Flirting with the devil...

As many of you know, Jen and I don't have a car - by choice. Most of the time we're on our bicycles or on public transit. For the few out of town trips we make, we rely upon rentals, and for occasional in-town hauling needs (dog-food, garden supplies, etc.) we are part of a car co-op, and can use cooperatively owned cars at an hourly rate.

Well, we recently learned that there is a new city car "rental" service in Toronto where one can rent a vehicle for just $1 a day!!! Jackpot (so I thought)! Ah wait...there's a catch...the car is covered in advertising...we'd drive the car and spread visibility for the advertising...the company sponsoring the ad benefits and we'd benefit by getting a dirt-cheap rental. In order to make this deal worthwhile for the sponsors, we'd need to drive a minimum of 30km each time we rented.

Could we justify this as a simple symbiotic relationship? A win/win situation that happens to be privately sponsored by big-corporations? I mean, they'd advertise anyhow, wouldn't they? And we'd rent a car anyhow, wouldn't we? So why not help each other out??

And here arises the dilemma...what if your values (such as our own) do not support the promotion of the hedonistic consumerism that these ads likely promote? What if you're vegetarian on principle (like I am) and the car you rent is advertising McDonald's? What if you're a labour activist, and the car you rent is advertising Wal-Mart? What if you're an NDP supporter, and the car you rent is advertising Stephen Harper? What if you're a Catholic, and the car you rent is advertising condoms? What if you're an environmentalist and your trip was only 20km, and you're forced to drive around for another 10km just to meet your minimum quota??

So what initially seemed like a sweet deal, suddenly begins to look like a potential deal with the devil (although I guess some could argue that the difference between mega-corporations and the devil is minimal anyhow!). In the end, we decided that it was more important to not sell our souls for the few bucks we'd save from it all. But it was an interesting process and I thought I'd post it to see if anyone has had similar experiences and/or other thoughts?