It’s no secret: We live in a capitalist society. We are consumers who exchange currency for products and services from private companies competing in a free market. It’s also no secret that most of these companies have their sights set only on profit. The recent price increase for Xbox’s Game Pass, Nintendo’s claim to the patent for all turn-based monster battle games and YouTube’s increasingly encroaching ad policies are appalling acts — but not surprising. We have become accustomed to these outrageous acts by companies. After all, their decisions are out of our control. The most we can do is petition, protest and campaign while boycotting the unethical companies, making ourselves ethical consumers.
While these measures are very effective, we have to remember true ethical consumption is a myth. You often hear the phrase “no ethical consumption under capitalism,” but these words do not capture the weight of these ethical violations and how they have infiltrated the system. Almost all products that we consume in everyday life are inherently connected to despicable practices. This is something I’ve seen myself; when a group of friends and I decided we would boycott Target, for example, we found ourselves struggling to find another store that hasn’t had a problematic track record. What’s worse, the products sold by them often come from shady suppliers, too. The more I looked into it, the more depressing it was. Just how deep does this go?
Let’s begin with food. Many of us consume meats like beef, pork and poultry often, as well as animal products like milk and eggs. The farm industry’s practices alone are enough to make your stomach churn, though they may not be surprising. According to the Animal Welfare Institute, factory farms often confine their animals to enclosures so small that they are unable to move or comfortably turn, causing high stress levels and an increased chance for sickness and infections. Additionally, in the same article, it lists that the painful ailments that selective breeding of animals has caused livestock. Cows carry more weight in milk than their legs can sustain. Chickens grow their muscles so rapidly that their organs fail to catch up. Pigs, bred for leaner meat, are more easily stressed.
How’s clothing, then? The fashion industry is no better, for its workers or for you. Clothing brands rely on overseas factories for many of their products, and workers in those factories often go underpaid and overworked. Nike, for example, actively underpaid more than 400,000 workers in over a thousand factories in Karnataka, India. Another offender favored by many is Shein. Its cheap prices come with inhumane working conditions, such as 75 hour shifts, wage theft and unsafe work environments. This also comes at a cost to consumers: an inspection in South Korea discovered toxic chemicals several hundred times over the legal limit within the clothes. The additional air pollution are just the bloody cherry on top.
The list continues, from producers of physical products to digital. Social media companies like Meta (owner of Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, etc.) are already infamous for their violations of privacy. Layoffs due to AI and other reasons continue to grow. Many companies reportedly enable Israel’s genocide in Gaza with their services, most of which also provide common goods and services to regular consumers. Though people may call out these companies from time to time and organize against them, most of the time we simply go on despite knowing just what our money is going to.
So is this it? Are we doomed to always be complicit in human rights abuses and environmental cruelty as long as we are reliant on capitalism? Have I written this article simply to depress you out of your mind with the world’s horrors?
Well, no. There is something we can do, even if it seems like nothing we do will work. For starters, boycotts have impact. It can seem insignificant, especially when it’s a huge company, but by spreading the word and encouraging others to buy more ethically minded alternatives, eventually we can send a message to these companies and force them to respond. We can also support local businesses that are transparent about their practices, write petitions, attend protests and educate others.
That being said, complacency is understandable. The companies I’ve listed provide very convenient — and often cheap— goods and services in comparison to local businesses. Less sustainable goods are sometimes more accessible. Furthermore, the influence these companies have on our lives, whether it be upfront advertisement or simple reputation, can push us towards buying into their narrative (and their goods) very easily. The capitalist claw sinks so much deeper than we can imagine, so that even the best of us are prone to slip. But that’s not solely a failure on us — it’s a failure of the whole system, inside and out. We have to fight it from the ground up and can start from the smallest of things — go to a thrift store. Choose the Green Bean instead of Starbucks. We can find options that are affordable and ethical. We can do better — we must.
I didn’t write this article to make you feel hopeless. I wrote it to remind you what we’re fighting, and why we should keep fighting. It can be so easy to see the world as a hopeless place beyond saving — but hope is what changes things. We have to believe we can change and to hope for that change, or nothing will. We can put these horrible practices to rest. In the meantime, start by learning about what you consume.
Contact Felix Yi at fyi@oxy.edu
