Well I'm definitely not advocating for a totalitarian state, I was specifically talking about consumer markets driving change if we collectively care enough.

I'm advocating for the fact that consumers could make many of the changes we often hear about happen if we actually cared. We have a habit if many people, even majorities of people, yelling about problems like climate change, deforestation, chemical contamination, etc. But we all still choose to use products that contribute to those exact problems.

We have no idea what the exact outcomes would be if, for example, consumers stopped buying any products that use PFAS and forced the industry to go away. There would certainly be ripple effects, but I'd argue that those effects will always be better handled when consumers decide to enact change rather than waiting for governments to force it on us all at once or for the environmental damages cause to grow so large that we run into real, devastating outcomes.

If we know we're supporting products and companies that are making things worse, we're choosing to kick the can down the road and hope its long enough that its the next person's problem when the pile of damage has gotten too big.