Corn Futures: Consumer Politics, Health, And Climate Change

摘要

The ideal of consumption-channeling policy is that a benign and rational government can shape the context of individual choice to benefit social welfare. The ideal of expressive consumption is that responsible individual choices can honor the demands of conscience and perhaps in the process contribute to a responsible economy. In the question of corn, consumption channeling is likely to fail because government decisions are neither rational nor benign, but the source of the corn economy's perverse features. Expressive consumption is also likely to fail, partly for reasons of salience, partly because those same government decisions limit the scope and possible efficacy of individual choice. Sometimes, to be able to choose responsibly, we must first change the context of our choices. To do so, in turn, we sometimes have to change the politics that shape that context. The corn economy presents would-be reformers with just this kind of challenge. Although there is no guarantee of success, only the political mobilization of strategic consumption has much chance of finishing the job.