NEWS: Socially Responsible Shopping Grows Up

cool. will i be able to afford socially responsible products?

Well, economists say that a rational person armed with perfect information will always make the right economic decision for him or herself. I hope that part of that rationality includes caring about the social policies and impacts of companies.

I can now find out the environmental impact of my Etnies... sweet!

Great link! Thanks.

That's more or less a tautological statement. When an economist says it or anyone else does.

This is where people's "preferences" come in. More and more people are thinking this kind of thing matters.

It's only a tautology if you believe that one thing automatically leads to another. I don't believe in either a perfectly rational human being or the possibility of perfect information, nor do I believe that most buying decisions are made rationally anyway.

I agree, but in my current mental state I have little faith in people making choices that would inconvenience them or cost them even a little extra money. But maybe I have too little faith.

OK, let's split the philosophical question from the empirical one.

It's tautological precisely in that it is not causal. It's definitional.

A "rational actor" is one who makes the best decisions from themselves, given their available options and the best information available. That's the kind of working definition that "rational actor theorists" (whether economists, sociologists or political scientists) would employ.

When you say "I don't believe in either a perfectly rational human being ...nor do I believe that most buying decisions are made rationally", you almost certainly have a much more restrictive definition of "rationality" than a typical rational actor theorist would.

Now to the empirical question.

People are already starting to vote with their feet regarding "fair trade coffee" and "free range eggs" and so on. These are decisions where political ethics are tangibly affecting personal preferences.

Let's see where it goes form here. Further provision of information is a key part of this process, of course.

yeah, but amazon quite often has the same type of product listed by two different suppliers at two different prices.

I think his point was that now that he has a way of knowing which is the socially responsible product, will he be able to shop with his conscience or still need to shop with his wallet...

To be fair to commonman, I think his point is that if one utilises this information based on ethical/political considerations, one might decide to switch to more ethical (and less cheap) products because the cheap producer of mp3 players is exploiting Namibian goat-herders or something.

So, at some point, a choice has to be made about whether to shell out for the free-range fair-trade no-sweatshop unionised-labour health-care-plan-offering mp3 player.

I think that's the point anyway.

They're actually doing a great thing. It's a beautiful bit of detournement, really - taking the Amazon selection and subjecting it to user-defined social and ecological responsibility criteria. It's very fledgling, but will grow grow grow if people support the concept. Ideally, it's a concept that will be copied far and wide, adding powerful pressure to manufacturers and providing a more level playing field for small producers who make the effort to do things "the right way."
.

Right.

I'm thinking back to the thread where Monastrell was arguing that restaurants shouldn't be regulated regarding food quality (as in, safety).

The libertarian argument is that food providers have an incentive to maintain quality standards, without need for costly regulation.

Now I think where the possibility exists of sudden and undetectable changes in food quality with possible implications for human health, some official regulation and legal penalty is required.

But this is a good case where a non-governmental approach to oversight is likely to be the way to go, and it'll be interesting to see how this all plays out over time.

[Edited on Aug 24, 2005 by TheFuckOffKid]

I am proud to be one of the founders of alonovo.com, and very excited to see this discussion thread.

We are hoping to eliminate as many barriers to an informed, compelling and comprehensive experience as we can, and indeed as Bean mentioned earlier, we have really taken our first step in what is an amazing opportunity to improve the quality of many people's lives. By creating a large, apolitical (thus not strategically segmented and polarized as the American community is now) informed marketforce demand, we can catalyze and accelerate what has been called 'a race to the top' among business.

As we have all noted over the past several years, we cannot rely on government to properly regulate, administer and enforce corporate behavior to counterbalance the externalization of business costs to society -which further consolidates wealth and power to the top.

We believe that people want to do the right thing. We see evidence of that all the time during tragedies and emergencies. I left a (generally) wonderful career at Oracle behind because I know so many people that felt powerless to stop the plundering of our resources, the sewage dumped in our rivers and oceans, the mining and clearcutting of our forests and attempts at drilling and mining in natural areas of pristine beauty. In many discussions with people across political ideologies, one thing became very clear -you do not have to be a green or democrat to want a blue sky and a clear, refreshing toxin-free glass of water from the tap. We all want better lives for ourselves, families and loved ones. We believe it is not about red or blue -it is about money, period.

With an amazing team of superheroes we set out with the understanding that whether our votes are counted or not -our debits and credits most certainly resonate loudly.

Anyway -great discussion and I am happy to answer questions from the SG community about our work and plans, and happy to feedback to our engineering team suggestions and recommendations.

--George Polisner
http://www.alonovo.com

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Best first post ever.





Welcome to SG, George, and thanks for putting out such a great service.

darn, i didn't intend to post it multiple times. sorry about that folks!

good thing the core engineering team (superheroes -i swear!) is working on the complexities of alonovo.com -and not me

--george

So, who wants to take bets on how long it is before bean gets a creative coding streak, doesn't sleep for a week, and cranks out something that performs this function?

He does crap like that. I'm serious.