Goodness and the Global Consumption Economy

The global consumption based free market economy is the most efficient system the world has so far devised for creating, allocating and distributing wealth, and with it the economic opportunity that is fundamental to individual and collective prosperity. When we speak of “growth” in an economy, we are speaking of an increase in the sum total of goods and services traded within it. Growth fuels job and wealth creation which in turn fuels an increase in demand for goods and services. A virtuous circle is thus established by way of which demographic growth can be harnessed to fuel an increase in human prosperity and well-being rather than leading to a Malthusian nightmare.

There can be no doubt that in its overall conception, the global consumption based free market economy is a “good”. For confirmation, one need look no further than the increase in well-being of hundreds of millions of inhabitants of India, China and Asia who have been lifted out of poverty in the last thirty years. But as we make our own, individual consumption choices, we should be mindful of ways in which consumption can result in harmful consequences, and try to weigh these fairly into our decisions.

First among these is the limitation of the earth’s resources. We can no longer simply take from the earth any and everything we want to convert to our purposes. For the first time in mankind’s history, we are now at risk of exhausting many of the resources that support our current consumption patterns. Simple examples include over fishing of species like cod and ocean sea bass. A more complex example is greenhouse gas emissions and the multiple risks associated with climate change. Still more complex are the impacts of habitat loss and accelerating rate of species extinction due to the encroachment of human activity and toxic waste disposal both on land and, perhaps even more worrisomely, in the oceans. And finally the global supply of fresh water, the essence of all living things, is under threat due to overconsumption, waste, poor management, pollution and climate change. Surely it is irresponsible to make a consumption decision without reflecting on its impact in each of these areas. Philalethes believes it is our duty to educate ourselves and others so that consumption choices can be ever more informed. Most importantly, we must discipline ourselves to use the information we have to correctly weight our choices. If, for example, I buy a cotton T-Shirt, I should at least have some understanding of where the cotton came from: in many cases cotton growing, which is extremely water intensive, threatens groundwater resources and puts populations at risk of water shortages. I should also understand how much pollution was created in the dying process. Unsustainable dumping of chemical dyes into rivers and lakes is responsible for increasing groundwater poisoning in much of the developing world, in particular India and China. And I should understand the carbon footprint associated with manufacturing and transporting the T-shirt to market. In many cases the manufacturing process will involve significant carbon intensity due to the use of dirty coal to produce electricity. Of course, the longer the distance goods are transported the higher their carbon footprint. And lastly, but perhaps most importantly, I should ask myself if I really need to buy the T-shirt at all. A moment’s reflection on the choice of T-shirts already available in my wardrobe can make all the difference, as can a moment’s reflection on why I want to buy the T-shirt in the first place. Do I really need it or am I just reacting to an impulse created by the relentless bombardment of advertising and marketing directed to making me believe I need it?

The second area in which consumption choices can support harmful consequences relates to fairness and disparity. Philalethes believes that the increase in disparity that has resulted from the expansion of the global consumption based free market economy and the increase in unfairness and injustice that result are amongst the greatest threats to humanity’s welfare in the 21st Century. Poverty, disease and illiteracy are all antithetical to the “good”. Their increase drives an increase in the quantum of human misery, and represent a decrease in the “quantum of goodness” delivered by a free market economy. The reason this occurs is precisely because a free market is free. Not all human action is good or well intentioned. Greed drives market participants to exploit opportunities for enrichment that often involve serious harm to others. One need only think of child labor, slave labor, prison labor, sweatshops, diamond and gold mining in sub-Sahara Africa, poppy cultivation in central Asia, coca production in Latin America and the many tainted food and drug scandals from BSE in Europe and America to melamine tainted baby milk in China to get a sense of how all too frequently greed for power and profit trumps human goodness in the global free market for goods and services. In more subtle ways, the tendency of markets to reward price efficiency often leads to the concentration of market power in the hands of a small number of large, industrial players. This in turn can lead to procurement and production practices that, whilst they result in cheaper goods and services, in fact contribute directly to an increase in disparity by depriving primary producers of a fair market for their goods or labor. Philalethes believes that in relation to questions of fairness and disparity one’s consumption choices are in effect powerful “voting rights” which can be deployed to support an increase in the “quantum of goodness” and to diminish the economic reward and incentive towards unfair and unjust market practices. Again, it is the duty of each of us to ask and answer the question as to the ethical content of goods and services offered to us and to avoid casting our vote in support of bad practices simply to benefit from a lower price.

Philalethes recognizes that the principal limitation to our ability to consume consciously is the availability of the information necessary to properly inform our analysis and assign an appropriate weight to the “goodness” of a particular choice. After all, one can give a lot of thought to what kind of automobile one should purchase, but there is only so much time one can sensibly devote to pondering an individual supermarket purchase! Given the millions of available product and service choices, the task of analyzing their “quantum of goodness” is daunting. One way Philalethes would like to consider is whether a “wiki” approach could be used. A “wiki” is a type of web page designed so that its content can be edited by anyone who accesses it, using a simplified markup language. The most successful example of its use is of course “Wikipedia”, which is an ever expanding encyclopedia of received human knowledge, and possibly one of the most important developments in the history of civilization since Diderot, D’Alembert and the encyclopedists of the Enlightenment. Could a site be created where, eventually, every individual product and service choice could be catalogued, the quantum of associated goodness analyzed and evaluated, and the choice assigned a recommended “mark-up” or “discount” factor by caring netizen consumers all around the world? A choice that increases the quantum of goodness would be assigned a price discount, meaning that a conscious consumer should consider that the true price he pays for the particular good or service relative to competitive choices is lower than the nominal price when one gives an appropriate credit for the positive “quantum of goodness” in the choice. Similarly, goods that diminish the “quantum of goodness” would be assigned a percentage mark-up, meaning that the true price of making the choice should be considered higher than the nominal price when the cost of the choice in terms of reduction in the “quantum of goodness” is properly taken into account. Choices as between comparable goods and services could be assessed by comparing prices that reflect the externalities implied in the choice. There are already a number of net based and NGO sponsored resources in existence that could be drawn on for such a task, such as carbon footprint calculators and fair trade organizations. Philalethes looks forward to thoughts and ideas on the creation of a “Conscious Consumption” Wiki from people more knowledgeable in the ways and potential of the internet than himself…
…