I used to think like you do. But then couple of realities struck me:

1.

Pick any government. Any. Look what it has decided during the last year? If you don't find immense bullcrap buried somewhere there, PM me please. I'll move to that place.

Democracy is kinda nice idea, but in practice it's always corrupt. And when it's not, it's outright stupid.

- "In August 2012, a Gallup poll reported that Congress’s approval rating amongst Americans was at 10%" from Wikipedia.

- My own country has made these super smart moves like a law forcing everybody to use cycling helmet. But then they ruled that not using it would not be punished in any way. The only effect is that now people take law less seriously.

- In Finland they are currently spending time and taxpayers money to decide what kind of electronic surveillance our government would like to install to all cars. Just in order to gather payments from cars entering Helsinki, in order to reduce traffic congestion. How about rising gas taxes locally in Helsinki? No they need some pricey as hell electronic surveillance.

- This hole SOPA stuff? We we're lucky really.

The list goes on and on. So to me it looks like governments are always stupid. Best you can do is to limit their power, so they have less possibilities to be stupid.

2.

Capitalism favors the cheapest thing. This may seem like nothing if you consider ecology. I'll throw few points and then a theory of mine. Yes they are weird points.

- Some scientist examined what is more ecological. Plastic Christmas tree or a real pine. They found out that if you use it only one Christmas the real pine is better. But if you can use the same plastic one on several Christmastimes it's more ecological. Real pine cost's about 30-80 eur, plastic trees range from 70eur to 200eur.

- Another study was made considering tomatoes. They found out that in Finland it's most ecological to consume domestic tomatoes. But in the winter Spanish import tomatoes are more ecological. Conveniently domestic tomatoes are cheaper in the summer, but in the winter Spanish imports are cheapest.

I'm guessing that I would find other examples quite easily. Only problem is that studying what is most ecological is quite time consuming. So scientist don't do it that much. But what if the cheapest option would be generally the most ecological option? It would make sense in a way. If your company is producing tomatoes at two dollars per kilo, it's kind of hard to burn five dollars worth fossil fuels per kilo and have profitable company.

So would it be kind of cool if our system had built in function to favor the most ecological products?