We parents have let corporate interests and their puppets harm our children

It happens so insidiously. At the heart of all of this is corporations who are profitable are addicted to being profitable. So, they contribute to politicians to gain influence and a return on their investment. Quite often, our children are the ones harmed in this profit pursuit. This is especially true if the profits are on the pocket book desires of children.

Take the case of the cigarette brand icon Joe Camel. Tobacco companies swear Joe Camel was not designed to market their products to teens and adolescents. That is absolute “camel manure.” Of course, the icon was designed to market cigarettes to under-age users. We should not forget that a panel of tobacco CEOs lied in succession to a Congressional committee saying nicotine was not addictive when they knew that it was for about thirty years. The industry was punished by a huge fine for this gaslighting and deserved it.

The reason for this post this week is I read a story about US betting companies lobbying against more rules and regulations governing their marketing to children. Betting companies make money off people who feel they know what they are doing. It is that simple. Take fantasy sports leagues - the significant majority of bettors lose a lot, while a very of small percentage of bettors using multi-variable statistical regression models make money off them. So, more children betting means more money for the company.

Yet, this marketing to children is not new. Retailers make money selling to children. Clothiers make money designing the hot new fashion to kids, often recycled fashion from the past. And, even drug dealers have a profit model of hooking adolescents on their products.

But, it goes beyond direct sales to this audience. Fossil fuel companies represent the most historically subsidized industry by far. They make so much money they can afford to fund various disinformation campaigns and politicians to parrot what they want them too. There is a great movie called “Merchants of Doubt” which speaks to the ongoing disinformation campaign, which has been stepped up of late.

Just to make a quick observation of the fossil fuel industry influence, the industry PR people did not like the term “global warming,” so they made us use the softer “climate change" as they felt they could better argue against that term. The people most impacted by their disinformation are our kids, who will inherit a world of trouble, but we parents are seeing the pain now as well.

Finally, in the US, we have spineless politicians who aren’t courageous enough to deal with our spiraling US debt. This lack of courage is on both sides of the aisle. We must have spending cuts and tax increases both to solve our problem. Our kids will otherwise inherit a national budget where interest cost will exceed all other spending - military and social insurance programs.

If I were a teen, I would be increasingly vocal about the future. We need more outspoken folks like Greta Thunberg is on the global warming front. And, parents need to join in and help make better stewardship decisions to support a better world.