Talk:Ethical consumerism

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Contents

[edit] Links deleted

This section was a linkfarm. Deleted some spammish links. ~SeventhHaido 07:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shopping vs. Voting

"Many think shopping is more important than voting" I think this needs citation 208.251.83.66 20:37, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

===Kosher is a moral choice?=== I thought kosher and Halaal were for religious reasons, not for ethical ones. Why does the article include them in:

There are other such uses of labels to reassure buyers by indicating when goods are "organic", "kosher", "halaal", "vegan", "free-range", contain recycled materials or otherwise morally desirable.

Gront 21:11, 18 March 2006 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, you are right, but I think there are enough similarities to warrant including them in the list. Common Man 22:52, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] neutrality tags

Time to remove the neutrality tags? The articlce does need expansion, however. --Newdawnfades 02:46, 31 May 2004 (UTC)

[edit] more democratic capitalism

...consumers seek to collectively influence and thus make more democratic the direction of standards of world capitalism.

This statement doesn't make sense. Capitalism is the most democractic economic system in existence, as each consumer votes with their hard earned money (which represents the means of production). This isn't a method to throw away all votes that the proponents of "ethical consumerism" view, in their minds, as unethical, is it? If so, that's a dictatorship, not a democracy. Its very fishy that this movement is assaulting economic democracy in the name of democracy. MSTCrow 21:52, Aug 18, 2004 (UTC)

[edit] ethical shopping

Someone requested a new page for ethical shopping on Wikipedia:Requested articles/Social Sciences and Philosophy , and I created a redirect to this page. But is this really the same thing? This page is defined as "the practice of boycotting products ...", which seems more narrow to me than ethical shopping. Are these really two different things or can they be discussed on the same page?
Sebastian 11:33, 2005 Mar 11 (UTC)

something on the current boycott of coca-cola in colleges and trades unions maybe?

[edit] Criticism?

There's no criticism in the article; I'll try and write something.

[edit] Fair trade?

Is this necessarily synonymous to "fair trade"? Le Anh-Huy 16:24, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Why does the article give you the impression that it is synonymous? Common Man 19:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Consumarchy

Consumarchy (talk ยท contribs) is pushing this term:

LEARN MORE ABOUT CONSUMARCHY
A theory of CONSUMARCHY is being developed, which may well guide Adam Smith's invisible hand on the path to consumarcho-capitalism?
See http://consumarchy.blogspot.com/
for an overview of the envisioned 'realistic utopia'
the consumarchist -
London

While the word is nice, it is hardly used (136 occurrences in Google, many of them refer to Wikipedia pages - including Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Consumarchy). I toned down the excessive mention in the intro, and moved his/her chapter to the bottom, but I'm not sure if it should even be included. Common Man 19:44, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Deleted text

I deleted the following because it doesn't make sense as it stands. Maybe it fits better into business ethics, because it doesn't mention any consumer behavior, Common Man 20:59, 25 July 2006 (UTC)

Moralism or lacking ability to judge the morality is often based on lacking insight into processes and benefits. For example the transport of beans from Egypt to Europe by airplane may be criticized [1], as well as the transport of potatoes over the alps - simply to wash them.

[edit] Drug Links to terrorism

I feel the claim that terrorists are funding their activities through the sale of drugs is quite unfounded, I think without a good citation, it really needs to be reviewed. p.s. first post on wikipedia, hope I got the syntax correct 203.82.182.242 09:09, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Assumptions

"The collective choice will not simply deprive consumers of particular choices or make them cost less for less ethical people, but will actually alter the market composition so that the choices offered become generally better (from this ethical view) over time." I'm not sure this really is a universal assumption. Many people, probably most vegetarians for example, make some purchase decisions simply because they do not want to partake of products they view as unethical. That is, they voluntarily deprive themselves of particular choices. Similarly, in boycott situations, the goal is sometimes to simply remove a product from the market, not to improve it. Thoughts? Envirocorrector 10:50, 20 July 2007 (UTC)

Thinking a bit more about this, it seems that one goal of ethical purchasing is actually to reduce demand for a product, thereby reducing its supply. Again, sometimes we want to improve a good (say, growing coffee in the shade) but sometimes we want less of a bad good produced (say, fewer cars of any kind coming off the production line).Envirocorrector 10:29, 22 July 2007 (UTC)
Deleted the entire assumptions section for two reasons. First, these assumptions don't cover some of the most important reasons for ethical consumerism (such as shirking markets). Second, the final paragraph of this section ("These assumptions have been challenged...") served only to extend the criticisms section of the article to other sections. Envirocorrector 16:38, 30 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] criticism

Is it just me, or does the entire final paragraph of the criticism section essentially say "some people are nihilists"? Envirocorrector 10:32, 22 July 2007 (UTC)

The whole criticism section is confusing. "Critics also argu that ethical consumerism is fundamentally anti-democratic. In their view, the act of buying is considered a vote, with unequal distribution of wealth causing an unequal distribution of votes." This makes no sense. If the act of buying is considered a vote, doesn't that constitute an argument that ethical consumerism is fundamentally _pro-democratic_? This isn't a critique of ethical capitalism, it's a critique of uneven wealth distribution. In fact, I've just talked myself into removing it. 72.13.132.140 (talk) 20:35, 18 November 2007 (UTC)