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What can I know (if trust in knowledge has been lost)? | 49
aside, one must still note that this connection between individual
selfishness (maximalisation of profit) and public welfare stands only so
long as the participants increase cost effectiveness with the application
of technology that either improves the quality (usability) of produced
goods or increases their quantity without simultaneously increasing the
externals (e.g. the burden placed upon nature, unemployment, etc.). It
is much more common, however, to knock down wage costs, decrease
quality, pass on the environmental and social costs or simply increase
the amount spent on marketing (convincing or deceiving the consumer),
since the latter yields the greatest return in most cases.
Most of the business arguments aiming to reconcile the market
economy with environmental protection claim that competition leads
to greater cost effectivity, thus encouraging thrift with natural resources.
As has been seen, however, the participants have many ways of gaining
a competitive advantage. As regards the more efficient use of natural
resources, it has already been shown that, in line with the Jevons¬
paradox, the end result will be their increased, not decreased use, since
cost-reduction leads to increased traffic. Cheaper products are bought
more, thus increasing the demand for the resources necessary for their
production.
One of the slogans dear to the liberal and conservative protectors of
the environment is “let the prices tell the truth!” They believe that if
state bans and support did not exempt economic actors from
responsibility and help them to pass on the true environmental costs,
then these costs would be properly reflected in the prices. The popular
story about truth-telling prices comes in handy for Roger Scruton, for
instance, who devotes a separate chapter of Green Philosophy to the self¬
regulating nature of spontaneous market processes and to proving that
if they are not disturbed, they will take care of the exchange rate
appropriate to the real costs by themselves. ‘This is an illusion, however,
for there is no such thing as “real” costs. Only on the basis of a Marxist
or other substantive value theory could one be held accountable for the
Employ’d a million of the poor,
And odious pride a million more:
Envy itself, and vanity,
Were ministers of industry;
Their darling folly, fickleness,
In diet, furniture, and dress,
That strange ridic’lous vice, was made
The very wheel that turnd the trade.