newspaper column and letters page this week may have been one of the triggers for last week's "shock" Bank of England rate rise.
The general public and economists look at inflation in different ways. If it cost £40 to fill up the car last week and £50 this week, most members of the public would see that as inflation. However, economists would see such a price change, other things being equal, as DEflationary. If people have to spend more on fuel, they have less money available o spend on other items. For economists, inflation is a general rise in prices and costs throughout the economy, not just a shift in relative prices. Most economits nowadays would agree that this is only possible if monetary policy is excessively permissive, a view summed up in the late Milton Friedman's dictum that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
The official price indices compiled by the ONS -- CPI and the older RPI -- are far from perfect. Ludicrously, CPI takes no account of housing costs. But these measures at least attempt to reflect average spending patterns within the economy. Consider, though, what will happen as members of the public start to play with the PIC. Anyone with a mortgage has certainly seen their cost of living increase over the past few months, as the Bank has raised rates and lenders have pulled back on incentive deals. Electricity and gas bills have soared, and council taxes keep rising. If you just calculate a PIC based on these, the results will be horrific.
In the official indices, these upward pressures are offset by continuing falls in prices for electronics, imported clothing etc. However, most people using the PIC are likely to argue that they don't buy a new laptop or MP3 player or whatever every year, and will therefore exclude such items from the calculation altogether (whereas the ONS carefully calculates their impact on average spending patterns). The popular version of the PIC will be dominated by frequently purchased items, many of which have seen sharp price increases over the past year, and by mortgages.
The Bank of England has plenty of good reasons to be worried about the inflation outlook. Survey data show that companies are more confident about their pricing power than they have been for many years. The Bank's reaction to this is to raise rates to keep underlying inflation pressures in check. However, when they see their PIC calculations the reaction of most people, especially union negotiators, will be to demand a wage increase, which will only make the Bank's job more difficult. Little wonder that the Bank decided to get its retaliation in first.
The general public and economists look at inflation in different ways. If it cost £40 to fill up the car last week and £50 this week, most members of the public would see that as inflation. However, economists would see such a price change, other things being equal, as DEflationary. If people have to spend more on fuel, they have less money available o spend on other items. For economists, inflation is a general rise in prices and costs throughout the economy, not just a shift in relative prices. Most economits nowadays would agree that this is only possible if monetary policy is excessively permissive, a view summed up in the late Milton Friedman's dictum that "inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon".
The official price indices compiled by the ONS -- CPI and the older RPI -- are far from perfect. Ludicrously, CPI takes no account of housing costs. But these measures at least attempt to reflect average spending patterns within the economy. Consider, though, what will happen as members of the public start to play with the PIC. Anyone with a mortgage has certainly seen their cost of living increase over the past few months, as the Bank has raised rates and lenders have pulled back on incentive deals. Electricity and gas bills have soared, and council taxes keep rising. If you just calculate a PIC based on these, the results will be horrific.
In the official indices, these upward pressures are offset by continuing falls in prices for electronics, imported clothing etc. However, most people using the PIC are likely to argue that they don't buy a new laptop or MP3 player or whatever every year, and will therefore exclude such items from the calculation altogether (whereas the ONS carefully calculates their impact on average spending patterns). The popular version of the PIC will be dominated by frequently purchased items, many of which have seen sharp price increases over the past year, and by mortgages.
The Bank of England has plenty of good reasons to be worried about the inflation outlook. Survey data show that companies are more confident about their pricing power than they have been for many years. The Bank's reaction to this is to raise rates to keep underlying inflation pressures in check. However, when they see their PIC calculations the reaction of most people, especially union negotiators, will be to demand a wage increase, which will only make the Bank's job more difficult. Little wonder that the Bank decided to get its retaliation in first.
