The Ronald McDonald Paradox

I fear I have turned into a naïve idealist. I’m concerned about the increasingly blurred line between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ actions of big corporations, and saddened that science lies at the heart of it. [A disclaimer: I am aware that there are a plethora of companies who strive for success strictly through ethical practices, and I am not anti-business]. An obvious example is the science of killing people. I might say I think we’re spending an insane amount of public money to make technology with the power to obliterate life. Someone else will say we need it to defend ourselves. Someone else will say it’s to keep peace. And someone else, still, will say something like: “actually, night-vision technology used by the army also allows us to film baby cheetahs playing at night” or “two words for you: mobile medicine”. There are many interpretations, and there’s no denying that the amount of good that has come out of the same science used to develop weapons extends well beyond observing wildlife.

However, there’s also no denying that we are often placed at (metaphorical) gunpoint by the big guys: so, Pfizer may have killed people through dodgy clinical trials in developing countries, but hey, you try and survive as a company when it costs in excess of a billion dollars to take a drug from R&D to market in the developed world! And anyway, do you complain when you get a monster headache and reach for Advil (or Ibuprofen in the UK)? And what about that promising new cancer treatment?

The issue of “good guys doing bad things, and justifying the bad things by doing good things” (in the style of celebrity name mash-ups, I offer “the goobies”) has been covered extensively by documentaries like ‘Bowling for Columbine’, by films like ‘The Constant Gardener’, by series like ‘The Wire’, by any book with “exposé” somewhere on the cover, and by songs like ‘Oh My God’. Heck, we’re all goobies sometimes. But some of us make a neat profit out of it, sometimes at the expense of lives.

I’m on the cusp of finishing one such exposé, namely Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation”, a book that at practically every page reveals something to cause an involuntary nervous twitch. Written just over a decade ago, it tracks the rise of the fast food industry in the US, and the negative impact it has had not only on the way people eat, but on the huge, complex chain that enables it to thrive. With every chapter discussing relentless corporate lobbying to reduce already minimal wages of its workers, E.coli poisoning arising from unsanitary conditions at slaughterhouses, suicidal cattle-ranchers losing their livelihoods to greedy meat-packing firms, desperate schools selling wall-space to Coke, and so on, it’s pretty damning, just falling short of explicitly stating “it’s evil”. Schlosser makes very little attempt to discuss “the good side” of the fast food industry, and this is where his critics pipe up. For example, one “sceptic burger-eater” gives a scathing one star and comments:

“…the fast food and meatpacking industries are extensive employers of the poor, the underprivileged, illiterate and those who can’t get jobs elsewhere. Does this mean these people are being exploited, or are these industries providing some kind of opportunity to people not lucky enough to be qualified sociologists? To Schlosser, obviously, it’s the former.”

Following that logic, you can quickly come up with similar counter-arguments for almost every point made in the book:
Ok, so schools are getting a lot of money from Coke and in return allowing Coke to put up ads in their corridors, and on their roof-tops. Does this mean that the innocence of children is being exploited through targeted advertising, or are these industries providing some kind of opportunity to kids whose school would otherwise be shut down for lack of funds?;
Ok, so there’s been a history of meat-packing firms processing old and diseased cattle, and indiscriminately grounding gristle, bone, hair and manure into beef patties. Does this really mean that the industry is putting people’s lives at risk to make a buck, or are these industries providing some kind of opportunity to people not lucky enough to be able to buy the finest cut from the butcher?;
Ok, so fast food is linked to child obesity, diabetes and heart problems. But, what with The Ronald McDonald House Charities for seriously ill children, or the sponsorship of Little Athletics, does this really mean that McDonald’s doesn’t give a damn about children as long as they drag their parents in to buy Happy Meals, or is McDonald’s providing some kind of opportunity… well, you see where I’m going with this.

The trouble is that there is no clear answer –goobies are paradoxical, often because it is how they continue to turn a profit, grow and survive in the big world of business. Therein lies the trap. It’s a trap for the poor and uneducated, whose choices might be to eat cheap processed food, or go hungry. Or sign up for a clinical trial and get some free healthcare, or get no healthcare at all. It’s also a trap for those with means who have more choice, but don’t have time to seek out and make the morally-conscious (and often more expensive) choice. It’s a trap for budding industrial scientists and engineers, who are given opportunities of a life-time to work in environments where no expense is spared on the best and latest tools for scientific research. The consequently blurry, simultaneously happy and sad outcome of the kind of corporate greed (to use a somewhat worn-out cliché) discussed in Schlosser’s book is the emergence of incredible science, spawning industries dedicated to the delicate chemistry of smell and taste, automation, and crop production, to name a few, all of which have been put to both good and bad use in the world. It’s the trap that enables the frozen-food industry to bully the US Congress into declaring that an 1/8th of a cup of tomato paste constitutes a serve of vegetables, thereby making fat and sugar-laden pizzas a legitimate vessel of nutritional goodness for school-kids. It’s a trap for anyone who is able to reason that without the bad, there would also be no good.

So, do we boycott the big guys to try and force them into changing their mean ways? My feeling is that the average time-poor consumer would find it near impossible to avoid giving a few bucks to corporations who operate through a multitude of brand-names. In any case, would we really say no to Coke sponsorship, if it meant that the local school would close down, or would we really declare McDonald’s to be evil when it funds charities like Ronald McDonald House? So, if we don’t boycott the goobies, do we join them, like some scientists who work on new and innovative ways of killing people, because the science and opportunities are exciting and diverse, and because, heck, we might make the gun, but we’re not the ones pulling the trigger? Or, do we join them in the hope to change them into plain ol’ good guys? Some companies are growing “social responsibility” arms, after all. But is that an attempt to change bad practices, or just another way of saying “see, we’re not all bad!”? And even if it is the latter, would we really rather that corporations did strictly ethically-sound things, or cease to exist? Can we really hold up such ideals, knowing that the big guys will continue to go about their business, rolling on like big boulders, too big to feel the little chunks chipped away by law-suits whenever they get caught doing naughty things?

I don’t have an answer, but I worry that doing a few good things gives goobies leeway to do bad things. I worry that exposés of bad corporate behaviour now do little more than create a knee-jerk reflex of shock, followed by a shoulder-shrug. I worry that the Ronald McDonalds of this world will forever dangle hospitals, education, development and prosperity from one hand, while stuffing Big Macs down our throats with the other. I worry, most of all, that while we may never live in a world of ideals, we may forget them all-together.