after seeing movies like syriana and inconvenient truth, how can we use gas? blood diamonds, how can we buy diamonds, gems? fast food nation, food? clothes made wherever. simple financial decisions, as we know that the people running it are probably way beyond corrupt. yesterday, i listened to how a small shop owner lamented about not being able to compete with costco, yet i buy from costco.

it's easy to say the world is just messed up and you gotta do what you gotta do, but this being christmas, i'd hope for a better answer.

what would be an example of living a worldly responsible life? what would u do or not do, buy or not buy? can a "clean" life be led or is that just a luxurious ideal that most simply cannot afford?

last time for 2006, merry christmas.

 

most people don't know or don't care. that is the reason why people continue to buy those "unethical" products.

 

This is a really good topic IMO.

Gas. I'm guessing that all of us are guilty of just taking our S2000s out for a fun drive. I regularly auto-x my car, and I probably get about 10 mpg in those conditions. So far I have done nothing to reduce our dependence on foreign oil. However, I believe in alternative energy and if there were some real alternatives that made sense financially for me, I'd probably go for it. But it's going to be really hard to reduce our dependence on oil.

As with most things, there are two sides to the story. I believe that most movies try to blow things way out of proportion just to support their liberal cause. For example, less than 1% of the diamonds on the market today are conflict diamonds. I didn't see the movie, and won't until it comes out on DVD, but I'm guessing that fact was never mentioned in the movie. Also, most major diamond distributors like DeBeers will not sell any conflict diamonds and you can ask the salesperson to put it in writing that the diamond is not a conflict diamond. As far as I know, nobody in my family has ever bought a diamond, and I hope to find a girl someday who is not really into jewelry. IMO, jewelry is kind of a waste of money, unless you buy it specifically as an investment.

Fast food is another one of these things that I try to avoid. I probably have fast food once every two-three months on average. I live in the dorm on my college campus, and two out of three meals I make myself using my microwave. The other meal I eat in the cafeteria. Even when I was living away from home and I had to provide my own lunch, I tried to stay away from the mainstream fast food places. I went for the more upscale fast food like Qdoba, Baja Fresh, Quiznos, etc. I would think that these were a bit healthier since you're paying more, and the companies can afford to spend more on better/healthier ingredients. I'm guessing that it all boiled down to money. If companies like McDonalds could make more money by using healthier ingredients that cost more and in turn charge higher prices for the food, they would probably do that. But they always find suckers who don't want to pay an extra 20 cents per hamburger to live an extra 5 years.

When it comes to clothes I don't spend a lot. I always go for the stuff that's on clearance and shop at stores like Value City. I simply don't care as to what I wear as long as I look halfway decent. I'm willing to bet that there is another side of the story here as well. Sure these big corporations may only pay $2 for a days worth of work, but in a lot of cases those people could not make more than $1.50 elsewhere. Then the liberals pick up on a cause about how some company is only paying its workers $2 a day, and how that company should be boycotted without really painting a true portrayal.

 

I think you hit the nail on the head, in that it is a luxury most people cannot afford. When I say luxury I mean either it consumes excessive money, or an excessive time investment.

It's also a difference of lifestyle. I work in a small insurance agency. While there are plenty of people content to buy their insurance online to save money, lots of people are either not internet saavy or do not feel comfortable doing this without talking to an agent face-to-face. Most of the people who i'm describing are lower income, or older people (of course there are exceptions, but you get the point). These demographics will always be a part of our society. I would venture a guess that the majority of my customers also shy away from Costco in favor of shopping at smaller stores--but what is smaller anymore? Family Dollar is a national chain. So are most grocery stores. However, these same customers are probably WalMart regulars, as WalMart is almost inescapable.

I've noticed that in major metropolitan areas (NYC for example) constraints on space and, i'm guessing, zoning make huge national chain stores a near-impossibility. In those areas, especially where the majority of residents use public transportation instead of a car, mom-and-pop stores thrive.

In the end, it just comes down to the fact that times change, people change and we have to adapt. It's similar to arguments against ultra-conservationists--the natural state of the world is not static, but rather, one of change. Species dying out and others evolving, climates changing, landscapes drying out and others flooding, etc. The organisms that can adapt to the changing climate evolve, and others die out. The human organism is no different.

 

the movie said at least 15% are conflict diamonds and that large companies will just mix them in and swear that they are not.

if the movies do blow the problem up, i think it's better to err on that side since there IS some attrocity happening at the core of the issue.

 

like i said, most people just don't care. if humans exercise ethics in every single decisions they make in life, then the world would not be the way it is.

 

it's like everything we do is tainted and if we try hard individually, it feels like the trend of the rest of the world will completely erase anything you do.

 

Just as I suspected, they skewed the figures

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N05341166.htm

In the late 1990s between 4 percent and 15 percent of the world's diamonds were estimated to have come from conflict zones, but this is now less than 1 percent, Simons said.

BTW, this is a senior State Department Official, not some diamond company spokesperson.

 

unfortunately, i trust the gov as much as private companies.

 

All right. Find one credible source which supports the 15% figure and it has to be within the past year.