Anyone who has read Adam Smith knows that in a free-market system, the pursuit of private profit always leads to the enhancement of the collective good. The inherent human desire to make a buck, channelled through the unfettered forces of supply and demand, will ensure that resources are optimally allocated and efficiency is maximized, for the good of us all.

That must have been what the folks at Canadian Bonded Credits Ltd. (CBCL) were thinking, when they invented their amazing automatic phoning machine.

CBCL is a high-tech collection agency based in north Toronto. My experience with them began one evening in June when I received an automated, intimidating voice mail message instructing me to call their toll-free number regarding an unpaid debt. Since I have no unpaid debts, I did the logical thing: I deleted the message.

Problem was, I got another message the next day. I deleted it. And the next day. After ten days of these calls, I came to a startling conclusion: these annoying daily calls were not going to stop unless I phoned the company back. (Many readers, no doubt, would have come to this conclusion sooner. Sometimes I can be a little slow.)

Finally in frustration, I called their toll-free number on the evening of June 22 (amidst trying to cook supper, entertain my daughters, and communicate with my spouse). I was placed on hold. Nine minutes later I was connected to a live person. He asked if I knew of two individuals who, apparently, may have lived at my address some years ago. (My place used to be a boarding house. I can only imagine how many candidates for debtor’s prison once lived there.)

After a three-minute conversation, he concluded I was not the person they were looking for, and informed me the daily calls would stop within 24 hours.

The innovative folks at CBCL devised this infuriating system to boost the profitability of their collection activities. But has Smith’s vision of enhanced social welfare been furthered? Let’s see.

Someone who used to make these phone calls the old-fashioned way (by picking up the phone and talking to people) lost their job. Meanwhile, I lost 22 minutes of my life: 10 minutes listening to and deleting the first 10 messages, and 12 minutes on their 1-800 line.

Technology allows companies like CBCL to pursue increasingly unlikely credit recovery prospects, since the company’s private costs are marginal — mainly because most of the cost is borne, without compensation, by innocent persons like myself. This is exactly the same logic that explains spam e-mails, or those interminable telephone solicitations from India that interrupt every dinner hour: low-cost technology allows profit-seeking companies to engage in decreasingly efficient, but increasingly annoying, ventures.

Clearly, CBCL has turned Adam Smith on his head. The more this company pursues its private profit, the more damage is done to the public good. Normally, one would expect government to protect its citizens against destructive profit-seeking behaviour like CBCL’s, through the design and enforcement of public interest regulation. But in today’s anti-red-tape business climate, this doesn’t happen very often. (In fact, the only thing more annoying about this whole episode than CBCL’s phone calls was the complete and utter lack of assistance I received from my inquiries to federal and provincial regulatory bodies.)

So I’ve been forced to take matters into my own hands.

In my effort to correct CBCL’s misallocation of resources, I have submitted an invoice to the company for the value of time which they stole from me. I make about $42 per hour as the CAW’s economist. So the 22 minutes was worth $15.40. I added a $5.45 processing fee. (That’s the same extra fee that Ontario’s Highway 407 charges drivers without transponders — and we all know how that profit-seeking enterprise is a model of economic efficiency.) The total comes to $20.85. CBCL has refused, twice, to pay up.

My motivation is not solely to be compensated for the small part of my life that was stolen. There’s a much more important economic point at stake. Think of the anonymous Canadians who suffer in silence every day from the actions of unregulated private companies which are privately profitable but socially destructive. These Canadians may not have the wherewithal to submit itemized invoices. And they don’t usually have a platform from which to launch their campaign for an allocation of economic resources that is genuinely efficient — not just profitable.

It is for these silent victims, that I herewith launch my “Man Against Machine” crusade. Perhaps I will take CBCL to small claims court. (I’ve even thought about hiring a collection agency — but I don’t want to harm any more innocents.) Perhaps I will press the case with regulators. Ontario even has a law which prevents collection agencies from “harassing” people; obviously this law is enforced about as effectively as stock market rules against insider trading.

It’s not just to pay for my time. It’s to enhance the efficiency of the whole Canadian economy. Because if CBCL, and anyone else who uses this technology, actually had to pay the full costs that their “innovations” impose on the rest of us, they’d be out of business in a month. Then we could put all that talent to use doing something actually useful.

Jim Stanford

Jim Stanford is economist and director of the Centre for Future Work, a progressive labour economics institute based in Vancouver. He has a PhD in economics from the New School for Social Research in New...