I haven’t bought a diamond in many years, although the reason has more to do with the fact that they’re a ripoff than with any deeper moral issues. The latter would come into play, though, if the former hadn’t got there first.
But then, I bought some socks yesterday. I have no knowledge of the working conditions of those who made them. My guess is they’re not great, but I don’t intend to look it up. I needed socks, I bought socks.
So I guess I’m not a moralist. I’d certainly prefer that people weren’t abused in a lot of ways, but I’m not in the business of disrupting my life at the checkout counter. Better, I think, to give to something like Save the Children, which tries to root out the problems at their source (and often succeed, though somehow you never seem to hear about it).
My morals tend to stop when I feel I’m being stolen from. If I were smart enough to rob the US health care “system,” I’d do it, but they’re much better thieves than I could ever hope to be. The best thieves are like that: they’ve got the place strung up to dance to their tune.
From the other content of your post, I gather that you’re a political conservative. So I’m curious as to why you don’t think that market forces are a more effective solution to poverty than private aid organizations. To me, the most efficient way to solve these problems is precisely to use consumer power.
I consider myself more of an amoralist or one of flexible morals. At heart, I desire the good and feel that that is enough.
I buy locally produced milk in glass bottles that I then return (the grocery store gets a deposit on the bottles) because I know that it helps a local farm and the cows are treated better. However, I wouldn’t do it if the milk was awful (quite the contrary, it is the best milk I’ve ever had). The same thing with cage-free eggs. I have a vegan friend who does not approve of these measures because I still stand in violation of her morals. Then, again, PETA violates many of my morals (amorals?), so I suppose everything is relative to everything else. I just do the best I can with the resources I have available.
I have no illusions that dumping a good stock would hurt anyone but me (especially not in my current economic position). I would gladly buy and profit from Coke stock. I would then use the profits to probably open a ferret shelter.
At the end of the day, I don’t think people are good or bad. I think everyone has both in them. Some people act mainly from the bad, others mainly from the good. For most, I think it is a day to day decision. I also think economic power influences this. If you have lots of money, you have more freedom and time to embrace your good or bad self. I think wealth is like mental illness in that it exaggerates whatever is already there. I think Angelina Jolie is a good example -all the money, fame, and good looks in the world and she is devoted to helping the impoverished around the world.
I’m a moralist in ways that I know about. I won’t buy Exxon gas. I used to boycott Cracker Barrel restaurants because of their anti-gay discrimination. I look for dolphin-safe tuna. I rarely buy cosmetics, and then from companies that say they don’t test on animals. (I’m not sure how that works - I thought certain tests were required) I spay and neuter my pets and (except for one horse) have recued animals. I don’t like diamonds. I don’t burn CDs. I don’t buy things that are obvious trademark-infrigements, like knocks at the flea market.
OTOH - were my jeans made in Africa buy an underpaid child worker? Possibly. And what’s worse - a kid starving to death because his family can’t feed him, or him working and being fed. Neither is a good option, but I’d say that the kid would prefer to work and live. Child labor has been around as long as there have been children. It’s only in the last 100 years or less that it’s even become a social issue. I agree that kids should be attending school and playing soccer instead of working, but sometimes there’s no alternative.
Software piracy is you knowingly and actively committing a crime.
Finding out if a product (or company share) comes from an undesirable source can be complicated.
Just the other morning I was hangin’ around in my house. I had that new book with Madonna naked and I was checkin’ it out. Just then a friend of mine came thru the door, said she never pegged me as a Scumbag before. She said she didn’t ever want to see me no more, and I still don’t know why!
I think I’m an alright guy. I just want to live till I’ve got to die, I know I ain’t perfect but God knows I try. I think I’m alright.
I would. Who wouldn’t especially if they are parents? The worth of my child is worth way more to me than the collective populations of India and China combined. I lost a child around the same time that the giant tsunami wiped out hundreds of thousands of people in Asia. Which one do you think affected me more and do you think that I would wipe out a few hundred thousand more if I could get my daughter back? Absolutely.
Yes, but we’ve already established that you don’t believe in morals, so none of that surprises me. I was asking someone who purports to believe in some morals.
I think it is unfair to pick on people for putting their families first. I would die for my loved ones and I would kill to save myself or them. No question. I would kill the innocent.
The luxury of our current economic and technological advancements has put us in a position that no other culture or people has ever been in–namely, questioning our evolutionary hard-wiring. We are hard-wired to survive and protect our progeny, at any cost. As decadent as Rome became, they never lost sight of this, but we have.
I thought more about this question after my last post and I think that the best anyone can do is to be a person of their word. I know many people who are idealists and recycle and protest and whatever, but you can’t trust their word when they say they will do something. I put more value on the people in my life whose word I can trust. I find that they seem to have more inclination to kindness (and a/morality?) anyway.
My daughter already has a pony so there isn’t any sense in killing someone to get another one. Those things are work and she can only ride one at a time anyway.
It isn’t about spoiling your child with superfluous things anyway. Sociobiology explains it all just fine. You protect your children in terms of their health and wellbeing above all else. Spoiling them, especially if it hurts others, doesn’t play into it.
The point was that you’re willing to help injure other people in order to save a few cents. So my question is how far that goes. Would you kill an innocent to save a dollar? 100 dollars?
How did a question about survival become a question about attaining luxuries?
If I needed 50 cents in order to buy bread for me or my family to survive another day, sure I would kill for it. Survival of the fittest. As long as none of us has to compete at that level for resources, then we have the luxury of being “Live and let live.” It makes us feel good, which is also a luxury. However, no one would give a rat’s butt about this sort of thing if circumstances became a true fight for survival. This has been documented throughout history. It is our wealth and availability of resources alone that makes us feel like we are better than all that (I am not immune to this), but the truth is that none of us are.
You are missing a few things here. Killing people is against the law plus it can be messy and dangerous. Getting life in prison for something like that wouldn’t do anyone any good so no, you wouldn’t just commit violent crimes any time you felt like it.
The second piece is your conscience and what it has to say about these things. If killing someone is going to bother you for the rest of your life and give you very little gain, it wouldn’t be worth it. I suppose that if it was a person you hated, you knew you would never get caught, the gain would be sufficient, and you would get more pleasure than pain out of the act, you should kill them.
Sorry I didn’t get back to you earlier - I don’t post in the afternoons, usually. So. To answer your question. How far does it go?? When the cents I’m saving are the ones that put the ROOF over our heads, the FOOD in our stomachs, the MEDICINE in the cabinet that we need - hell yes, f*** everyone else. Especially when there are a hell of a lot of people who have the resources necessary to do way better than I can to fix the ills that plague the world - and those folks also ain’t doin’ squat for ME so all I can do is make my little portion of it liveable and safe for those I love.
You are starting to sound a little self righteous and judgemental, dude - I hope I’m just reading you wrong.
You know, Richard, I really don’t like your attitude. Most people do what they can. It may be more or less than you. But it’s not your job to tell other people how to live, no more than it is the job of a fundamentalist Christian to tell gays they got AIDs as a punishment from God.
I’m not saying you don’t have the right to feel smug and holier-than-thou, just that you don’t need to push your perceived way of how people should behave on everyone else. Your attitude and arguments turn more people away than will draw them to your variety of causes.
Excuse me, I have to go buy a shirt made from child laborers with blood-diamond buttons and packaged in a non-biodegradable, non-recyclable plastic package. Maybe on the way I’ll stop for a lunch from Ruby Tuesday’s that’s large enough to feed a third-world country. Maybe chicken sandwich made from factory-farmed chickens on a bleached flour bun and fries cooked in trans-fat.
