I'm doing a business degree at university. This basically means that I get fed ideologies of the corporate world on a daily basis. This has been going on for two and a half years.
I remember a business ethics lecture in marketing I had in first year. Our lecturer that semester was a former marketing executive at Woolworths. He had a lifetime of knowledge about product development, placement, marketing, and all the rest of it.
With his years of experience in such a well-respected and industry leading company, he must have seen himself as the perfect moral voice to conduct a lecture such as this.
The lecturer came across as an extremely intelligent man. The kind of businessman who was not all business. In fact, I now remember, he had gone back to uni after retirement and completed some form of ethics and morality course.
As I saw it, the lecture he put forward was a defence of the current framework of corporation/consumer relations. Which is more or less tied to what is presently understood as capitalism.
He said that businesses were justified, ethically justified, in bringing products to market if they maintained that they were producing things that people wanted.
Satisfying wants was a morally indestructible business operation. Furthermore, 'proof of want' was determined by the purchase choices of consumers. If you bought it, you must have wanted it.
It was ethically ok to market junk food, because people bought junk food, thus they wanted junk food, and vice versa.
Now, a couple of days ago, I watched the now infamous film, Supersize Me. More than just proving a point about the detrimental effects of living off junk food, the movie ignites a significant question about the ethical validity of capitalism.
A fundamental law of capitalism: the individual has the right to choose. When I think about this sentence I am reminded of Homer in the 'Bart Gets an Elephant' Simpson's episode:
Marge: I really think this is a bad idea.
Homer: Marge, I agree with you -- in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory.
Well, I think the same can be said about capitalism (or maybe the opposite, depending on how you look at it). In theory, the right to choose, the right of the individual, is a morally sound framework on which to build your society. People should be responsible for their own lives, their own decisions.
There is, however, an important assumption in capitalism which has let ethical responsibility in the corporate environment to steadily dwindle away:
- People know what they want.
And within this, the following two assumptions:
- People create their own wants.
- People have an inherent ability to assess the future payoffs of their present decisions.
Do they?
When people start smoking, do they really want to get lung cancer? When people buy junk food that they have been fed since they were young, do they want to get acne? Do they want to get fat?
When I buy Carlton Draught, do I want this beer because, objectively, I think it is the best beer for its price? Or has marketing played a 'want creating' role in my judgement?
If glue were marketed as a designer drug, would more people sniff it?
Why do people want what they want? Have we not got to the stage where people want what corporations tell them they want? Now, it's true, our bodies crave nicotine, caffeine, fat and sex and our minds crave acceptance, understanding, etc. But are cravings, exemplified and made accessible by companies, wants? Are they the right kind of wants? The ethical kind of wants?
A really significant question: Are they really our wants?
If they are not our wants, or even, if companies have merely played a role in creating our wants, doesn't it seem appropriate that companies should take responsibility for not only the profitable effects of want creation, but also the detrimental effects?
I remember a business ethics lecture in marketing I had in first year. Our lecturer that semester was a former marketing executive at Woolworths. He had a lifetime of knowledge about product development, placement, marketing, and all the rest of it.
With his years of experience in such a well-respected and industry leading company, he must have seen himself as the perfect moral voice to conduct a lecture such as this.
The lecturer came across as an extremely intelligent man. The kind of businessman who was not all business. In fact, I now remember, he had gone back to uni after retirement and completed some form of ethics and morality course.
As I saw it, the lecture he put forward was a defence of the current framework of corporation/consumer relations. Which is more or less tied to what is presently understood as capitalism.
He said that businesses were justified, ethically justified, in bringing products to market if they maintained that they were producing things that people wanted.
Satisfying wants was a morally indestructible business operation. Furthermore, 'proof of want' was determined by the purchase choices of consumers. If you bought it, you must have wanted it.
It was ethically ok to market junk food, because people bought junk food, thus they wanted junk food, and vice versa.
Now, a couple of days ago, I watched the now infamous film, Supersize Me. More than just proving a point about the detrimental effects of living off junk food, the movie ignites a significant question about the ethical validity of capitalism.
A fundamental law of capitalism: the individual has the right to choose. When I think about this sentence I am reminded of Homer in the 'Bart Gets an Elephant' Simpson's episode:
Marge: I really think this is a bad idea.
Homer: Marge, I agree with you -- in theory. In theory, communism works. In theory.
Well, I think the same can be said about capitalism (or maybe the opposite, depending on how you look at it). In theory, the right to choose, the right of the individual, is a morally sound framework on which to build your society. People should be responsible for their own lives, their own decisions.
There is, however, an important assumption in capitalism which has let ethical responsibility in the corporate environment to steadily dwindle away:
- People know what they want.
And within this, the following two assumptions:
- People create their own wants.
- People have an inherent ability to assess the future payoffs of their present decisions.
Do they?
When people start smoking, do they really want to get lung cancer? When people buy junk food that they have been fed since they were young, do they want to get acne? Do they want to get fat?
When I buy Carlton Draught, do I want this beer because, objectively, I think it is the best beer for its price? Or has marketing played a 'want creating' role in my judgement?
If glue were marketed as a designer drug, would more people sniff it?
Why do people want what they want? Have we not got to the stage where people want what corporations tell them they want? Now, it's true, our bodies crave nicotine, caffeine, fat and sex and our minds crave acceptance, understanding, etc. But are cravings, exemplified and made accessible by companies, wants? Are they the right kind of wants? The ethical kind of wants?
A really significant question: Are they really our wants?
If they are not our wants, or even, if companies have merely played a role in creating our wants, doesn't it seem appropriate that companies should take responsibility for not only the profitable effects of want creation, but also the detrimental effects?