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= Moral Culpability in Ethical Consumerism = Ethical Consumerism refers to the conscious decisions consumers make which integrate ethical factors into buying decisions (including environmental, labour, and political reasons). It asks the question of social responsibility when making a purchase from a company.

Ethical consumerism is form of political activism which a person makes through the goods that they purchase and the companies they purchase from. Consumers are able to support companies which have shared values with their own through financial purchases. Ethical consumerism provides consumers a platform to promote ethical change in product manufacturing and consumption which encourages companies to follow ethical practices both within and outside of the sphere of production. Through practices such as boycotting and buycotting, consumers can create strong impacts on a company’s revenue in hopes to change harmful practices and/or encourage ethical practices.

Moral culpability of ethical consumerism refers to the responsibility that a person has in the harmful effects of their consumption behaviours. Consumer behaviour has direct individual effects as well as peripheral indirect effects on the production and consumption cycle.

Varied levels of wrongdoing occur within the consumption cycle:


 * Wrongdoing during production: Ex. the slave labour of children in the Ivory Coast during chocolate production ; Sweatshop labour with physically demanding work and low pay in the garment production industry; Palm oil production which causes rainforest deforestation; Pollution to the environment caused by many factories emissions and chemical output
 * Wrongdoing in product marketing: Ex. advertising dangerous products to children (Joe Camel cigarettes, flavoured nicotine vaping devices)
 * Wrongdoing during product use: Ex. Lawn care products and equipment which damage the environment (pesticides, gas emissions)
 * Wrongdoing ancillary to the product: Connections a company or product has to an immoral thing which causes harm (Ex. not buying Dominoes pizza because the CEO is against abortion rights, not buying clothing made in unethical sweatshops)

Complicit Account vs. Causal Account
A person’s consumption habits can be directly or indirectly linked to the production cycle and outcome of harm. The causal account and the complicit account describe the different levels of responsibility a consumer has when making a purchase and how culpable they are for the harm caused by the purchase of a product or service.

Complicit Account
The complicit account makes a person morally complicit in a serious wrongdoing even if the person’s purchase makes no direct impact on the outcome of harm. There is a level of intentional participation, the consumer is aware that they supporting a practice in some way which causes harm, regardless of their participation in the direct cause. For example, if a person purchases chocolate bar with chocolate made by slave children in the Ivory Coast; they are complicit in the harm that the chocolate producers are causing. By making that purchase they are intentionally participating in the cycle of production of slave-made chocolate, and therefore aiding the production cycle to continue.

The act of consuming a product or service which causes harm makes a person accountable for the harm, whether participation is structured and causal or non-structured.

Based on Kutz’ Complicity Principle, “(Basis) I am accountable for what others do when I intentionally participate in the wrong they do or harm they cause. (Object) I am accountable for the harm or wrong we do together, independently of the actual difference I make.”

Causal Account
The causal account argues that a person’s actions must have a direct link to the harmful outcome in order to make a person culpable for the harm. As most single purchases do not have a direct impact on production, the consumer is not viewed as culpable for the overall wrongdoing. Using the example of a chocolate bar purchase made from child slaves in the Ivory Coast again, a consumer would not be found accountable through the causal account of being culpable for the harm caused. Because the chocolate in the chocolate bar has already been made through slave labour at the time of the purchase, the consumer’s purchase does not have an impact on the harm that has already been made.

Consequentialism
Consequentialism views a person’s individual actions related to the total outcome of harm. A single action can create a consequence of harm even if one person does make the total difference alone. If every outcome of harm has a total number of consumer actions needed to create a consequence, then it is simple a matter of collective actions to reproduce harm.

Collective Action
Every one consumer purchase is a fraction of the total number of purchases needed to cause consequential harm. Even if one can not see the direct harm caused by one act, that does not mean that the act does not cause harm or contribute to the large wrongdoing.

Example: If 100 purchases of a chocolate bar made from child slave labour are needed for a retailer to order an additional case of the same chocolate bars, then every single consumer purchase gets the store one fraction closer to placing another order.

Consumers may purchase an unethical products because they do not believe that their single purchase makes a consequential difference to the overall harm (because the item has already been purchased and the harm has been done). Through consequentialism it can be proven that these single purchases are an accounting formula which perpetuates the cycle of unethical labour and production. If 1,000 people think that their single purchase doesn’t matter, they are all collectively creating a need for the retailer to re-order 10 cases of chocolate.

Structure of Wrongdoing
The structure of wrongdoing relates to the collective (or lack of collective) decision making within participants. Moral harm can be caused as an intentional group effort, or a collection of individual acts.

Structured Wrongdoing
Active participation within an organization which makes a collective decision to act. For example, if a person participates in a group where all members act in a shared wrongdoing.

The Dresden firebombing of World War II is an example of structured wrongdoing. If bombing plane were to fly over the city and drop one bomb, it may not cause any substantial harm. But the collection of over 2,000 bombing planes and respective crews dropping thousands of bombs repeatedly over the city caused a huge amount of harm of damage and fatalities. Members of this structured wrongdoing were willingly participating in a known collective act.

Unstructured Wrongdoing
There is a lack collective decision making within participants of unstructured wrongdoings. These are typically people who act individually in wrongdoings which cause lesser singular harm (possibly due to a belief of low consequentialism).

