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Our Changing Climate
Why Ethical Consumerism Is a Trap
Why Ethical Consumerism Is a Trap
Our Changing Climate
·
21:00 · Nov 22, 2024
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if
there
were
ever
a
day
that
epitomizes
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0:00
if there were ever a day that epitomizes
0:02
the excesses of capitalism
0:03
it would be F
0:07
deals upon deals pepper
0:08
Windows early morning crowds Rampage
0:11
through stores and multiple TVs
0:13
line carts as big box companies offload
0:16
all their endless production
0:17
into our Liv this be the biggest Black Friday
0:20
ever but for some
0:22
Black Friday represents a chance to push back
0:25
to consume ethically the patagonians
0:28
of the world urge us don't buy their jackets
0:30
and REI argues we should opt outside
0:33
while Ikea encourages Shoppers to buy and sell their used furniture
0:36
instead with the slogan green Friday
0:39
the message in this marketing is that you the consumer
0:42
can make a change at the checkout counter
0:44
you can make informed
0:46
choices by buying brands that actually care
0:49
you in turn can create environmental
0:51
and social transformation and show that you care
0:54
in the process but it's not so easy
0:56
indeed the ethical Purity Patagonia
0:58
REI and Ikea pursue by a shoeing
1:01
Black Friday might just be slight of hand
1:04
an illusion that hides the deeper workings of exploitation
1:07
and inherent destruction of capitalism
1:09
today we dive into the murky Waters of ethical consumerism
1:13
we'll waade into the midsts of B Corp certifications
1:16
the importance of commodity fetishism
1:18
as well as unpack
1:19
whether there is truly
1:20
no ethical consumption under
1:24
capitalism Amazon packages pile up on front door steps
1:28
storage units filled to the brim
1:30
sales commercials and influencers
1:32
shovel even more useless
1:34
stuff down our throats
1:36
consumption pervades every facet of our lives
1:40
and in the process we consume
1:41
far more than we need food waste is higher than ever
1:45
primary energy consumption has skyrocketed
1:47
since 1950 and Global waste continues
1:50
to rise unabated not to mention emissions rates push upward
1:54
year over year at a time when they need to be doing the exact
1:58
opposite but this is not simply the end result of human nature
2:02
it's not the conclusion
2:03
of our greed and moral depravity
2:05
no consumption is the enabler
2:08
of capitalism and we're forced to live with its waste
2:11
capitalism demands overc consumption
2:13
because consumption is the motor oil of capitalist
2:16
production and accumulation as I explained in this video
2:20
capitalists must constantly expand their productive
2:22
capacities through new technologies
2:24
decreasing labor costs and scaling
2:26
up to create the most commodities
2:28
for the lowest price prices
2:30
if they fail to do so
2:32
capitalists get eaten alive
2:34
by other more capable owners
2:36
who've managed to create more products at cheaper prices
2:39
and ultimately create more profit
2:42
this process of constant
2:43
accumulation and expansion creates increased
2:46
production production that generates
2:48
piles of Commodities which must be sold to the masses
2:52
to continue the cycle of capital
2:54
accumulation exchanging products for even more money
2:58
is essential to complete the last Lev leg of the money
3:01
invested into Commodities and sold for even more money
3:04
also known as the MCM
3:06
cycle in a sense consumption
3:08
can be seen as a release Val or lubricant
3:10
of production it expands
3:12
and contracts and enables
3:14
but never creates the flow of goods
3:17
enter ethical consumerism a movement of buyers who assume that the problem is the
3:22
quality and quantity of the Commodities
3:24
we buy we only need to choose better and buy less and capitalism's
3:28
environmental and social toll shrinks
3:31
at its core ethical consumerism
3:33
asks us to wield everyday shopping
3:35
to drive social change
3:37
it seeks to guide the tide of overproduction
3:39
towards the moral good
3:41
by embracing so-called ethical
3:43
brands in short voting with your dollar and companies have leaned
3:47
on this mindset with everything from allnatural
3:49
hemp fiber Patagonia pants claiming to save the Earth to 100%
3:53
recycled Coke bottles companies coat their products in nods towards saving the planet
3:58
it's Apple's very first carbon neutral product or ending exploitative
4:02
practices to get you to buy their stuff from the consumer
4:06
point of view under capitalism
4:07
and especially under neoliberal
4:09
capitalism wielding or purchasing
4:11
power for political purposes
4:13
makes sense for so long we've been inundated
4:16
with the narrative that consumers
4:18
have control that our choice at the checkout counter
4:21
matters if we can all just put our money where our mouth is and
4:25
buy the right stuff the market will respond
4:28
quickly and corporations will be forced to transform
4:31
