Daniel Akst’s Posts

• A Smug's Life

  Earth Day: the ultimate empty gesture 6

  Posted 6 months, 3 weeks ago

  Dan Akst says Earth Day has become a haven for hypocrisy.

• The Wrong Target

  Could chain stores actually be good for the environment? 19

  Posted 4 years ago

  To some environmentalists, the shoppers of the world have nothing to lose but their chains. If only people stopped spending at these awful big-box stores, the thinking goes, the earth might be saved -- and local businesses would flourish.

  

  Shop to it!

  From an environmental perspective, there is in fact much to dislike about the chains. Their low prices, sustained by a rapidly globalizing economy, promote resource-churning consumerism. They are typically reached only by auto, and thus inspire millions of greenhouse-gas-spewing car trips. And surrounded by a sea of… Read More

• Choose You Can Use

  School choice could be an answer to sprawl 24

  Posted 4 years, 1 month ago

  Imagine a country -- we'll call it Hobsonia -- that requires all its residents to shop at officially assigned supermarkets based on where they live. Now, Hobsonians care passionately about food, and since the law allows them to move if they wish, citizens decide where to live based largely on where they can buy groceries. Those with money move to the best supermarket districts, which tend to be in affluent areas where store managers know that unhappy customers have the scratch to move elsewhere. Hobsonia thus sorts itself into good supermarket districts and bad. While people talk passionately about improving… Read More

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