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I'm wondering how to be an ethical consumer in general and have a hard time identifying products to support.

by imglorp 5y ago

krapp 5y ago
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.
- dylan604 5y ago
  That's just BS. There are plenty of businesses that choose to do the ethically/moral/decent thing, but they tend to be the smaller ones. The giant fucking evilCorps in the world suck all the oxygen from every conversation, so it feels like they are the only examples available. I'd also suggest private companies vs publicly traded companies where their obligation is to the stock holders rather than being decent.
  - cebert 5y ago
    Can you provide an example company?
    - fsflover 5y ago
      https://puri.sm https://puri.sm
    - dylan604 5y ago
      patagonia
  - toomanyducks 5y ago
    I'd go one step further in that analysis. Why does it feel that large companies are the most representative to the people (like me) claiming that consumption under capitalism is unethical? Well, I'm a bit of an anarchist, so I'm going to go down the 'distribution of power' line here. It doesn't matter that purism or system76 is ethical when Google controls my every waking moment. When the mega evil Corps have all the power and the influence. When they control not just my life but also the ecological and political environment around me. Denying the power of Google is akin to climate change denial. So yes, I'm not going to point to a small company built off of open source and pretend that my life is okay. Or I could go a bit further down the Marxist line, and say it's because capitalism requires large scale exploitation at a large scale. Ignoring that exploitation is supporting that exploitation, and is immoral. I'll not get into the theory to support this in this comment, but when Amazon warehouse workers literally work themselves to death for my shitty orders, we've got a problem. And it is immoral to point to the existence of Purism and say that everything is fine. This is coming off more intense than I intended. I'm sorry. I swear this isn't personal criticism, just an attempt at productive engagement with ideology, but the world is breaking. It's really fucking hard to be kind.
voakbasda 5y ago
Modern capitalism (corporatism) is not ethical after a certain scale. There is no such thing as an ethical product sold at the margins necessary to stay in business at the top of the food chain. Framed another way, I have yet to meet a C-level exec of an organization bigger than 50 employees who wasn’t an obvious sociopath.
GavinMcG 5y ago
What really needs support is political change. That might be on an individual candidate level, or on a meta level (e.g. voting against politicians who will gerrymander). Personally I don't think it's worth the energy trying to optimize one's individual consumer choices, at least to the extent that you can put that energy toward systemic change.
Sparkle-san 5y ago
It's not perfect but I've found that companies that are certified B corps to generally be more ethical and try to steer my spending in that direction. https://bcorporation.net/ https://bcorporation.net/

I'm wondering how to be an ethical consumer in general and have a hard time identifying products to support.

krapp 5y ago

There is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

dylan604 5y ago
That's just BS. There are plenty of businesses that choose to do the ethically/moral/decent thing, but they tend to be the smaller ones. The giant fucking evilCorps in the world suck all the oxygen from every conversation, so it feels like they are the only examples available. I'd also suggest private companies vs publicly traded companies where their obligation is to the stock holders rather than being decent.
- cebert 5y ago
  Can you provide an example company?
  - fsflover 5y ago
    https://puri.sm https://puri.sm
  - dylan604 5y ago
    patagonia
- toomanyducks 5y ago
  I'd go one step further in that analysis. Why does it feel that large companies are the most representative to the people (like me) claiming that consumption under capitalism is unethical? Well, I'm a bit of an anarchist, so I'm going to go down the 'distribution of power' line here. It doesn't matter that purism or system76 is ethical when Google controls my every waking moment. When the mega evil Corps have all the power and the influence. When they control not just my life but also the ecological and political environment around me. Denying the power of Google is akin to climate change denial. So yes, I'm not going to point to a small company built off of open source and pretend that my life is okay. Or I could go a bit further down the Marxist line, and say it's because capitalism requires large scale exploitation at a large scale. Ignoring that exploitation is supporting that exploitation, and is immoral. I'll not get into the theory to support this in this comment, but when Amazon warehouse workers literally work themselves to death for my shitty orders, we've got a problem. And it is immoral to point to the existence of Purism and say that everything is fine. This is coming off more intense than I intended. I'm sorry. I swear this isn't personal criticism, just an attempt at productive engagement with ideology, but the world is breaking. It's really fucking hard to be kind.

voakbasda 5y ago

Modern capitalism (corporatism) is not ethical after a certain scale. There is no such thing as an ethical product sold at the margins necessary to stay in business at the top of the food chain. Framed another way, I have yet to meet a C-level exec of an organization bigger than 50 employees who wasn’t an obvious sociopath.

GavinMcG 5y ago

What really needs support is political change. That might be on an individual candidate level, or on a meta level (e.g. voting against politicians who will gerrymander). Personally I don't think it's worth the energy trying to optimize one's individual consumer choices, at least to the extent that you can put that energy toward systemic change.

Sparkle-san 5y ago

It's not perfect but I've found that companies that are certified B corps to generally be more ethical and try to steer my spending in that direction. https://bcorporation.net/ https://bcorporation.net/