Ethical Consumerism is a Myth (Made with Good Intentions).

if you're new to the channel you may not
know that I am a vegan however I am a very pragmatic very nihilistic vegan I don't believe in most of the things that most of my fellow Feakins believe so for example I don't believe that animals have a soul I don't believe in an afterlife I don't believe in reincarnation I don't believe in karma neither the Buddhist idea of karma or the Hindu idea of karma nevertheless I'm a vegan veganism I think it's the right thing to do in the same way I do make ethical decisions as a consumer but I do not believe in ethical consumerism as the title of this video suggests you I regard ethical consumerism as a myth although it is a myth constructed out of good intentions and people trying to rationalize even good things they're doing which is finite so I don't really anything that's the practice of ethical consumerism but let's talk a little bit about the theory and the way in which it can be misleading or the way in which people kind of delude themselves with their belief in this theory the pricing mechanism in economics is a way of sharing information when the price of something goes up it can indicate scarcity it can actually indicate scarcity of many different kinds you get into some really surreal questions in economics when you look at the pricing of heart surgery there was a time in the United States of America when you know performing routine heart surgery surgery for heart attacks was a new development in medical science when there were very few people who had been trained to perform this operation and when it was considered risky of course there still is some risk then over time partly just because of the proliferation of heart surgeons more and more people had this skill believe it or not their supply and demand and the price the price of having a heart attack went to hunting down the price of actually paying for heart surgery went down now the United States of America is one of the only countries in the world that has free-market principles with heart surgery and on a huge scale - now - know what you can learn from looking at the price of heart surgery in Cambodia or something this is a very very strange area so but in that case I mean you say the scarcity has to do with the skilled staff who can take it out the reason why the price is high is also things like fear whether you think you're gonna live or you're gonna die if you buy this product that can be an issue with other products too the price communicates information okay when people purchase something when they pay the price they are also communicating something through the market right like hey I could have chosen the cheapest product available but instead you chose something more expensive for this reason or that reason okay and when you refuse to buy something whether you engage in a boycott or you refuse to produce something for some other reason you may be sending a signal also you're sending a signal that you don't want this low quality product you want some that's more expensive higher quality you may be sending the signal that you don't want to buy something that's made in China you instead want to buy something that's made in the United States of America or something that's made in Europe you know whatever um there were all these things that are sent through the price mechanism through the purchase mechanism there is the sharing of information through free market mechanisms however it's very dangerous that people try to talk themselves into believing that they're sharing more information than they really are sharing and that they're communicating something through the protests through the active purchase or refusing their purchase that cannot possibly be the single signal communicated to the market so I have known various women who would say to me that they refuse to buy clothing from a certain company because that company has overly skinny models the models are too slim that are advertising this clothing right if you want to communicate to that company that you are not buying their product because you think the models are emaciated you think the models look anorexic or something you want them to use fleshy or models in their advertising okay you cannot communicate that information through just refusing to purchase the clothing made by that brand there's no way they're gonna be looking at their accounts and they're gonna get that signal okay now you can communicate that message to other methods you could write letters you could start a letter-writing campaign you could start collecting hundreds of signatures from people you could organize a feminist group there are ways you could communicate to that company hey we like your clothing we want to buy your clothing but we refuse by it for this for this reason but that's not packaged into the signal the signal there is not going to be specific and it's not linked to that variable because that company it's not in the modeling business it's not even in the poster making business it's not in the advertising business they're in the clothing manufacturing business that's all of what they're paying attention to when they look at what sells and what doesn't the last thing in their mind is oh the models are too skinny you know they're going to be looking at those products ago gee you know last year this type of clothing sold better and this year it sold worse well maybe it's for this reason maybe so that reason they're gonna be looking at fashion and the climate they're gonna be looking at a million factors and it's not even going to occur to them all right now there I've used this example before there was a bakery I used to go into regularly I don't know a proud one in five times or ten times in in in Canada and you know I asked them look I need to know which breads are vegan and which ones aren't you know in the Western will normally sell even if they don't mean for them to be vegan a lot of bread is vegan there's no reason for it to contain dairy or eggs and my having that conversation with the person repeatedly again maybe five times really communicating to them this is something they need to get organized on it's something they need to care about right before they just didn't pay any attention and they didn't know I'd go in and ask and they'd say okay we got a phone the Baker we got a ad you know we because they didn't know they didn't know some of them they knew had milk powder or some of them some of them an egg wash or something some didn't and the woman said to me you know the last time I want to have this