Business: Externalizing risk and damage while privatizing profit for the elites

Contaminated residential parcels near the Chemours chemical factory in Fayetteville, N.C. More than 4,000 homes qualify for under-sink water treatment systems.

The New York Times writes in an article, How Chemical Companies Avoid Paying for Pollution, on how chemical companies externalize human risks and environmental damage in their quest for profit above all other concerns:

DuPont factories pumped dangerous substances into the environment. The company and its offspring have gone to great lengths to dodge responsibility.

Brian Long, a senior executive at the chemical company Chemours, took a reporter on a tour of the Fayetteville Works factory.

Mr. Long showed off the plant’s new antipollution technologies, designed to stop a chemical called GenX from pouring into the Cape Fear River, escaping into the air and seeping into the ground water.

There was a new high-tech filtration system. And a new thermal oxidizer, which heats waste to 2,000 degrees. And an underground wall — still under construction — to keep the chemicals out of the river. And more.

“They’re not Band-Aids,” Mr. Long said. “They’re long-term, robust solutions.”

Yet weeks later, North Carolina officials announced that Chemours had exceeded limits on how much GenX its Fayetteville factory was emitting. This month, the state fined the company $300,000 for the violations — the second time this year the company has been penalized by the state’s environmental regulator.

GenX is part of a family of chemicals called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS. They allow everyday items — frying pans, rain jackets, face masks, pizza boxes — to repel water, grease and stains. Exposure to the chemicals has been linked to cancer and other serious health problems.

To avoid responsibility for what many experts believe is a public health crisis, leading chemical companies like Chemours, DuPont and 3M have deployed a potent mix of tactics.

They have used public charm offensives to persuade regulators and lawmakers to back off. They have engineered complex corporate transactions to shield themselves from legal liability. And they have rolled out a conveyor belt of scantly tested substitute chemicals that sometimes turn out to be just as dangerous as their predecessors.

PFAS substances are known as “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down and can accumulate in the environment and in the blood and organs of people and animals.

Most Americans have been exposed to at least trace amounts of the chemicals and have them in their blood, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Research by chemical companies and academics has shown that exposure to PFAS has been linked to cancer, liver damage, birth defects and other health problems. GenX was supposed to be a safer alternative to earlier generations of the chemicals, but new studies are discovering similar health hazards.

This week, the Environmental Protection Agency announced that it was going to start requiring companies to test and publicly report the amount of PFAS in the products they make. It is an early step toward regulating the chemicals, though the E.P.A. has not set limits on their production or discharge.

Chemours argues that most of the pollution in North Carolina occurred long before it owned Fayetteville Works. DuPont, which built the factory in the 1960s, claims it can’t be held liable because of a corporate reorganization that took place several years ago. DuPont “does not produce” the chemicals in question, “and we are not in a position to comment on products that are owned by other independent, publicly traded companies,” said a DuPont spokesman, Daniel A. Turner.

If the ex-president had been re-elected in 2020, as he still claims he was, the EPA would not be starting to regulate these dangerous chemicals. And, if chemical companies put human health first, the EPA would not need to regulate them because they would not be used much or at all.

Like their attitude about climate science and global warming, fascist Republican Party (FRP) elites do not believe that chemical pollution is a human health problem. In their minds, environmental damage is a grossly overblown non-issue. Regulations are out of the question. So is honesty. 

Questions: 

1. In view of core radical right dogma that free markets always do better than any government, is it fair or accurate to argue that the FRP opposes regulation of chemical pollution and honesty about its existence because the profit motive trumps both human health concerns and environmental damage? 

2. If the FRP was in control of the White House, (i) would the EPA be starting data gathering in a process to regulate PFAS or GenX chemicals, and/or (ii) would this kind of reporting be attacked as fake news and lies from the failing “enemy of the people” New York Times? If there is an enemy of the people, who or what is it?

