I've been chewing this over since Burglar's reply to my original post (and here on The Bourgeois Burglars) and not yet had the time to post again on this. Thanks to Burglar, we know already that the Philosopher says
“the generous person, then, will give for the sake of the beautiful, and in the right way, for it goes along with right giving that it be to whom and as much as and when one ought” and “it is most definitely characteristic of a generous person to go to excess in the giving, so that less is left for himself, for not looking out for oneself is part of being generous.”
At the same time, Burglar comments:
“whether or not you are completely virtuous is not entirely up to your will. For example, a person who is wealthier than you will be able to exercise the virtue of generosity more than you. But it seems you can still be generous, though perhaps not as often since you must also be prudent.”
So an Aristotle-inspired consumer ethics seems then to have four considerations or aspects (if we take “giving” as also applying to “paying”):
- Buy for the sake of the beautiful - This involves having a proper esteem for the object or service prior to purchasing it. This would forbid (generally) buying something shoddy, as well as a mindless materialism aimed vaguely at buying 'the next thing' or the newest gadgets, slavishly following the latest fashions. Questions to consider here would be focused mainly on the worth and nature of the object/service: is it well-made or well-designed, what kind of life does it encourage or discourage, what kind of virtuous action does it enable, is it aesthetically beautiful, etc.
- Pay whom you ought - For consumer ethics, this seems to concern issues of justice and accountability, giving your money to the proper person. Forbidden here is paying Peter for something Paul owns, obviously. It arguably involves a concern that your payment benefit those most concerned with the creation of the beautiful object/service. Questions to consider here would focus around the seller: does this seller own the object and therefore have a right to my payment (or does someone else?), what part does this seller play in the creation of the object/service, does this seller take responsibility for the quality of this object/service, can I purchase from another seller who does, etc. Even more arguably this could involve a consideration of what the seller then does with your payment, and this is where the logic of boycotting may come in. Or perhaps Aristotle would pshaw at a boycott? Burglar???
- Pay when you ought - This seems to me likely to involve issues of proper payment on the buyer's part. In other words, having acquired a good/service, it is vicious to avoid or delay paying unnecessarily or arbitrarily. Writing bad checks is an obvious (and illegal) example of violating this principle, but other areas to consider might be abusing lines of credit or delaying prompt payment of bills even within legal bounds (e.g. waiting until the last minute to pay that bill for no practical reason). More thorny issues might involve the use of financing (which does usually benefit the seller, but is arguably not a virtuous economic system - see Jubilee Papers Biblical prohibition of interest, and again here, or on limited liability and debt, and on Christian investing, which is a slightly different application but I think still relevant). Questions to consider (besides those of basic legality) would then be, can I pay promptly for this object/service, do I need this object/service enough to justify credit or fincancing, am I responsible about paying my bills on time, etc.
- Pay as much as you ought (with self-forgetful excess where prudence allows) - I think this is likely the trickiest one, this balance of self-forgetful generousity and prudence. Perhaps it might involve choosing to live below your means in order to enable self-forgetful generousity within prudential bounds? For example, if we spend $15 less than we could every week on food, we can self-forgetfully throw a few excessive dinner parties a month! Does that count? This may also mean paying as much as I am willing (see below for more) for an object, rather than waiting for it to go on sale for less. I wonder too if this can line up with the To Whom aspect to prompt the question, am I paying as much as I ought to the producer of an object/service? By purchasing from another seller, can I pay more generously a producer of a beautiful object/service?
And with that in mind, let's go back to the original questions
- By spending only 85 bucks for years of aid in chopping and slicing by a well-made machine, do I dishonor the labor, both manual and intellectual, that went into its production?
It seems not necessarily, if my esteem for the object is proper and I am operating within the contraints of justice and accountability as well as within those that prudence places upon the impulse to excess within the virtue of generousity. However, in this particular case, I would have been willing (and able) to pay more without imprudent excess - 40 bucks ain’t gonna burst the budget - so was I indeed vicious after all? Should I not send in the mail-in rebate form for that extra $20 off?
- In demanding the lowest price possible, the "steal", the bargain basement blowout, am I buying virtuously?
- If I wait to buy an item until the retailer is desperate to dump extra merchandise, am I doing something akin to blackmail?
Again, it's the fourth consideration -- excess and prudence -- that is coming into play here, and it depends on my motivation for seeking lower prices, which itself depends upon circumstances somewhat outside of my control (my own wealth) or constrained by other choices for other aims. However, both of these are still problematic if I can afford the higher price and have high esteem for the item.
- Should I insist on paying at least the cost of production when searching for my bargains?
This question is really too simplistic, because it assumes I can know the cost of production for an item and doesn’t take into account well enough how production and distribution work. It needs to be better articulated. I think this is also where the Philosopher may not be able to help as significantly, because of differences between our global economic systems and his. Now obviously trade wasn't only local for Aristotle, but the global dimension of trade has increased dramatically in the last two centuries, as well as the industrialization of production, even of agricultural products. As a result of this globalization (which I'm not assuming is evil, by the way), the networks of production and distribution are much more complex. Most problematic for me is the alienation of the buyer from the producer of the good/service, which chips at accountability on both ends: the accountability to provide beautiful or worthy goods/services and the accountability to properly pay or even reward those who provide such goods. It's harder to disclaim accountability for sweatshops in a village economy, for example. There's no going back, of course, so the tough questions really are how to keep relational accountability between buyers and producers in a global economy, when there are multiple layers of sellers between me and the farmer in Brazil who cultivated the banana I had for lunch. When many of those sellers are essentially middlemen, who add little to no value to the object, do they really remove ethical accountability to producers from the buyers, or do they transform it? Key to this is the (I think) 20th century concern with
process (both in art and in philosophy, at least) - is it ok to buy a beautiful object from a legal seller when part of the process of getting the item to me involved injustice or a culpable lack of generousity?
That's all for now...! Further insights on this matter are super-welcome. In the meantime, the snowfall outside has lessened so that I no longer fear to venture forth, so away to work I go.