conversation said you know we need to start a checklist and keep track of which breads are freaking and which ones are because we don't know and I'm sorry she just recognized this is something important if I had just walked into the store looked at the bread turned around and walked out if I had just not bought read there that doesn't communicate that signal okay if I simply never walked into that store at all I only walked into a vegan baking store and only bought bread there right so this question applies to other ethical problems linked to veganism I had one person ask me sincerely he we were speaking through boys daddy was like Skype you know and I could see him and here's why she was not joking she asked seriously should he refuse to buy almonds because indirectly farmers growing almonds are part and parcel of the honey industry they employ bees honey bees to pollinate the almond trees so on and so forth I'm sorry if I miss remember I believe that was example was almonds and I pointed out to him I said look when you refuse to buy meat when people don't buy meat that does send a signal okay but if the signal you want to send is that you want to buy almonds that are raised without bees being used for pollination or maybe it's even more specific maybe it's that you you you you're okay with bees for pollination but not for honey production you want non exploitative use of pollinators or something to make you know I don't know there are alternatives to be based pollination for those industries or if that is the signal you want to spend then it's like trying to influence the fashion industry to stop using emaciated models this is something so specific you cannot possibly communicate that simply through purchasing one product or refusing to purchase another the idealized outcome of people buying less and less cow milk and buying more and more soy milk oat milk oat milk is a big story this year 2019 this is near 2020 but 2019 was the year of oat milk in North America where the market exploded for this you know there's a very simple signal being sent through free market mechanisms people want less cow milk they want more soy milk oat milk non-dairy alternatives okay so everyone gets that that's clear but you can't address the use of bees in not farming not agriculture this way you can't address the use of animal by-products in recycling car tires this way okay the the creation of the rubbery mix that goes into car tires the creation of the the very strange mix of things that's in tarmac in road resurfacing to my knowledge again partly because it is so cheap they use some materials that are slaughterhouse byproducts you know that are I think it's bone meal and gelatin and stuff is churned up in some of these processes I'm not an expert if that is the issue you want to tackle again that would probably involve legislation or something there is no way you can communicate that by refusing to drive on a road you think you say oh I know that when this road was resurfaced they use bone meal or gel they used animal by-products in in paving this road whereas this other road it wasn't they just you know the company didn't that's not even an intentional choice obviously which is for Rovers no oh no no I'm not gonna buy these tires I'm gonna buy this tire for this reason there is no way the pricing mechanism or the boycott mechanism could possibly communicate that okay so ethical consumerism as a movement there's a problem with information both ways one problem is the consumer communicating information to the producer and the other frankly is the ignorance of the consumer himself or herself because people write in to me all the time about Nike shoes every single time I've addressed this I sent the person links to Nikes ethical commitments and the independent auditors I sit you didn't even google this Nike has one of the best records in the world here look okay Nike pioneered new methods of having independent auditors come in and look at you know human rights and quality of life in their factories and those reports are posted direct to the internet Nike doesn't get to a sense of them and when a factory is bad like they're treating their workers too poorly then they have a system where the the factory gets a couple months to try to improve conditions and they send people back in to inspect it and if the and improved it if they go past a point then they end all cooperation with that factory and they create a new factory or seconder Nike was a world leader in this and they're also a world leader in this kind of transparency so there's a problem with information going both ways there's the delusion that you as a consumer are communicating something meaningful to the producer and there's an even more dangerous ego trip that you as a consumer know more than the producer when you have never taken the time to really do research into for example factory conditions or into the ecological consequences some of these decisions people make there's actually a lot for you to know if you really want to engage in this religion of ethical consumerism I hear people all the time making very lazy claims about how plastic is destroying the world and if you just use Socratic method for a few moments okay so you're assuming there'd be less of a negative consequence if that were made of wood if that were made of steel what's that were made of glass really have you ever done the math have you ever looked that up no it would be a lot of work for you to know these things know you can probably tell I've done enough miscellaneous research in my life that I'm at least aware of these factors that actually very often plastic packaging is ethically superior and ecologically superior to the non plastic alternatives really I'm aware that sometimes a big corporation like Nike has much higher ethical standards and better conditions for workers in factories than a small mom-and-pop company that doesn't have any of this auditing any of these ethical commitments doesn't have any of any of this track record history and they don't of the budget even to to make these efforts to improve human rights and factories okay I'm aware of these contradictions cuz I've done social science research on a variety of things but even still I am aware that I can't know it all so my attitude even though yes I am a vegan and in some ways I do engage in ethical consumerism but I don't believe in it because I think there are dangerous delusions involved both in terms of what information I am communicating to the producer and in the assumptions about what I know from and about the producers as a consumer