Thoughts on Sagoff's Message

I found Sagoffs commentary about the how there is a struggle between what we want as citizens and consumers to hold fairly true. As a consumer I know that it is always tempting to buy things regardless of how little I know about the product, how trivial it is, or maybe I even know it was produced irresponsibly. Personally I believe that it is our “political” or moral goals that should be the main guide of our actions, however to me it seems like there is largely a failure to uphold them. I feel like I see things somewhat differently than Sagoff does. The problem is not with the dichotomy between our personal wants and our political beliefs; I largely believe them to be the same. The problem is that the market hides the value of things that are not commodities and ignores that even things we don’t necessarily pay for can have great amounts of value. I believe that we as individuals do not want to burden ourselves with the costs of paying for things which others will also benefit from yet not pay for since the market does not really view them as a commodity. If there was actually a way to have people fairly split the costs for cleaner air, and water amongst other things people would gladly do so both for their “political” reasons and for their own self-interest. I also think the playing field can be somewhat tilted towards these large corporations. The corporations claim to be “people serving people” however they are inherently well organized and generally have a lot of capital to spend in favor of their point of view. It is much harder for individual citizens to get together and to raise money to express their opinions.