BUILDING THE MOVEMENT

Getting Proactive: Ethical Consumption

Unified boycott efforts represent only the first level of an expanding unified economic strategy. Boycotts are - as are most forms of protest -ultimately a reactionary approach, reacting to various harmful corporate practices and altering individual corporate practices without really changing the system. But when enough individuals mobilize, we can become a sizeable economic force. Rather than merely responding to corporate misbehavior, participants can get proactive, and begin dictating terms to the corporate world.

Instead of asking corporations 'what are you doing for my hair' or 'my sense of style,' economic activists can begin to ask them 'what are you doing for my concerns, my values, my environment?' When consumers demand convenience and affordability over all other considerations, they will get convenient and affordable products at the expense of other interests. If we make our ethical values and social concerns into market values, comparable to or of even greater importance than price, style, and quality, then corporations will begin to cater to that new set of demands. Corporations really have nothing against being good and moral. But because producing safer goods and products of a higher quality is more expensive, it can be costly to be ethical. Yet, if we want to see our values reflected in our society, we should be willing to invest in them.

The concept is already growing. Many people now look for cruelty-free cosmetics, dolphin-safe tuna, ozone-friendly sprays, organic foods, song- bird friendly coffee, fair trade coffee, recycled content paper products, sweatshop-free clothing, and non-genetically-modified foods. WalMart is now carrying more products made in the U.S. due to its perception that its customers want American-made goods. The fact that over 80 percent of all cosmetics and toiletry companies no longer test on animals is testament to the power of consumer values. And the reason more stores are carrying more organic produce is simply because people are buying more of it.

That the concept of consumer responsibility will grow and expand is inevitable. For supporters, every purchase becomes an opportunity to take part in rolling back corporate power. Since we've "consumed" our way into so many problems, it only makes sense that to rid ourselves of these problems we will have to re-evaluate and alter our consumption. Already, growing numbers of organizations are devoted specifically to the addressal of lifestyle changes in our capacity as consumers: voluntary simplicity, socially responsible investment, green business, and an ongoing boom in consumer boycotts. The proliferation across the country of "green" alternative directories, alternative currencies, barter fairs, and other promising endeavors all indicate the direction and potential for this new movement.

Corporations want us to believe that their economic power (and ours) are somehow not indicative of political power. But it is apparent that where we put our economic power has enormous social, environmental, and political consequences. Still, people generally don't realize that every time they make a purchase they are, in a very real way, endorsing, reinforcing, legitimizing and helping to determine a corporation's policies and practices. We can tell a corporation very loudly that we don't like what it is doing, but as long as we continue to purchase its products, we are essentially telling them that they are doing everything right. Corporations make decisions based upon numbers, not ethical appeals.

Within the present corporate system, it pays to be bad, irresponsible, and destructive insofar as such behavior promotes the corporate well-being, does not put the corporation at unacceptable levels of risk, and does not provoke a negative consumer response. This isn't because all bad behavior is inherently more profitable. Rather, it is that good behavior tends to be more expensive. Being good costs. Overall, behaving in ways that benefit society are more costly than behavior that is harmful. Providing fair compensation to workers, being a good environmental steward, staying out of self-serving politics, accurately representing a product or service to consumers - all tend to entail greater financial costs to the corporation. If ethical behavior were just as financially rewarding as unethical behavior, every corporation would likely be an angel, and social and global problems would be much closer to being resolved. The problem is that there are too many instances when it simply pays better to be bad, and pays much much better to be very very bad.

For too many years, we have paid corporations to be bad. They did bad things, and we rewarded them by buying their products. They did more bad things; we bought more of their products. There has been a disconnect between our spending and our values, and we have a world of problems and powerful corporations to show for it. But if we begin to make that connection, en masse, we can begin to reverse some of these problems. We can begin to pay corporations to be good. It is quite simple. If we truly respect our values and concerns, we will have to pay for them. If we are willing to pay for flavor and style, why shouldn't we be willing to pay for human rights?

CORPORATE AMORALITY

Imagine your purchases this way: that for everything you buy, you are, in effect, hiring someone to create it for you. Say you are buying a shirt. When asked whether you want it sewn with child slave labor, you would say no. When asked whether you want it made from cotton sprayed with pesticides that are polluting a town's drinking water, you would say no. For too many years, corporations have only been giving people the price without telling them all the other associated environmental and human costs.

Part of the problem is that we have the expectation that corporations should behave responsibly, and make ethical choices just like the rest of us. Corporations should simply know, like the rest of us, not to engage in such morally bankrupt behavior. We shouldn't need them to ask us if we want something made with child labor. And we shouldn't have to tell them. Corporations are comprised of people, and they should know better. They should operate with some scruples. But sadly, corporations can't do that. The corporate system is not set up that way. In corporate behavior, the standards of normal human behavior do not apply. While everyone in the corporation is accountable in economic terms, there is no ethical accountability.

Corporations and their managers have one overriding goal: for the corporation to survive. The shareholders have one overriding goal: for the value of the corporation to grow in order that their investments increase in value. Where do ethics enter in? The shareholders are simply interested in numbers and are largely unaware of how the corporations they own behave. Many buy and sell based solely on numbers. The corporate management is hired to protect and improve the value of the investment. Management, too, is ultimately concerned only with numbers: production figures, costs, sales, profits, market share, stock value. Lower management: the same story, and on down the line. So where do ethics enter in?

Corporate Survival Or Human Survival?

But people have ethics, right? Ethics should be inherent in all corporate decisions made by corporate decision-makers. So why aren't they? Ultimately, it is because all corporate decisions are answerable to the shareholders who do not look at the ethics behind why their stock may be doing well or poorly -most only look at numbers. As a result, a corporation that focuses more on numbers than on ethics is more likely to attract shareholders. A corporation that focuses on ethics will lose shareholders. Because all these corporations are competing to hold onto shareholders and to attract new ones, those practices that attract the most shareholders will become the dominant model that most corporations will seek to emulate. In this world, managers who raise stock value through environmentally and socially destructive policies often rise to the top.

While a good deed here and there is not likely to bring down a corporate giant, placing other concerns above corporate concerns cannot become a habit. Over the long term, ethical compromises can undermine the corporate position. Managers who would regularly, or even occasionally, factor in ethical considerations will eventually lose ground to those who never place anything above the short-term corporate interests. Conscientious leaders would be replaced by those who will plow ahead at any non-economic cost. Otherwise the corporation stands to be put out of business or taken over by others more focused upon their own survival.

Industry publications routinely portray the corporate world as a dark and dangerous jungle full of toothy predators, or as an ocean teaming with hungry sharks. Corporations that don't exploit efficiently will be displaced by those that do. Those that exploit efficiently will be replaced by those that exploit more efficiently.

In this world, where corporate survival is an ongoing struggle to attract shareholders, ethics are not selected traits. Corporations have evolved in a world where the most ruthless, most cut-throat competitor comes out on top. And most corporate management is composed of people who have no misgivings about working in such an amoral environment. Since growth is the driving force that promotes corporate survival, growth can become its own end, in and of itself. Because ethics are a negative trait in this environment, they can only have value as costs or benefits.