Wednesday 10 January 2007
Fly him to the moon (please)
Another fine week for "joined-up government" in Britain. Last week a junior minister in the transport department teed off on the airlines for their lack of co-operation over measures to combat climate change. He accused BA of "barely playing ball" and called Satanair -- sorry, Ryanair -- "the irresponsible face of capitalism". For his pains he was rounded on not only by the airlines but by his boss, the improbably-monikered Stephen Ladyman. Then Tony Blair came back from his latest schmooze with the rich and past-it -- this time at Robin Gibb's villa in Miami -- and announced that he had no intention of abandoning his long-haul holidays, and neither should anyone else. However, he was paying to plant a tree or two to offset the emissions -- making this possibly the first time that the word "paying" had been used in connection with a Blair family holiday.
As an aside, does anyone else think that this whole "carbon offset" nonsense is almost irrelevant, and maybe even counter-productive? It's a bit like allowing murderers to foster extra children to replace their victims. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but the notion that removing a tonne of carbon dioxide from the already-pristine air of Costa Rica somehow makes up for belching out an extra tonne of the stuff in Mexico City or LA or Shanghai is patently false. It's dangerous to allow wealthy globetrotters to think that this is all they need to do.
Blair apparently believes that it's up to science to solve global warming. He's not wrong, but maybe he hasn't noticed that the scientific advances of the past two centuries have led to an inexorable rise in energy consumption. Sure, today's aircraft are somewhat less polluting than those of 20 or 30 years ago, but the main impact of technological advances has been to make flying cheaper, with the result that the overall amount of pollution created by the industry is rising sharply. Likewise, technology has made cars much cleaner, but also much cheaper, with the result that there are more and more of them out there. Rising incomes and consumption are swamping the benefits of improving technology, resulting in steadily-increasing overall levels of carbon pollution. And this is not to mention the congestion, noise pollution etc that go along with the seemingly insatiable appetite for cheap travel.
It's sometimes claimed that raising the cost of travel would harm the poor disproportionately.
Even if this were true, it would not be a good reason to keep energy prices low -- much better to find a way to compensate those who need help. But in fact, all the evidence is that cheap flying is the pastime of the wealthy, not the poor. The proportion of passengers from the top three income groups at the cheap flight paradise (or hell) of Stansted is almost exactly the same as at Heathrow. These people are the most likely to campaign against expansion of those airports, so it doesn't exactly help that they are the first in line for the early flight to Istanbul.
As an aside, does anyone else think that this whole "carbon offset" nonsense is almost irrelevant, and maybe even counter-productive? It's a bit like allowing murderers to foster extra children to replace their victims. OK, maybe that's an exaggeration, but the notion that removing a tonne of carbon dioxide from the already-pristine air of Costa Rica somehow makes up for belching out an extra tonne of the stuff in Mexico City or LA or Shanghai is patently false. It's dangerous to allow wealthy globetrotters to think that this is all they need to do.
Blair apparently believes that it's up to science to solve global warming. He's not wrong, but maybe he hasn't noticed that the scientific advances of the past two centuries have led to an inexorable rise in energy consumption. Sure, today's aircraft are somewhat less polluting than those of 20 or 30 years ago, but the main impact of technological advances has been to make flying cheaper, with the result that the overall amount of pollution created by the industry is rising sharply. Likewise, technology has made cars much cleaner, but also much cheaper, with the result that there are more and more of them out there. Rising incomes and consumption are swamping the benefits of improving technology, resulting in steadily-increasing overall levels of carbon pollution. And this is not to mention the congestion, noise pollution etc that go along with the seemingly insatiable appetite for cheap travel.
It's sometimes claimed that raising the cost of travel would harm the poor disproportionately.
Even if this were true, it would not be a good reason to keep energy prices low -- much better to find a way to compensate those who need help. But in fact, all the evidence is that cheap flying is the pastime of the wealthy, not the poor. The proportion of passengers from the top three income groups at the cheap flight paradise (or hell) of Stansted is almost exactly the same as at Heathrow. These people are the most likely to campaign against expansion of those airports, so it doesn't exactly help that they are the first in line for the early flight to Istanbul.
Friday 5 January 2007
WalMart and the return of slavery
Not long ago I shocked a colleague by suggesting that, in a world of ever-growing income inequality, the big surprise was not how much crime there was, but how little. When the rich show no restraint and precious few morals in adding to their pile of loot, why should the poor? Two business news stories this week have done nothing to answer my question.