their production into morally
4:32
sound and environmentally ethical entities
4:35
because no one will shop at their stores
4:37
if they refuse to change
4:39
this is the neoliberal
4:40
theory of consumer sovereignty
4:42
an idea that has now been championed
4:43
by liberals interested in working
4:45
within the system for change
4:47
this strain of politics
4:49
transforms the act of consumption
4:51
into a political activity
4:52
with catch races like vote with your fork or vote with your dollar but
4:56
the reality is far from the utopic
4:58
and simplistic vision of consumer sovereignty
5:01
ethical consumerism while meaning
5:03
well has done little to move the
5:07
needle the proliferation of stores like Whole Foods REI
5:11
everlane as well as Corporate social responsibility
5:14
makes it seem like ethical consumerism
5:16
is working there is no doubt that these companies are taking some important
5:21
actions Whole Foods has committed to reducing
5:23
its food waste and making its stores
5:25
more energy efficient while Tech Behemoth
5:28
Salesforce committed $1.5 million
5:31
to help end homelessness
5:32
in the Bay Area but are these just Illusions
5:35
are these just small
5:36
actions that help cover up more substantial
5:39
exploitation and the maintenance of the status quo
5:41
the short answer is
5:43
yes Whole Foods is owned and operated
5:46
by Amazon a company Long known for pushing both its workers
5:50
and the environment to the brink
5:52
not to mention that as Whole Foods has grown
5:54
it's been plagued with Revelations
5:56
about its exploitative supply chain like selling cheese May with prison labor
6:00
or more recently when migrant children in the United States were found
6:04
throughout whole foods' supply chain
6:06
helping to debone chicken sold at Whole Foods
6:09
meanwhile Salesforce say they can do well and you can do good at the
6:13
same time one day and then use that $1.5
6:16
million which is a minuscule
6:18
amount compared to their profits
6:20
for unhoused people to make an app
6:23
and then the very next day the company fires 1,000
6:26
of its employees without warning
6:28
in this light corporate A's
6:30
ethical Deeds should be seen not as progress towards a more ethical form of
6:34
capitalism but instead as a flimsy
6:37
protective shield that masks
6:38
corporations true ecological and human
6:41
exploitation these quote unquote
6:43
ethical Deeds are just the maintenance
6:46
of the status quo in terms of time and money
6:48
they're small compared to the actions
6:51
of the company as a whole in a sense this is a new version
6:54
of marketing a new manifestation
6:56
of what Marxist scholar Herbert maruse
6:58
calls the manuf facturing of false needs
7:01
to offload all their products onto the masses
7:04
capitalists need to make us believe that we actually need
7:07
the latest iPhone or those hemp fiber pants
7:10
rather than just wanted
7:12
for some companies that means
7:13
building an ecological or ethical
7:16
Aura through labels and one-off
7:18
actions because this signals
7:20
to Consumers with political and moral compasses
7:23
that they need to buy that specific
7:25
product to save the planet
7:27
or fight worker exploitation
7:30
this increasingly seems to be the case with the B Corp label an ethical
7:33
label that's been watered down and co-opted
7:36
as a means to clean up the image of exploitative
7:38
companies initially the B Corp label was born out of a desire to certify
7:43
the transparency accountability and social and environmental
7:46
measures companies took the label often certified
7:49
smaller more Niche brands for the actions they took
7:52
but unfortunately its process relies
7:55
heavily on good faith every 3 years a borp
7:57
company must submit for certification
7:59
but that process especially the impact report is entirely
8:03
self-reported a fact which as professor of policy at tside
8:06
University Matthew cotton in an interview with BBC notes
8:10
makes it relatively easy to manipulate
8:13
internal reporting procedures or misrepresent
8:16
findings and we're seeing the Fallout of that process in 2024
8:20
the label now seems to be just another tool for laundering
8:24
the dirty practices of capitalism
8:26
Nespresso a coffee subsidiary
8:28
of nestle notorious for their exploitation
8:31
of Water Resources recently was awarded the B Corp label
8:35
despite their dark history of child labor and worker exploitation
8:38
not to mention that they sell these single-use
8:41
plastic curig like machines
8:43
meanwhile the bottled water brand Aqua
8:45
which is a subsidiary
8:47
of Dan holds a b corpse certification
8:50
despite recently topping an audit of Indonesia's
8:53
biggest plastic polluters to make matters
8:56
even worse beab has launched the B movement
8:59
Builders initiative in 2020
9:01
which further Waters down the B Corp label
9:04
by recognizing multinational corporations
9:06
for their weak environmental
9:08
or social practices yes
9:11
some of these green initiatives
9:12
or fair trade labels
9:14
may actually be real there's no question that hemp fiber pants