3. Are the American people too spoiled, ignorant and/or deceived to tolerate EPA regulations that cause some loss of convenience or functionality in consumer products that contain toxic chemicals? Does it matter if most of the harm occurs with local people and the local environment where they are made? 

2,854 PFAS contaminated sites in the US

blue dots - contaminated drinking water

purple dots - military sites

red - other sites

Something’s really wrong…

This is what we’ve come to:

pic.twitter.com/kGsjP1Hbii

My name is Michele Fiore. I'm running for Governor of Nevada. We don't need more weak, compromise, blue blazer Republican politicians. That isn’t me and never will be. I will never stop fighting. Join the fight: https://t.co/k9QWQjPn6v pic.twitter.com/JuKbwZeXCg

— Councilwoman Michele Fiore (@VoteFiore) October 19, 2021

Comments?

The business of business: The vaccine business, just like the used car business

A baby squid - not  in the 

COVID vaccine

The business of business is business, usually meaning profit above all other concerns. Other concerns include human well-being and pollution. Businesses generally do their business by privatizing and trickling profits up, and socializing or externalizing human, social and environmental costs and damage. And, all this fun and games thing is routinely done in as much secrecy as business can manage it, leaving the public clueless and business free to copiously lie about how it does its standard operations and how much it is concerned about externalities like human, social and environmental damage and costs. 

It's a win-win for business and a lose-lose for the public interest or common good. The radical right loves it. So do businesses, which have bought and paid for this kind of a political-commercial system.

Although most libertarians and other anti-government ideologues vehemently deny it, the business of government is protecting the public interest. As the radical right ideologues see it, the business of government is getting out of the way of business so that unregulated markets can run free and wild, thereby best serving the public interest. That is about a crackpot of a faux reality as arguing against taking the COVID vaccine because there are tiny living creatures with tentacles in it, currently my favorite bit of COVID crackpottery.

In the vaccine, allegedly -- 

by a crackpot radical right politician

Speaking of standard business operations and the COVID vaccine, the New York Times writes:

A report released Tuesday by Public Citizen, a consumer rights advocacy group that gained access to a number of leaked, unredacted Pfizer contracts, sheds light on how the company uses that power to “shift risk and maximize profits,” the organization argues.

The Manhattan-based pharmaceutical giant has maintained tight levels of secrecy about negotiations with governments over contracts that can determine the fate of populations. The “contracts consistently place Pfizer’s interests before public health imperatives,” said Zain Rizvi, the researcher who wrote the report.

Public Citizen found common themes across contracts, including not only secrecy but also language to block donations of Pfizer doses. Disputes are settled in secret arbitration courts, with Pfizer able to change the terms of key decisions, including delivery dates, and demand public assets as collateral.

Sharon Castillo, a spokeswoman for Pfizer, said that confidentiality clauses were “standard in commercial contracts” and “intended to help build trust between the parties, as well as protect the confidential commercial information exchanged during negotiations and included in final contracts.”

Aspects of the contracts are not uncommon, including the reliance on arbitration courts and clauses designed to give companies legal protections. Pfizer’s price for its vaccine, as low as $10 per dose in Brazil, appeared to be lower than some competitors’ prices.

Pfizer has formalized 73 deals for its coronavirus vaccine. According to Transparency International, a London-based advocacy group, only five contracts have been formally published by governments, and these with “significant redactions.”

“Hiding contracts from public view or publishing documents filled with redacted text means we don’t know how or when vaccines will arrive, what happens if things go wrong and the level of financial risk buyers are absorbing,” said Tom Wright, research manager at the Transparency International Health Program.  

The contract reached with Brazil prohibits the government from making “any public announcement concerning the existence, subject matter or terms of [the] Agreement” or commenting on its relationship with Pfizer without the prior written consent of the company.

“This is next-level stuff,” said Tahir Amin, an intellectual property lawyer who co-founded I-Mak, a nonprofit global health organization.

Pfizer exerted control over the supply of vaccine doses after contracts were signed. The Brazilian government was restricted from accepting donations of Pfizer doses or making its own donations. Pfizer also included clauses in contracts with Albania, Brazil and Colombia that it could unilaterally change delivery schedules in the case of shortages.

