Treatise - submission for Round 1

'Good-advice' legislation: Are companies and regulators deciding what is best for the consumer?

FOR

                The law is the ethical minimum, and where inordinately large sums of money are involved, sometimes barely so. The disinclination of the lawmakers to ensure that every firm’s public information and communication acknowledges potentially harmful effects of corporate produce – cigarettes are only the tip of the iceberg – is fuelled by lobbying that takes place under the table. Large corporations, for the overwhelmingly majority, have the odious track record of not giving two hoots about consumer health and wellness – unless the business model is based on it: the healthcare sector, pharma companies and diet supplement firms come to mind.

                Yet even these supposedly-under-the-Hippocratic-oath entities follow subversive tactics at the Medical Representative level to push their products – regardless of effectiveness – over the competitor’s. Who loses? The consumer. The government either hides behind the facade of dealing with other, ‘bigger’ problems – corruption in bureaucracy, sliding economic indicators, political upheavals – while ignoring corporate fraud till it either bursts its own seams under its own weight, as with the Satyam and 2G spectrum scandals, or disappears unnoticed into the safety of the past.

                Ralph Nader was oppressed and targeted by the dominant automobile companies of the US of A when he outed their utter disregard of drivers’ as well as pedestrians’ safety. Whistleblowers are a rare breed because people are aware of the trauma large corporations can cause an individual and his/her family. It is as if the very basic tenet of democracy – the freedom to contribute for the betterment of the society as a whole – has been bought, bit by bit and legislation by legislation, by companies who have only monetary profit as their motive and capturing market share as their goal.

                As the Walrus in Through The Looking Glass says, "The time has come, To talk of many things: …” – it has come, indeed, to make regulations and those who make them more aware of their responsibility.