9:18
are better for the environment
9:19
than fossil fuel-based polyester
9:21
genes ring on the hyper exploitation
9:23
of the Imperial periphery
9:24
indeed some businesses are genuinely
9:27
trying to do better within a broken
9:29
system but as we will soon see in the meat grinder that is the
9:32
capitalist mode of production
9:34
environmental destruction and worker
9:36
exploitation are inevitable because they are necessary
9:40
to capitalism itself but even if these corporations
9:43
are somehow environmental or moral Saints
9:47
ethical consumers don't seem to be walking the walk one 2005
9:51
study found that despite 30%
9:53
of UK consumers reporting that they have intentions
9:55
to buy ethical products
9:57
only 3% of consumers
9:58
actually follow up on their morals at the checkout counter
10:01
meanwhile in 2011 an extensive
10:04
book on the subject titled
10:05
the myth of ethical consumerism
10:07
revealed a similar intentions
10:09
action mismatch the authors conducted
10:12
numerous studies including one that the authors write
10:15
showed that we can manipulate
10:16
an individual's preference for fair trade products simply by prompting them and removing
10:21
their privacy with such actions
10:23
70% purchased the fair trade alternative
10:26
which was the same price
10:27
without such actions less Le than 1%
10:30
purchase the fair trade product
10:32
in short at the checkout counter
10:34
ethics rarely come into play
10:36
this is possibly because at the end of the day for many who live
10:40
paycheck to paycheck price is the ultimate
10:42
Factor when it comes to purchasing
10:45
decisions this Gap however shrouds
10:47
the larger picture ethical consumption
10:50
distracts us from the foundational
10:52
rot of capitalism our desire for and praise of Corporations
10:55
minimal reform as well as our hyperfocus
10:58
on which is the best
10:59
product distracts us from what's really happening
11:02
under the hood as one paper argues
11:04
ethical consumption inadvertently Works to thwart the destruction of capitalism
11:08
by reinforcing conventional capitalist
11:11
consumption essentially shopping ethically
11:14
instead of changing the system
11:16
actually doubles down on it voting with your dollar concretizes
11:19
the idea of consumer
11:21
sovereignty when the reality of who controls
11:23
production and generates desires
11:25
for those products are capitalists
11:28
and corporations elves we can only buy what is produced
11:32
and as a result
11:33
The Producers the owners of the means of production
11:36
have significantly more control of the Commodities
11:39
that enter the market what these owners
11:41
the board members the investors
11:43
the factory owners care about at the end of the day is not the
11:46
well-being of the planet or the health of workers
11:49
but instead profit and the continuation
11:52
of the corporation and it's here we finally arrive at the route
11:57
capitalism at its core relies
11:59
on the exploitation of Labor
12:01
through the lever of fossil fuels
12:03
I'll say that again in another way for the owners of production to make
12:06
a profit they must exploit
12:09
workers this specifically means that during an 8-hour
12:12
day for example if a laborer
12:14
is paid $80 a small chunk of the workers's
12:17
time is spent making $80
12:20
worth of product the rest of their time is unpaid
12:23
or Surplus labor that is where the capitalist
12:26
makes their profit this is the core engine
12:29
of capitalism and as Andreas m asserts in fossil Capital
12:33
this engine is facilitated
12:35
by the temporal and spatial
12:37
consistency of fossil fuels
12:39
fossil fuels allow capitalists
12:41
to bring factories in the workplace to cities where the cheapest labor resides
12:45
as well as keep the lights on in warehouses
12:47
and offices with exacting
12:49
consistency both of which are crucial for consistent
12:52
growth and competition in short worker
12:55
exploitation and environmental destruction
12:57
are inherent to the the capitalist mode of production
13:01
this is the real reason
13:02
why we can't have ethical consumption
13:04
under capitalism profits and the exploitation
13:07
of workers and combustion of fossil fuels that come with them
13:10
will always come before
13:12
morality and ethics in a capitalist
13:14
system not because a company is evil
13:16
but because that is how the system works
13:19
to stay competitive and provide value for stakeholders
13:22
companies must steal the Surplus labor from workers
13:25
and wield fossil fuels for maximum output
13:28
and consist consistency but this process of exploitation
13:32
and destruction is obscured
13:33
from the consumer in what Marx calls the hidden Abode of production
13:37
what we see on a store's shelf
13:39
is Thoroughly divorced from the laborers
13:42
and the long chain of Manufacturers
13:44
and materials it took to create those products
13:46
we only see the end result of production
13:49
that thing on the Shelf is a seemingly
13:51
magical object imbued with value
13:54
this is what Marx calls commodity
