[orange character is smiling smugly, doing a finger gun, in front of the “1860 WEEKLY SLAVE MARKET” in which a crowd of people are browsing slaves, while some slaves ask “please help…”]
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism bro, everything is equally bad
I won’t stop buying slaves until the state compels me not to, until then to each their own and let’s agree to disagree and I’ll have you know my family needs their labor
It’s great that you can live without slaves though, keep being an anti-slavery activist it’s awesome!
You’re the best!
IDK, but not havig a slave is easy. Now try the same with products that are harder to live without such as food (there’s a reason, why thecbros making it near impossible to opt out from AI).
Food is a great example of this meme actually. I’ve seen this exact argument (no ethical consumption) used many times by ‘leftists’ to try to justify consuming the flesh of the victims of horrific torture and suffering inflicted by the animal agriculture industry.
Yeah but this also works on a lot of vegan substitutes and staples.
Quinoa is a good example in that its popularity amongst american vegans and health food enjoyer’s (myself included) caused damages to local food supplies in poorer countries. Forcing south american and I think African communities to consume shitty processed flour with little to know access to the same nutrients and proteins of quinoa.
TBH, I don’t know how bad this still is, I haven’t followed it for a while. But the point I think is that the industrial scale food production chain is always going to be questionable ethically.
And if you chose the local only route of going to farmers markets only you’re probably limiting yourself to the point of risking malnutrition on a vegan diet (love my local FM, but they do not have beans in the quantity I eat them) and, based on my interactions with all the Kentucky Farmers I’ve met, you’re probably financially supporting a fascism supporter.
The point of “No ethical consumption” I think has always been that things are very complicated supply chain wise and it will take a LOT of work to beat the system. I believe that was intended to make the people trying feel better when they can’t possibly beat the system. But you’re right, people take it to an extreme and justify not even trying.
There’s a “The Good Place” moment where a guy gets sent to the Bad Place for buying flowers for his dying mom. The joke being that the flowers were harvested by slaves and flown on a plane causing un told pollution (I never actually watched the show, just saw the clip on a meme board at some point). But that’s the consequences of “doing good” under capitalism. We just don’t know how bad it is to do good all the time.
Adopting a mindset to reduce the amount of risky consumption is more effective than avoiding it at any cost.
I can’t count how many times I’ve seen a ‘leftist’ try to shoehorn this into anarchist or Communist discussions