Saturday, October 3, 2009
Moral Consumerism
Is it morally permissible to consume as much as you can afford? If you can afford something do you have the inherent right to take resources from other people who could use the resources but are unable to purchase them. Specifically consider this in the context of American consumerism and exploration of resources.
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This post makes an undeniably powerful statement. I am touched.
ReplyDeleteOh wait, nevermind. It's coming up as wingdings in Google Chrome. If y'all are seeing this post right, then don't mind me hahahh
ReplyDeleteI'm seeing it in wingdings
ReplyDeleteTRANASLATED...?
ReplyDeleteIs it morally permissible to consume as much as you can afford? If you can afford something do you have the inherent right to take resources from other people who could use the resources but are unable to purchase them. Specifically consider this in the context of American consumerism and exploration of resources.
I can see it fine either way...
ReplyDeleteANYWAY:
First of all, this sounds like something we would discuss in AP Environmental Science... I would argue that excessive consumerism IS amoral. This almost recalls Peter Singer's argument from the film, with the analogy of the pond, in that by consuming as much as possible, people are wasting money that they could be putting to use for bettering the world around them. I think that the fact that someone may decide to spend an extra few hundred dollars on the best and newest items when they could simply save their money or even donate some of it is what makes it immoral. Now, one might argue that when people make the conscious decisions to make larger, more frivolous purchases, they are not always thinking, "Well, rather than give this $4,000 to Unicef, I think I'll indulge in a new hot tub." To expect everyone to think like this would be ridiculous, but I think that it would not be asking too much to have people think about the better uses for their money in general. I think that this rampant consumerism really becomes a problem in the large, large scale, once a person has so much extra money that they don't even need to think about a major purchase, because they know they have the cash. In this situation, I think that it's a problem with our culture in general; we've built up an amoral society around material objects, when we should focus on what people need to get by first... I realize that this is a poor way to end an argument, but I'm really not sure where I'm going with this... so I'll let someone else respond first.
I agree with John. Unfortunately John has stated most of what I believe is why consumerism is immoral, but I do have some things to add. Though I do think a small amount of consumerism is morally permissible. Looking at an extreme case, Bill Gates is someone who has a tremendous amount of money at his disposal, and could easily buy entire companies just for the sake of buying them. Obviously this is not the case, and it is well known that throughout his successful career Bill Gates gave a tremendous amount of money to charity. So I think its possible to have consumerism that is morally permissible, though more often than not, this is not the case.
ReplyDeleteI think you have to be a little careful, though. I don't think any ethical wrongdoing occurring here is wholly the fault of the buyer. When someone buys stuff, he is giving money to a seller--and at its root, a company/manufacturer of those goods. Those companies are generally built to maximize profit in order to expand and further contribute services to society that are generally inaccessible to people without the means of replicating the same goods.
ReplyDeleteNow, those goods may be completely unnecessary or not, but regardless, the ethical wrongdoing is heavily dampened by the effect of a company's sales on providing income for people not only within the company but any kind of labor or goods remotely related to that company. That's what's going on when you pump the economy by spending.
Now, if the money that you are spending is NOT being put to those purposes--namely, the companies are operating at huge profit margins that do not work toward strengthening production, nor business, but rather to line some people's pockets, that would be an unjust use of that money.
So, while you may be acting unethically by spending wastefully, the effects of your wasteful spending aren't entirely bad, so it may be harder than you think to put the curse of death on wasteful spenders. Some food for thought.
btw this is all assuming a capitalist system--and that assumes a capitalist system is objectively and intrinsically moral. There's a lot to say against capitalism, but from least of all evils perspective, it probably is a good choice of framework to assume. The implication is that no, even if there is unethical action occurring, the actors involved might not be the immoral ones, since the system will invariably introduce social prejudices and injustice into the system, by nature of our imperfections.
ReplyDelete