Wednesday, March 13, 2013

Conscious Capitalism


Coffee

Living with Coffee was a good documentary in that it made the connection between buyer, seller and producer. Like China Blue, it put faces to those who produce our commodities. Even though I see their faces and see their labor, it is still hard for me to grasp that kind of lifestyle. It’s almost unimaginable. It’s important for people to care where their products come from. People should buy with a conscience as in buying fair trade coffee. Yet, it’s sad when the full truth about these programs and ideas are not revealed or are scams. It’s not that we should stop buying our products because that would be detrimental to individual producers, but we should vote with our money and buy from companies that actually practice fair trade and fair labor. This change would lessen the profits of those social unfriendly companies and hopefully change the way they do business.

Capitalism is good

I don’t completely agree with Mackney and Sisodia. Their point of view is very different from Robert Reich’s who has written many books on capitalism. Reich calls our modern day capitalism, supercapitalism. Yes, businesses are good and they have provided many opportunities and social advances for people. The authors mention how businesses need to be more moral and do business ethically and how there are many who do have act consciously. Yet, I don’t think the authors hold businesses accountable enough. They do not mention how businesses have contributed to the inequality in the US and other countries. They also do not mention the role of the stock markets and how many businesses are more concerned about returns rather than the social good. 

No comments:

Post a Comment