"There is no ethical consumption under capitalism." Agree or Disagree?

[Still-alive]

As in there's pretty much nothing you can buy in our modern world where at least all or parts of the materials made in it were made at the expense of peoples exploitative labor. some around of suffering likely was involved in it too.

Strongly Agree

Agree

Disagree

Strongly disagree

I'm not sure/undecided

[OpenClose]

This seems like philosophical purism applied to a very messy and complex subject.

Simply put, the best you can do as an individual is buy what you need at market values, and try to consume from ethical sources. If your only sources are unethical, the unethical nature comes more from a larger social structure rather than the individual. And in that case, the unethical part is more of the production than it is the consumption.

The post-industrial world is new and unexplored territory. It used to be the owners, workers, and means of production were all the same thing. You own a shoe shop. You make the shoes. You get paid for the shoes.

The new part is when ownership, the industrial means of production, and the labor means of production are all separated.

The laborers can't build the product without the machine, so wouldn't get full credit. The machine can't build much without the workers (so far), so the labor itself becomes a commodity that has its own market values. No individual can buy the whole machine, so the machine is owned by the business or a rich individual.

How do you reconcile all of these? Distribute ownership amongst the workers? (Socialism) Distribute ownership amongst the population as a whole? Distribute ownership amongst a group of investors? (Stock market Capitalism). Or have a single super-rich investor who buys the machines?

And there are several mixes of these.

My mom works for a private business that distributes shares amongst the employees. Not in the sense of paying in shares, but having a percentage of existing shares, and earning a proportional percentage of the profit.

We also have several services in which the general public are all investors and exercise ownership through electing the leaders of the institutions. Technically this could be called "democratic socialism" for these particular services, because they were put in place by elected officials, but then you have the ethics of people being both involuntary investors and captive consumers, and the consumers have technically already consumed some of such services by simply being born within said infrastructure.

Regardless of your answers or solutions to all of this, I think it would be unfair to pin all of this complexity on the individual consumer. It would be like blaming a random Russian citizen for the invasion of Ukraine, or the homeless guy down the street for drone strikes against civilians. It wasn't necessarily done with their consent, but they also don't have much power to withdraw that consent.

I guess welcome to the libertarian-left or something.

[OpenClose]

Oh, this was not meant to be a diss against the question. I love the question.

[WindAtMyBack]

As long as it does use labor from some third world country that uses virtual slave labor then it can be ethical.

I also don't see what this has to do with capitalism. Capitalism is the most ethical of any common system out there.

[WindAtMyBack]

as long as it *doesn't
I have a bad habit of forgetting the negative.

[letuswaltzforthedead]

I completely disagree with that, capitalism is just what people do and where their desire points them. People decide with their money, if they want a company to stop doing something, they can force them to (unless the company is supposed by the government in which case, that isn't capitalism anymore and you have a bigger issue at hand).

[Msputiton]

You make a good point. Pickles are really tasty.

🏃🏾‍♀️💨

[Tyrael]

I'd agree with that. Which is why I find it funny when people claim to make ethical purchases, while making those purchases on an iPhone made in a sweat shop.

[RolandCuthbert]

But there isn't an economic system that has ethical consumption.

[TroyDT]

Sure there is. Bob owns a farm. Jack is a mechanic. Jack fixes Bob's equipment and in exchange Bob give Jack milk and eggs.

[MiseriaCantareAFI]

Capitalism doesn't work...

for everyone

[Dinosaursandanime65]

E R E C T I O N

Its a mathematical term

[HSalenko]

What makes you think ethics is real?

[msc545]

strongly agree with this

[GoodGuyBreakingBad]

Agree