Boy, This Behaving Ethically Stuff Can Be HARD

Mostly because it's so hard to be 100% sure that my behavior really is ethical.

The truth of the matter is, since my name isn't Mohammed (praise be he), Jesus, or the Buddha, it's a safe bet that my behavior will never be 100% ethical. That doesn't give me license to throw my hands up in the air and say, "If I can't be perfect, why should I bother?" That would be like saying, "Since I had an extra cookie for dessert today, which isn't on my diet, I'm a total failure, so I think I'll just go eat a pint of ice cream."

I've been thinking about this since the weekend, when I read not one, but two, reviews in the New York Times of the same book, Cheap: The High Cost of Discount Culture, by Ellen Ruppel Shell (the Sunday business section review, by Devin Leonard, is here; the Monday arts section review, by Janet Maslin, is here).

Ms. Ruppel Shaw's argument is that we as consumers are so fixated on getting the best possible "deal", by which we mean only that the price is a low as possible, we consumers are responsible for companies behaving unethically. We are the reason for a lower standard of living in the U.S., as jobs have moved overseas to keep labor costs low; we are the reason for environmental damage around the world. She cites as examples Wal-Mart's underpayment of workers, Red Lobster's support of Thai shrimp farms (which have been accused of severe environmental degradation, along with other lapses), IKEA's use of wood from Eastern Europe (where, according to some estimates, as much as half of all logging is illegal), and so on.

Her solution is a consumer revolution, in which we would make our purchase decisions match our principles.

In principle, I'm 100% in support of that solution.

So what's the problem?

Leonard, in his review, notes that this will be hard, especially in a recession. Anyone who still has a "real" job is worried about it, and there are millions of people in this country alone who would be thrilled to have a real job whose security they could then worry about. In that environment, even more than usual, every penny counts. In that environment, how much more am I willing to pay for the certified-organic fair-trade coffee?

Maslin, in her review, points out that Ruppel Shaw is quick to lay blame, but doesn't look at herself as closely as she does at others, or isn't as knowledgeable as she thinks she is: "At the end of a chapter largely devoted to the horrors of Asian shrimp farming, she describes being in a Red Lobster restaurant with friends and being enlightened enough to eschew cheap shrimp in favor of chicken. Yet cheap chicken-farming isn't any less ghastly. It just doesn't happen to be addressed in this book."

So, I hope Ms. Ruppel Shaw is right, and that we can wean ourselves away from the "and it was so cheap!" mentality. And I hope that every time we find out that our "ethical purchase" wasn't quite as ethical as we thought it was, we won't give up the effort. We'll just be a little more careful next time.