The notorious George Reisman fires another salvo for Randroid ethics. This time, the scourge is not lying, theiving mutualists, but another form of cost-internalizing market usurpers: environmentally conscious businesses. Run away!!!
..."Green Hotels" have been busy attempting to persuade their customers to forego the customary daily provision of fresh sheets and towels in guest rooms. And more recently, they have begun to replace the provision of fresh bars of soap each day with the installation of fixed liquid-soap dispensers, similar to those in public lavatories, even in showers and bathtubs, where they can actually be dangerous.
It's one thing to argue that the so-called "green hotels" Reisman attacks are exploiting environmental consciousness to cut their own costs. I, too, find their breezy statements of faux Gaia worship tacky and self-serving. However, Reisman attacks them for even implying that any interest trumps "luxury":
Irrespective of the effect on their profits in the long run, what the Green Hotels are doing is disgusting. It is part of a cultural assault on luxury and pleasure. One that works to make every day of everyone's life one of unrelieved drudgery and sacrifice, to the point of there being no escape. Even vacations and holidays are now to be stamped with the mark of sacrifice. Sacrifice not even for other people, but for the "planet."
It's true that the environmental credo has problems of consistency. You shouldn't have to pay the same price for getting less soap, less frequent towel changes, or even organic food. All of these features should result in more efficient and sustainable business and therefore should lower costs to customers. Pollution, waste, and recklessness should be expensive in a market economy.
The reason they're not, of course, is because of State intervention on behalf of capitalists. Water is made artificially cheap to waste by subsidized government utilities devoid of sufficient concern for sustainability. A subsidized transportation network makes soap artificially cheap to distribute, and limited liability laws make it artificially cheap to incorporate, aggregate capital, and centralize production. At practically every step in the process involved with running a hotel, the state is intervening to offset their costs and make them run cheaper. So naturally, hotels can be extremely wasteful, and whether or not it is luxurious, waste bothers people.
Indeed, consumers buy this environmental pitch and decide of their own accord to help the planet, however nebulous and naive that argument may be. That's their call, though. No regulators are barging in and imposing austere conditions on deprived, overcharged customers - there's an authentic demand here being filled. It appears there is a demand for a clean conscience, and people are willing to pay effectively higher prices for it. Sounds like a market at work to me - a market that incorporates competing values and concepts of what is "the good". Such is the promise of a true free market, as I argued earlier.
If Reisman would apply his objectivist ethic equally to all the interests involved in the industry he critiques, he would see that it is actually cheaper to be environmentally conscious. And after all, consumers flock to lower prices - those who want a new towel every day can pay for it. I've never been to any of these hotels and had a problem getting new towels when I want them - though I usually don't, since using a clean towel every time is, well, wasteful. If it's wasteful when I do it at home, why wouldn't it be wasteful at a hotel?
I don't have a problem with luxury. I like nice things. But getting a towel every day without asking hardly qualifies. A bar of soap hardly qualifies. That's my opinion, Reisman has his - so can we stop preaching to each other and spend our money how we see fit? If you don't like the way one hotel does it, go to another one. If you don't like organic milk, don't buy it. Don't force your morals down other people's throat - that kind of obnoxiousness and homogeonization of culture is precisely what pisses me off about monopoly capitalism. Here hotels are giving consumers more choice and Reisman throws a fit about it. And this guy wrote a book entitled "Capitalism".
Which brings us to what I suspect is the real reason for this vulgar libertarian tirade: Reisman wants his "free stuff" without asking.
The Green Hotels are becoming increasingly brazen in their racket. Until recently, it was enough to leave a card on a pillow if one wanted the sheets changed. Now it's becoming necessary to call the hotel's front desk. In addition, notification that sheets and towels will not automatically be changed is becoming much less prominent. Just last week, I personally experienced these things at what I would have expected to be a really first-class hotel, namely, the Hyatt Regency in Newport, Rhode Island. (This hotel also had a liquid-soap dispenser installed at the bathroom sink, though it continued to provide fresh bar soap each day. It was at the [Dis]Comfort Inn near Boston's Logan Airport, that bar soap was entirely replaced with liquid soap dispensers.)
I wonder: does he write a psuedo-economic rant everytime he dines at a restaurant and doesn't get his after-dinner mint?
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