Pointy-headed right wing think tank types are always going on and on preaching about the genius of the marketplace. That’s a fine idea in the abstract, but when you take a look at reality, it becomes absurd.
I ran into a specific example of the downright stupidity of the marketplace this afternoon, as I got ready to bake a loaf of bread. The yeast had risen. I had kneaded the dough to a nice texture, and I was getting ready to warm the dough ever so slightly in the oven so that it could rise.
As my sticky dough hands moved to set the temperature, my pinky finger brushed the button to automatically clean the oven. Oops! I didn’t mean to do that, so I pushed the clear button, just like the manual says to do.
The oven did not clear, however. It gave me an F9 error message, which means that the door locking assembly is messed up. The oven won’t stop beeping, and it won’t turn on the heat to bake anything.
I called Frigidaire, the company that made the oven. I used their telephone tree to find a repair person in my area. The Frigidaire telephone system told me that there is no repair person for Frigidaire ovens in my area, and that’s all it would tell me.
I don’t live in a big metropolitan area, and so that means that companies like Frigidaire might find it not worth their while to bother ensuring that there are people who can repair ovens where I live. However, Frigidaire certainly finds it worth their while to arrange for the selling of its ovens in many stores near where I live.
Market forces favor the selling of ovens to people in my area, but not the fixing of ovens for people in my area. The result is that market forces favor people where I live going out and buying whole new ovens whenever their current ovens have any problem at all, even a relatively minor computer glitch such as the one I encountered today.
That system is profitable for Frigidaire – very smart for them. For people who live here, it’s just plain stupid, and certainly not cost effective. It’s also a stupid arrangement for the environment, because it requires a wasteful over-manufacture of ovens, increasing pollution, decreasing natural resources, and sending the environment we all have to live in careening out of balance.
Some market worshipper might conclude that the market is still a big genius, because it’s pushing people like me to move to big metropolitan areas – places where it’s more profitable to live. I refuse to accept, however, the idea that it’s a brilliant idea to push people like myself to move to big cities just so that we can get glitches with our ovens fixed. The cost of living in a metropolitan area is huge compared to how it is where I live. I would lose a lot of money moving near a big city, far more than I would save on the price of a new oven.
A law requiring the availability of repair of major appliances near where they are sold might bother right wing market worshippers. They’d call it socialism – as if any regulation that helps ordinary people deal with abusive and neglectful big businesses requires adherence to the principles of the Communist Manifesto.
I say that encouraging people to get their appliances fixed instead of just throwing them away is economically efficient when the larger implications of casually throwing appliances away is considered. That’s not Communism. It’s just what some people might call common sense.
The market-based approach to our society has produced huge advances in technology and the availability of inexpensive goods to the average person. Someone who can deliver a better product or a lower price can succeed in the marketplace. Consumers can use their marketing power to select the products that meet their needs at a cost they can bear.
The problem with the market is that many costs are borne by the population as a whole (through our tax dollars), and are not incorporated into the costs of an item. For the example you give, if the cost to dispose of your appliance were to actually fall on the consumer, then we would begin to see that repair is a more attractive option, financially.
This is a similar problem that we see facing recycling efforts. It’s far too inexpensive for the average person to simply throw away recyclable materials rather than put effort into recycling them. If people paid for the actual volume of waste they produce, then we would see huge increases in recycling rates around the country.
Some people complain that public transportation should be self-supporting without the need for subsidies. However, they fail to see the huge subsidies that are constantly given to air travel and highways. If these subsidies were reduced or eliminated, we would see a huge economic incentive to using bus and rail service.
Many Republicans would like to see market-based health care for our country. The market would then determine the cost of health care to individuals. Many would therefore find health care to be unaffordable. People with potentially expensive medical conditions would be priced out of health coverage. I think that Republicans are deluding themselves if they think a market-based health care system would be able to provide coverage to everyone. In typical market fashion, we would see care based solely on cost, not need. I think that health care is one area where a market-based approach is the exact opposite of what is best for our society, especially if we want to attain the goal of health care for every American.
Mark wrote, “Someone who can deliver a better product or a lower price can succeed in the marketplace. Consumers can use their marketing power to select the products that meet their needs at a cost they can bear.”
In these sentences, I think the words “can” that I have put in bold would be more accurate if they were written as a the phrase “can, in theory”.
In the way that markets truly work, someone who can deliver a better product or a lower price is often bumped out of the market by someone who can use power to play dirty.
Consumers can only use their marketing power to select the products that meet their needs at a cost they can bear in large groups – not as individuals, and can only do so if powerful market forces, such as corporations, choose to make the products available.
Applying Mark’s point to the Frigidaire situation, if Frigidaire had to pay a tax every time one of their refrigerators were disposed of (which costs society in ways including landfill space and wasted resources), they would be given an incentive to make repair services available.
We should have a garbage tax. Take a scientific sample of garbage, trace it back to the corporation of origin, and assess a tax straight to the corporation on that basis. Watch packaging shrink, get easier to recycle, or even get biodegradable, watch companies offer more and bigger deposits. Just like magic.
The invisible hand of the magic marketplace works, but it doesn’t work in a vacuum. It works in the context of a system of laws set up so that the marketplace does what people want it to.
So let’s do it.
I hope you tried disconnecting your oven from the wall and then plugging it back in. it sounds liek it could just need a reboot.
so, what ever happened to the bread?
when we were young, my grandmother would put the bowl with dough on a radiator with a moist towel over it.
the apt was heated, but if you turned the oven on(gas) that you paid for.
hope you were able to salvage it.
maybe an old fashioned wood stove might be a thought?
The dough’s in the refrigerator. Maybe I should cook it over a campfire.