No ethical consumption under capitalism.
EDIT: I should specify I’m not saying that you shouldn’t try to boycott where you can, just that sometimes doing business with these evil corporations is unavoidable unless you want to live off the grid.
to you, the 9 other likers and the one disliker:
I’d argue “under unregulated capitalism” and would love to hear how Im wrong here: When you buy an apple from a farmer in EU thats local to your small town, I’d say thats pretty ethical? Isnt it??!
Your example is fine. It’s not an option for most people to be able to source everything they need where the supply chain doesn’t rely on exploitation of labor and resource extraction somewhere along the process. Whether it’s in the materials used by the producer, the logistics in goods transport(oil & gas, shipping, warehousing, etc), or manufacturing of goods (labor, production house, etc…), the chain relies on exploitation somewhere along the way.
Buying the apple from your local farmer still relies on the oil industry to run farm equipment or transit of the product. By and large this is minimize when buying local from independent producers. Those, however, are often more expensive.
The consumer is the last step of exploitation. Where the profit stems from. Again, your local farmer probably isn’t extorting you, but your local grocery store probably is.
I buy bread from the local baker who is known as the German baker because they make kickass brotchen and these fantastic sesame and marzipan (my autocorrect said marsupial and while I do not doubt their skill I doubt their gluten) twists. They were across the parking lot from my first job and I did not know it but they had also just opened that year.
Could always pick up piracy. Hard to beat a 100% off coupon.
Simply pick up uBlock Origin and browse some community-vetted streaming sites on FMHY. (Short for Free Media Heck Yeah, a site that showcases community-vetted sites.)
That’s just streaming, no downloading. Simply find streams of whatever shows you’re invested in and binge as usual!
I’ve even gone as far as taking old laptops of mine and having them full screen these sites on startup. Then, I simply hook the laptop up to my TV via HDMI, plug in a Bluetooth keyboard, and binge away!
Piracy makes it hard to buy bird seed you need delivered the next day for your birds though
That is the one that’s killing me too. I just received an email that my subscription date is coming up. I want to cancel, at least my soul really wants me to cancel. But my broken body, limited $$, and limited mobility makes me feel like it would be cutting of my nose. It is really difficult to get to, never mind around, local stores.
If it helps, one of main arguments of the antitrust lawsuit against Amazon that the Biden administration opened was that Amazon routinely, actually, costs you money because they use their platform to offer more expensive options in your searches first and other means: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2023/09/ftc-sues-amazon-illegally-maintaining-monopoly-power (I’m not sure if that link with detail or with a much clarity as wherever I first read it but I can’t recall where I originally read it 3 or so months ago, I’m afraid).
The only major advantage that I’ll fully admit Prime has is speed of delivery; I admit I do use it when our cats run out of food and I dropped the ball on making sure we had more or I need filters for our air purifiers that just noted they need new ones.
But, even if you can find cheaper versions on Amazon, it can become easy to fall for the setup of their site if you use it by default all the time.
