C'mon, is this a serious dilemma? I mean, there's more evidence than you could drive through showing that faced with the choice of making (potentially expensive) changes to working conditions or spinning, lying, running a smear campaign against undercover investigators etc. corporations will choose the latter. It's the cheapest, easiest option. And they are very good at it.

The important question here is - who should shoulder the burden of proof when substantiated, well-documented claims of exploitation are made - the employees or the corporation?

I argue the latter. Does this mean I will always be right? Of course not. But if I'm wrong in denying patronage all that suffers is a fraction of a fraction of that corporation's bottom line. But if I choose to carry on buying because the question of serious exploitation hasn't been proved to scientific standards and I'm wrong I could well play a role in someone's mistreatment or even death.



I really don't see why it should be a full-time job. Most people tend to buy the bulk of goods from well-established corporations and there is a wealth of easily accessible evidence for and against each of them - if you choose to look.

Of course, it's simply impossible to know everything. But this shouldn't stop us from trying at all.



Not buying from a ruthless corporation such as Nike when there are numerous alternative manufacturers is, I think, a relatively easy decision. But questions of individual morality become far more complex - often revealing the ugly ideological compromises one is willing to make - when you start talking about essential items from highly-uncompetitive markets such as oil or pharmaceuticals.

So, take BP for instance. Here is a corporation that is in dirty right up to its neck. Forget about polluting vast tracts of America's coastline because it failed to provide adequate safety precautions (btw, this wasn't the first blowout a BP rig experienced for precisely the same reasons). As heinous BP deeds go this wouldn't even make the top ten. Ditto Royal Dutch Shell whose war against Ken Saro Wiwa's Ogoni tribe in Nigeria (check out the thousands of affidavits - some from people connected to Shell - claiming it is complicit in mass murder) continues to rage. I couldn't even begin to list the evidence against Monsanto (the developers of Agent Orange, a substance it has never been held accountable for which is still killing people today).

All of the above provide essential goods that are very, very difficult to live without (petrol, plastics, energy, medicines, fertilisers, pesticides etc.) if we want to maintain our standard of living. There is no doubt they are derived by morally indefensible means and yet we turn a blind eye and buy anyway whilst, paradoxically, congratulating ourselves for not buying, say, Nike shoes because their activities are morally indefensible.

C'mon, is this a serious dilemma? I mean, there's more evidence than you could drive through showing that faced with the choice of making (potentially expensive) changes to working conditions or spinning, lying, running a smear campaign against undercover investigators etc. corporations will choose the latter. It's the cheapest, easiest option. And they are very good at it.

The important question here is - who should shoulder the burden of proof when substantiated, well-documented claims of exploitation are made - the employees or the corporation?

I argue the latter. Does this mean I will always be right? Of course not. But if I'm wrong in denying patronage all that suffers is a fraction of a fraction of that corporation's bottom line. But if I choose to carry on buying because the question of serious exploitation hasn't been proved to scientific standards and I'm wrong I could well play a role in someone's mistreatment or even death.



I really don't see why it should be a full-time job. Most people tend to buy the bulk of goods from well-established corporations and there is a wealth of easily accessible evidence for and against each of them - if you choose to look.

Of course, it's simply impossible to know everything. But this shouldn't stop us from trying at all.



Not buying from a ruthless corporation such as Nike when there are numerous alternative manufacturers is, I think, a relatively easy decision. But questions of individual morality become far more complex - often revealing the ugly ideological compromises one is willing to make - when you start talking about essential items from highly-uncompetitive markets such as oil or pharmaceuticals.

So, take BP for instance. Here is a corporation that is in dirty right up to its neck. Forget about polluting vast tracts of America's coastline because it failed to provide adequate safety precautions (btw, this wasn't the first blowout a BP rig experienced for precisely the same reasons). As heinous BP deeds go this wouldn't even make the top ten. Ditto Royal Dutch Shell whose war against Ken Saro Wiwa's Ogoni tribe in Nigeria (check out the thousands of affidavits - some from people connected to Shell - claiming it is complicit in mass murder) continues to rage. I couldn't even begin to list the evidence against Monsanto (the developers of Agent Orange, a substance it has never been held accountable for which is still killing people today).

All of the above provide essential goods that are very, very difficult to live without (petrol, plastics, energy, medicines, fertilisers, pesticides etc.) if we want to maintain our standard of living. There is no doubt they are derived by morally indefensible means and yet we turn a blind eye and buy anyway whilst, paradoxically, congratulating ourselves for not buying, say, Nike shoes because their activities are morally indefensible.