Another BP post!
I noted in a post yesterday that Sheldon Richman has recently suggested that the best, nonstatist way to deal with climate change is "through a voluntary social movement that promoted an ethic [of] encouraging and pressuring people and firms to cease their destructive activities."
Likewise, Gene Callahan has argued that "One way negative externalities can be addressed without turning to state coercion is public censure of individuals or groups widely perceived to be flouting core moral principles or trampling the common good, even if their actions are not technically illegal. Large, private companies and prominent, wealthy individuals are generally quite sensitive to public pressure campaigns."
Leaving aside Gene's own troubles in dealing with his telephone company, it strikes me as a bit ironic to see libertarians over at the LvMI blog throwing cold water on the idea of channelling citizen outrage over the BP oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico into a boycott of BP. J. Grayson Lilburne has a post up to the effect that, because BP has soooo much cleaning up to do, those who clamor for a boycott of BP products, gasoline franchises etc. are acting against their own best interests.
And one commenter even suggested it was "irrational" to ever boycott a corporation - because corporations are not people, and never learn! Right, because we face a corporate world, it is our duty as citizens to blunt our silly "emotional" responses. Thank good those enviro-fascists are just people and not corporations, otherwise we wouldn't be able to hate them!
I left various comments on the thread; I copy portoins here: