We recently stumbled across a website called Made in a Free World. This is about sourcing ethical products, ones which don't make use of what is essentially modern slave labour. They have an alarming survey called Slavery Footprint.
You fill in data about your lifestyle (in great detail, like how many rooms your house has, and how many pairs of pants you have!), and they work out how many slaves/indentured labourers work somewhere in the world to make that lifestyle possible. Obviously things like cotton, coffee, cosmetics and so on are really problematic. Electronic devices also seem to be a real problem.
The two of us got 26 and 35 slaves respectively.
This was scary.
This is the number of people - including children - who work in conditions that I'm sure all of us would consider unacceptable in order to provide us with our insanely luxurious lifestyles.
I recommend everyone does this survey. Rethink your life choices. It's a humbling exercise, and one which we should all do once in a while.
Now I know that often ethical consumer choices are prohibitively expensive. So how can we save money but still consume ethically?
This can be an example of a Fool's Choice or false dichotomy. You feel like you have to choose between two bad options. Actually, there is often a third option.
Neither.
Don't buy the dodgy product. And if you can't afford the good product, then buy nothing.
Mostly, you don't actually need either of them.
Consuming less is a good idea anyway. Buying less saves money, cuts down on slaves and is also better for the environment.
Even food, the obvious exception to just not buying anything ever, can be part of the false dichotomy. Maybe the third option there isn't so much "neither" as "something else altogether", such local, in season fresh products.
But nonetheless, we have to accept that sometimes there is a genuine payoff here, and we have to make a genuine choice between cheapest and ethically acceptable.
This is a complicated, entangled issue. In each of these situations we need to make a moral choice as best we can. All I ask - and I am asking myself as much as I am asking you - is that we really think about the choice, rather than just grabbing the quickest, easiest, or even just cheapest option.
Yours, in a most challenged frame of mine,
jjdaydream
You fill in data about your lifestyle (in great detail, like how many rooms your house has, and how many pairs of pants you have!), and they work out how many slaves/indentured labourers work somewhere in the world to make that lifestyle possible. Obviously things like cotton, coffee, cosmetics and so on are really problematic. Electronic devices also seem to be a real problem.
The two of us got 26 and 35 slaves respectively.
This was scary.
This is the number of people - including children - who work in conditions that I'm sure all of us would consider unacceptable in order to provide us with our insanely luxurious lifestyles.
 |
| The economic chains which keep people in slavery are just as real as these ones. Photo credit:Trevor Leyenhorst (CC-BY 2.0) |
I recommend everyone does this survey. Rethink your life choices. It's a humbling exercise, and one which we should all do once in a while.
Avoiding the Fool's Choice
Now I know that often ethical consumer choices are prohibitively expensive. So how can we save money but still consume ethically?
This can be an example of a Fool's Choice or false dichotomy. You feel like you have to choose between two bad options. Actually, there is often a third option.
 |
| False dichotomy: forgetting the third option. Photo credit: Dan Moyle (CC-BY 2.0) |
Neither.
Don't buy the dodgy product. And if you can't afford the good product, then buy nothing.
Mostly, you don't actually need either of them.
Consuming less is a good idea anyway. Buying less saves money, cuts down on slaves and is also better for the environment.
When there isn't a third option...
Even food, the obvious exception to just not buying anything ever, can be part of the false dichotomy. Maybe the third option there isn't so much "neither" as "something else altogether", such local, in season fresh products.
But nonetheless, we have to accept that sometimes there is a genuine payoff here, and we have to make a genuine choice between cheapest and ethically acceptable.
This is a complicated, entangled issue. In each of these situations we need to make a moral choice as best we can. All I ask - and I am asking myself as much as I am asking you - is that we really think about the choice, rather than just grabbing the quickest, easiest, or even just cheapest option.
 |
| Think first. Consume later. Photo credit: Taymaz Valley (CC-BY 2.0) |
jjdaydream
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