It is true that confidentiality clauses are “standard in commercial contracts” and “intended to help build trust between the parties, as well as protect the confidential commercial information exchanged during negotiations and included in final contracts.” By that reasoning, the public is not a party to the contract and is told nothing other than what a company chooses to say. No wonder confidentiality is so dominant in commerce. Both parties to a contract can say whatever they want, true, false, crackpot or most anything else and there is no way for the public to know the real truth. 

Arbitration courts operate in secrecy, unless the contract specifies otherwise. Contracts rarely specify otherwise. 

In my opinion, dark free speech (DFS) is the most potent weapon that authoritarians and self-serving people and entities or businesses have to go about their business in secrecy. Secrecy, assuming it is different from DFS and not a subset of it, is probably the next most potent weapon. Secrecy is close to DFS in anti-democratic power, arguably close to tied for first. 

Questions:

1. Which is more powerful and deceptive, (i) public ignorance grounded in a combination of secrecy and the kind of DFS called “public relations”, (ii) public ignorance grounded in DFS (lies, emotional manipulation, crackpot motivated reasoning and the like), or (iii) are they about the same?

2. The contracts the NYT discusses were leaked and Pfizer did not want that information to become public: Did the secret contract terms mostly protect legitimate corporate needs, or did they mostly hide things that Pfizer wanted to keep from the public? What damage did this leak of contract terms cause Pfizer, e.g., loss of legitimate trade secrets, or was it mostly just embarrassing information that caused public relations damage?

3. In moral philosophy, deceit and unwarranted opacity are sometimes argued to be anti-democratic because they deprive people of their right to decide and behave on the basis of facts and truth. Power flows from the deceived to the deceivers. Are contracts like those that Pfizer coerced governments to sign more anti-democratic than pro-authoritarian, or are they something else, e.g., politically or socially neutral?

The tentacles . . . 

the tentacles . . . .

On Free Expression, Free Societies and Laws

We're dealing with so much Dark Free Speech these days that I thought it might be productive to rant on the topic of free speech, and the nature of freedom, and what makes us free.

I'd argue that "free speech" enshrined as a right, the way it is in the US particularly, is pretty problematic.

I have a hard time with the liberal idea of (near absolute) freedom of expression.

It's too easy for bad actors, like fascists to poison the institution with what Germaine has coined "Dark Free Speech" - the kind of vax misinformation, and politically violent brinksmanship we see coming out of the talking heads today.

In The Torah, there are a set of laws which outline a way for someone who is not Jewish to lead a "righteous life" - that is, to play in the street of life and dodge most of the traffic. There are only like 7 of them and they're all pretty easy to follow.

The most difficult might be the most important for social stability: Establish laws, courts and a system of justice.

Absolute free speech is lawlessness. That's what happened to GETTR and Parler. That's what's happening offline as well.

The opposite of the law is not freedom - it is lawlessness - it's own kind of bondage. The rules set us free. That's why we have them. They elevate us.

Humans are self-domesticating, but not automatically so. Right now a great number of us are undomesticating or going "feral" human.

The laws, our social contracts, and belief systems domesticate and civilize us. We aren't born that way.

I like to say everyone's an anarchist at birth, some of us just don't grow out of it. I say that as an anarchist, although not of the infantile variety I just alluded to, at least not since childhood. My anarchism allows for rules, it's simply that the rules flow from the bottom up rather than top down.

Everyone needs rules if they are to live a reasonably satisfying life. It's part of being human.

If we wanted to free our speech, we'd protect it, by explicitly ruling out bad behavior.

People that are concerned about censorship need to understand that we censor every day, all over the place, and that this too is one of the conditions of civility and civilization. 

Online forums are moderated, and nobody loses their shirt. Canada and much of western Europe have laws against many kinds of Dark Free Speech, and if anything, those countries are arguably freer than we are.

Rules are important.