Environmental damages caused by consumer products are a large example of the cumulation of unstructured wrongdoings which cause harm. Many consumers use products which damage the environment; such lawn machines which have non-filtered emissions, lawn fertilizers with harmful chemicals, and Freon coolant used in many air conditioners which causes damage to the Ozone. Because of the nature of unstructured wrongdoing, it can be challenging to get consumers to understand the magnitude of the cumulation of wrongdoing between individuals. Political intervention has proven to be an effective method in reducing unstructured wrongdoing. For example, due to government mandate, Freon coolants are being phased out of use due to the harm that they cause through contribution to global warming

Consumer Action
Collective consumer habits can contribute to the growth and/or decline the overall harm within the production and consumption cycle. Consumers who wish to reduce actions which harm others and cause moral offence may choose to change consuming habits.

Boycotting and buycotting are consumer actions which represent their support or opposition for specific products or companies. The purchasing power that consumers have can be effective in promoting ethical consuming and preventing overall harm by retailers and producers. Although one single consumer’s boycott or buycott may not have a noticeable impact on the overall outcome, it is the act of convincing other consumers to share the same habits which multiply and reduce wrongdoing.

Boycotting and buycotting are consumer actions which usually require consumers to be vocal about their choices in order to persuade other consumers to gain the same behaviours. This type of social activism attempts to create a type of collective decision making which makes stronger impacts on the overall harm caused by unethical production and retailing.

Boycotting
When a consumer deliberately does not make purchases of a specific product, brand, or retailer due to ethical wrongdoing, they are doing a boycott. The ethical wrongdoing may be for any reason at any point in the production, marketing, product use, or other association with the product or brand. Through the act of boycotting, the consumer is removing all financial support of the goods in order to prevent support to the wrongdoing.

In the example of chocolate production by child slaves in the Ivory Coast, a consumer boycott would involve the stoppage of purchase of any chocolate made in the Ivory Coast, and possibly by the companies who sell chocolate made under these unethical production methods.

Buycotting
When a consumer wants to support a product or company because they promote ethical acts, a consumer may do a buycott. Buycotting is when a consumer opts to purchase primarily from companies which represent a shared value with the consumer. This may be due to reasons such as (but not limited to) fair trade/ethical production values, environmentally conscious products, or shared political beliefs.

A chocolate consumer who is opposed to the unethical chocolate production in the Ivory Coast may wish to buycott chocolate from a brand which sources fair trade chocolate in their products. This way the ethical producer of fair trade chocolate receives support in the way of financial sales so that they can continue their operations. This way the company which produces fair trade products can thrive instead of the companies using unethical labour for their products.

Cocoa Production in the Ivory Coast
The unethical chocolate production on the Ivory Coast can be used as an example of the debate of moral culpability of ethical consumerism as it is such a large industry that many consumers participate in. Although child labour is illegal worldwide, children in the Ivory Coast are being sold as slaves to cocoa producing farms where they work as labourers for minimal pay and poor working conditions ( https://foodispower.org/human-labor-slavery/slavery-chocolate/ ). The Ivory Coast depends on cocoa as a large export value, and large chocolate corporations take advantage of the cheap labour and production costs which allow for this unethical labour to take place.

Consumers with knowledge about the child labour which takes place to produce their favourite chocolate products, and still continue to purchase these products are complicity accountable for the wrongdoing and harm being committed against the children labourers in the Ivory Coast. By intentionally making a purchase of these chocolate products, the consumer has agreed to support the company’s production choices and the harm that it causes. From a causal account viewpoint, a consumer purchasing one chocolate bar made from child labour would not be morally culpable for the harm caused. This is because the chocolate has already been produced under the unethical standards, and the retailer has already purchased the product; so the consumer is simply purchasing the end product, with no direct cause to the harm which was already caused.

When one approaches the consequentialist stance, as discussed in the respective section above, every consumer purchase cumulates to the total number of required purchases needed to cause another cycle of harm. When one compares this example to a physical example, the results are very apparent. For example, if one person walks across a field as a shortcut to get somewhere, it is unlikely that there will be any visible evidence of the route taken (even though there are surely many pieces of grass which have been broken and flattened). But if 50 people a day take the exact same shortcut through the field, the grass will eventually be flattened and stop growing in that path, and the route will be very visibly clear. This proves the consequentialist theory that every person’s purchase which supports harm may still cause consequences of harm even if the results are not immediately noticeable.

In the case of the consumers at the end of the retail cycle purchasing chocolate made from child labour in the Ivory Coast, they are participating in unstructured wrongdoing. There is no collective decision making, because purchases are made up of individual choices. This is why government intervention is required to prevent the wrongdoing of child labour to continue to occur in the Ivory Coast. The International Labour Organization is involved with the unethical labour occurring and has several articles outlining the attempts to reduce child labour in the Ivory Coast and around the world.

Consumer boycotts and buycotts are effective methods of consumer action to fight the use of child labour in chocolate production. There is a level of consumer knowledge and resources which are required to make ethical buying decisions. There are fair-trade companies which operate in an attempt to sell consumers ethical goods, but these items are typically more expensive because of the higher production costs (including a fair wage to cocoa farmers and workers). Boycotting harmful chocolate corporations which use unethical labour and in turn buycotting fair trade chocolate companies and products are effective consumer actions which can direct financial support and moral culpability away from harmful cycles of production which use corruption and exploitation and into the hands of companies and workers operating with ethical standards.