Daily Podcast: Safety First
AdAge reports "supermodel" Ganna Makeeva is suing Leo Burnett for negligence. Apparently, whilst shooting a superbowl ad for Cadillac back in '05, Ms. Makeeva was asked/instructed/paid to walk down a runway with a hole in it, as lights flashed, music thundered and her stomach rumbled (my add). The model fell. She sustained injuries to her "legs, knee, hands, wrists, stomach, head, neck and rib cage" and that she "has already undergone one knee surgery and must undergo yet another one to try to repair the painful and debilitating injury caused by the fall. She presently attends multiple therapy sessions each week in an effort to heal and recover from injuries she sustained." Wow. That sucks. But not, it seems, as much as the ad. "The ad… ultimately earned 2.5 out of four stars from Ad Age critic Bob Garfield, who wrote at the time: 'This is beauty photography, ostensibly eye-catching and sexy, in which slinky, exotic runway models strut their couture fashions while dripping with liquid chrome. Then, up from the vat, rises the 2006 Escalade, also slick with chrome. The visual is designed to stop you in your tracks. It won't.'" Stop you in your tracks. Geddit? If you didn't know ad folk are cold-hearted bastards before, you do now. Oh, and we reckon GM should step-up here and offer Ms. Makeeva a free car. Wouldn't you?
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I have a very different take on the London congestion charge from the one you guys have in your podcast. Mr. Farago, you said that it's dangerous to mess with the free market with things like congestion charges. My understanding of the congestion charge is that it is precisely an attempt to apply the principles of the free market to a scarce resource; namely, space on London's congested streets. As long as access to those streets was free, then that resource would be overconsumed because the price was low. The result? Congestion. Once you put a price on that resource, though, market principles come into play, and they reduce consumption of the scarce resource by raising its price. Your criticism of the congestion charge for being unfair to poor people is, it seems to me, an anti-free market criticism. It's the classic leftist critique of the free market: sure, it might be the most efficient way to distribute scarce resources, but it ignores fundamental questions of equity. Personally, this critique would be my critique of the congestion charge, but I don't think you can attack it on the basis of its "messing with the free market." It seems to me that it is unwise precisely because it takes free market principles to their logical--and fundamentally inequitable--conclusion.