First is the $210-million payoff to Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli for, well, failing. Even entrepreneurs who take risks and put up their own capital don't expect such rewards. Nardelli was a company employee who has walked off with a stupendous reward while making the people who employed him -- the shareholders -- no better off. This makes a total mockery of ths principles on which capitalism is supposedly based -- you are meant to be rewarded for success and risk taking, not for failure.
Second, and potentially more consequential, is the latest wage scheme from WalMart, the world's largest retailer and consistently one of its worst employers. The company is implementing a new rostering system that will allow it to keep employees on unpaid standby, to be brought in and paid only if there is an upturn in business during the course of any given day. The system will also allow store managers to identify those employees who are getting close to the number of hours worked in any given week that would qualify them as full-time staff. Those employees will not be called in, so that the company can avoid the added benefits that go with full-time status.
This is actually not the first time I have heard of such a scam. Many years ago, the Canada's Wonderland theme park in Ontario compelled some of its employees to remain on unpaid standby when bad weather cut attendance at the park. If it's any mitigation, most of those people were students on summer jobs. For the WalMart employees, it's different: this is their livelihood. As this scheme gets rolled out, the employees will lose whatever predictability they currently enjoy in regard not only to their incomes, but also their working hours. And given WalMart's dominant position in US retailing, it is inevitable that its competitors will have to consider similar cost-cutting schemes of their own, undermining working conditions even further in the US retail sector.
WalMart is a very odd company that only seems to be able to prosper in North America. A lot of the goods are of very poor quality, but Americans (and to some extent Canadians) seem quite happy to buy a t-shirt that falls apart in the washing machine as long as it's cheap enough, and they don't ask about the wages of either the person who made it or the one who sold it to them. WalMart recently beat an undignified retreat from Germany, and its ownership of Asda in the UK has not exactly been a stonking success. So there's at least some grounds for hope that these employment practices may not cross the Atlantic.
I've referred to WalMart's workforce as "employees", but the company many years ago opted to rebrand them as "associates". Time for another rebranding: if this rostering scheme is adopted, I think these people can safely be referred to as slaves.
First is the $210-million payoff to Home Depot CEO Bob Nardelli for, well, failing. Even entrepreneurs who take risks and put up their own capital don't expect such rewards. Nardelli was a company employee who has walked off with a stupendous reward while making the people who employed him -- the shareholders -- no better off. This makes a total mockery of ths principles on which capitalism is supposedly based -- you are meant to be rewarded for success and risk taking, not for failure.
Second, and potentially more consequential, is the latest wage scheme from WalMart, the world's largest retailer and consistently one of its worst employers. The company is implementing a new rostering system that will allow it to keep employees on unpaid standby, to be brought in and paid only if there is an upturn in business during the course of any given day. The system will also allow store managers to identify those employees who are getting close to the number of hours worked in any given week that would qualify them as full-time staff. Those employees will not be called in, so that the company can avoid the added benefits that go with full-time status.
This is actually not the first time I have heard of such a scam. Many years ago, the Canada's Wonderland theme park in Ontario compelled some of its employees to remain on unpaid standby when bad weather cut attendance at the park. If it's any mitigation, most of those people were students on summer jobs. For the WalMart employees, it's different: this is their livelihood. As this scheme gets rolled out, the employees will lose whatever predictability they currently enjoy in regard not only to their incomes, but also their working hours. And given WalMart's dominant position in US retailing, it is inevitable that its competitors will have to consider similar cost-cutting schemes of their own, undermining working conditions even further in the US retail sector.
WalMart is a very odd company that only seems to be able to prosper in North America. A lot of the goods are of very poor quality, but Americans (and to some extent Canadians) seem quite happy to buy a t-shirt that falls apart in the washing machine as long as it's cheap enough, and they don't ask about the wages of either the person who made it or the one who sold it to them. WalMart recently beat an undignified retreat from Germany, and its ownership of Asda in the UK has not exactly been a stonking success. So there's at least some grounds for hope that these employment practices may not cross the Atlantic.
I've referred to WalMart's workforce as "employees", but the company many years ago opted to rebrand them as "associates". Time for another rebranding: if this rostering scheme is adopted, I think these people can safely be referred to as slaves.
