Sigh. I mentioned here when progressives criticized Walmart for not buying more from small business, Walmart turned the criticism into a money maker off those companies they turned down anyway. Of course Walmart turns every critique into a profit center. They are expert in feeding demand and making money off of it.
The progressives turned their sights on Unilever -
So here we are into the world of perverse incentives. To achieve “100 per cent traceability” Unilever has decided to cut the number of smallholder farmers who supply its palm oil – by 80 per cent, according to Gavin Neath, senior vice-president for sustainability. He told a conference in London earlier this year that it was “a cull… to ensure standards”. It was not he said, that the smallholders were bad guys, but that for a large corporation they were untraceable and therefore a risk.
Klintworth admitted that the rest was “a trade-off” in which social concerns lost out to environmental ones. The result is a greater reliance on large palm oil plantations and a further turn of the land grabbing screw – all in the name of green ethics.
Since progressives relentlessly lose, and since they make money off the game, just playing the game, they too have a perverse incentive (moral hazard in economics) to continue to play and lose. Big biz loves the outcome.
Small ag traceability is cheap and effective. Big ag traceability is irrelevant. Unilever enjoys taxpayer funded anti-knockoff law enforcement. Small producers should not be selling palm oil to Unilever for soap, they should be making soap. They can link to google earth to assist in traceability, along with other cheap and effective means. Sulawesi’s All Natural Plantation Soap would be literally on the map.
We know how to get the soap to overwhelming and profitable demand, so that is not a problem.
It is standard corporate response to take a criticism and study how they can leverage the criticism into more power and profits. Strategy: never criticize big business. When Shell Oil becomes a “green certified” company you lost, you did not win.
Asking bigbiz to do the right thing is to ask a wolf pack “what’s for dinner?”
Feel free to forward this by email to three of your friends.
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