Capitalism functions because of negative externalities, ie, the costs accrued by society or the environment in order to privatise profits. If airlines were forced to compensate the rest of the world for each tonne of carbon dumped in the atmosphere, the industry would cease operating immediately.
One of the most pernicious examples of the privatisation of profit and the socialisation of cost is the addiction industry and today new evidence has shown the cost to society at large of alcohol. The financial burdens borne by the health service of alcoholic illnesses functions as a massive subsidy to brewers, distillers and retailers and their share holders.
One wonders what the headlines in Britain's newspapers might be if the same rhetoric was applied to these industries that is normally applied to other recipients of state welfare such as low income families or people with disabilities? One tenth of inpatients in NHS hospitals are dependent on alcohol, not simply drinkers or problematic drinkers but either physically or psychologically dependent. This costs the NHS £3.5 billion a year and diverts resources away from other over stretched services. The methodology in this report is robust, with a data set of 1.6 million individuals, drawn from 124 separate studies, making this about as clear a picture of the scale of the problem as one can have.
As this article is being written, lobbyists and public relations specialists from the alcohol industry will be mobilising, organising and contacting friendly journalists and think tanks to help tell a different narrative. In the past the addiction industry has used two key ideas to sweep away all criticism, namely responsibility and choice. The concept of personal responsibility is one that rightly most of us hold dear, the idea that we have a duty to manage our social interactions with others in a healthy and positive way is part of the glue that holds society together.
In this instance it is also weaponised against alcoholic drinkers, as evidence that they have failed in this basic task of citizenship. The fact that alcohol is produced, marketed and sold in historically unprecedented quantities seemingly has no bearing on the ability of drinkers to behave responsibly, and the alcohol industry comes under very little pressure to exercise and responsibility itself.
The only pressure that organisations that are designed to generate private profit for shareholders can come under is regulatory or financial pressure as their chief executives have a fiduciary duty to maximise profits within the confines of the law. Faux libertarian arguments are frequently deployed against such policies as minimum pricing (which has proven to be enormously successful in Scotland in reducing harm to problem drinkers).
The standard attack line is that the overweening nanny state is penalising drinkers and taking away their rights as consumers to cheap alcohol. Given that moderate drinkers pay a tiny increment more in the cost of drink and problem drinkers find their alcohol budgets dramatically reduced (with commensurate health outcomes), it could be argued that minimum pricing provides benefits for all. Moderate drinkers gain better access to health treatment over time as their alcoholic contemporaries are less ill and rely less on essential services.
A bargain investment for the price of a few pence per unit. The UK government has so far managed to resist introducing minimum alcohol pricing, despite the growing evidence that it is an effective strategy for reducing harm to the most vulnerable drinkers.
The cordial relationship that the government enjoys with the addiction industries has traditionally been based on light touch regulation and the claim that the government prefers to work with industry, not against it. Working with industry appears to be the act of giving the alcohol industry free reign to do as it pleases and to outsource the cost on to society at large.