Tuesday 2 January 2007
Rubbish about rubbish
In a posting on December 7 ("Green taxes, dark thoughts"), I noted the increasing tendency in the media to propose non-market solutions to the problems posed by climate change. I said that as an economist, this made me very queasy. In the Times for January 2, Martin Samuel has a piece that illustrates exactly what I was worried about.
Samuel opposes the "polluter pay" principle because he doesn't believe that he is the polluter. "We did not ask for green beans to be available 12 months a year, cased in two layers of cellophane and a black plastic tray. We did not ask for every single item of furniture to arrive requiring assembly and swaddled in enough Sellotape to gag a busload of hostages for six months".
Actually, Martin, "we" did. Tesco isn't flying in green beans from Zambia (or, my current favourite, pak choy from Morocco) so that Sir Terry Leahy can show off to his dinner guests. Ingmar Kamprad of IKEA hasn't become the world's richest man because his family have an insatiable lust for flat packed furniture. These things have happened because these entrepreneurs have identified a consumer demand and moved to satisfy it.
You can argue with some validity that "we" wouldn't have made these choices if "we" had understood the environmental consequences (but if you want to be taken seriously, you'd better not be sitting in your 4x4 when you make that argument). But there are beans airborne in our direction at this very moment, and Ikea is planning further expansion. What are "we" going to do about it? Martin Samuel seems to despair of any solution -- the Government is afraid to tackle the "real" polluters (big business) and has left it too late to change the societal attitudes that have tolerated so much wastefulness.
You think so? The collapse in sales of SUVs in both the US and the UK over the past year suggests that high energy prices can quickly change consumer behaviour. Making the consumer pay for pollution will have the same effect. If Martin Samuel can persuade enough people to stop buying Zambian beans in January, I can assure him that Sir Terry Leahy will stop bringing them in. (I wonder if Martin will spare a dime for the Zambian farmer he has just returned to poverty). Just conceivably, higher prices will be even more effective than a column in the Times in bringing about the desired shift in behaviour. And if he wants to do something more direct, Martin can rip the excess packaging off the produce at the checkout, giving the store the trouble and cost of disposing of it. Mind you, this probably isn't practical at Ikea.
Samuel opposes the "polluter pay" principle because he doesn't believe that he is the polluter. "We did not ask for green beans to be available 12 months a year, cased in two layers of cellophane and a black plastic tray. We did not ask for every single item of furniture to arrive requiring assembly and swaddled in enough Sellotape to gag a busload of hostages for six months".
Actually, Martin, "we" did. Tesco isn't flying in green beans from Zambia (or, my current favourite, pak choy from Morocco) so that Sir Terry Leahy can show off to his dinner guests. Ingmar Kamprad of IKEA hasn't become the world's richest man because his family have an insatiable lust for flat packed furniture. These things have happened because these entrepreneurs have identified a consumer demand and moved to satisfy it.
You can argue with some validity that "we" wouldn't have made these choices if "we" had understood the environmental consequences (but if you want to be taken seriously, you'd better not be sitting in your 4x4 when you make that argument). But there are beans airborne in our direction at this very moment, and Ikea is planning further expansion. What are "we" going to do about it? Martin Samuel seems to despair of any solution -- the Government is afraid to tackle the "real" polluters (big business) and has left it too late to change the societal attitudes that have tolerated so much wastefulness.
You think so? The collapse in sales of SUVs in both the US and the UK over the past year suggests that high energy prices can quickly change consumer behaviour. Making the consumer pay for pollution will have the same effect. If Martin Samuel can persuade enough people to stop buying Zambian beans in January, I can assure him that Sir Terry Leahy will stop bringing them in. (I wonder if Martin will spare a dime for the Zambian farmer he has just returned to poverty). Just conceivably, higher prices will be even more effective than a column in the Times in bringing about the desired shift in behaviour. And if he wants to do something more direct, Martin can rip the excess packaging off the produce at the checkout, giving the store the trouble and cost of disposing of it. Mind you, this probably isn't practical at Ikea.
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