[sokoloff]

Ah, I now see the disconnect. 5 posts or so up, someone suggested strong, targeted, heavy-handed regulation as a cure/control for an unethical company.

My "loosely serves the public good" was meant to suggest that instead you could target carbon or sin taxes, but you couldn't (read: ought not) target a specific company, say Exxon-Mobil or Philip Morris.

IOW, broadly target the thing you want to reduce with policy, not the company that does the specific thing.

I can see based on my text how you reduced it to a vague "pass smart laws", but I was trying to make a specific recommendation on how to do that, but then further leaving the majority of control for ethics to the choice of the consumers in aggregate.

[root_axis]

Thanks for the clarification. I get what you mean now.