13:56
fetishism which the YouTube Collective Marxism
13:58
today described as so when Marx talks about commodity fetishism
14:02
he's similarly referring to our elusory
14:05
perception as consumers that Commodities
14:07
contain inherent value in and of themselves
14:10
appearing in a kind of vacuum that's devoid of the larger
14:14
social context of the production of these Commodities
14:17
by real people engaged
14:18
in exploitative labor relations
14:20
ethical consumerism Works precisely
14:23
because of this divorce
14:25
because that toy on the Shelf seems to have inherent
14:28
value because as we can't see the exploitation
14:30
in the vast chain of production
14:32
materials and labor that is needed to bring it into existence
14:35
we are able to be convinced
14:37
that the commodity holds
14:38
virtue or value in and of itself
14:41
that our purchasing of that pair of hemp pants or even that Ben and
14:44
Jerry's ice cream cone
14:46
can indeed be ethical
14:48
this shrouding of production
14:50
and the mystification of the product with morals
14:53
shifts our politics it means that instead of addressing the root problems of worker
14:58
and environmental exploitation directly through strikes
15:01
and pressure on the endless cycle of production
15:04
now we just focus on the end product
15:06
we are led to believe that buying more ethical stuff
15:09
is a political act
15:11
but in reality many ethical brands are just subsidiaries
15:14
of large hyper exploitative
15:17
multinationals like this organic
15:19
pet food brand that is owned by Nestle
15:21
or innocent smoothies which touts its human rights and environmental
15:25
work yet is owned by Coca-Cola
15:28
many ethical brands sadly are wolves
15:30
and sheep's clothing and they can often be aided and embedded
15:34
by watered down ethical labeling
15:36
and certifications ultimately however there is no ethical consumption
15:41
under capitalism not because everyone is evil and everything is owned by multinational
15:45
corporations there is no ethical consumption under capitalism
15:49
because the nature of capitalism
15:51
itself demands environmental destruction
15:53
and worker exploitation so if this is the case
15:57
then should we just give up and buy buy whatever we
16:01
want if there's no ethical consumption under capitalism
16:04
then we should just give up right we should never even strive
16:07
to purchase Necessities from places that are at least giving lip service to more
16:11
sustainable and less exploitative
16:13
Goods no individual choices
16:15
certainly matter but they are like a single mosquito
16:18
trying to drain an elephant of blood
16:20
power comes in the collective
16:22
form so yes when you are looking to buy something
16:25
strive for the more quote unquote
16:27
ethical choice but just know that it will ultimately
16:30
not create the system change
16:32
we need to end worker exploitation
16:34
and mitigate climate chaos
16:36
unfortunately right now we are left with bad choices
16:39
I'm not saying that it's useless to try to purchase a more ethical good
16:42
so you might as well just go with the cheapest
16:44
worst thing but rather
16:46
our efforts shouldn't be focused
16:48
on our individual consumer
16:50
choices if we are trying to fundamentally
16:53
change capitalism which is what the climate crisis calls for
16:57
if we look back through history
16:58
systems change comes not from people buying better but instead Collective movements
17:03
fighting for political change
17:05
whether that's the Socialist Revolution
17:07
in Russia the suffer Jets
17:09
the civil rights movement or anti- aarth
17:11
sure there was certainly
17:12
selective boycott and divestments
17:14
of Corporations but these were Tools in a much broader
17:18
toolkit of change shopping
17:20
has never been and will never be the Silver Bullet for social change
17:25
so how do we directly
17:26
address the exploitation and eological
17:29
destruction of capitalism at the
17:33
root we can do much more than buy better indeed the ecological
17:37
world of the future
17:38
challenges us to do so
17:40
a truly ethical world
17:42
is one where production
17:43
is socialized where the workplace
17:45
the factories and the landscape
17:47
is controlled owned and planned
17:49
by all people everywhere
17:51
a truly Democratic and socialist
17:54
economic system a world where goods are produced
17:57
not based on how much profit
17:59
they can make but instead on their use
18:01
and necessity this would undoubtedly
18:03
be a radically different world
18:05
where the ethical and environmental
18:07
desires of everyday people
18:09
actually matter because they would be integral
18:12
in the planning and production
18:13
processes but that world isn't built on buying better products
18:18
we can't buy our way out of capitalism
18:20
that world is built instead
18:22
on deep organizing on Trust
18:25
on tight relationships and Collective
18:28
action with the recent reelection
18:29
of trump alongside the broader Global rise of fascism
18:32
organizing and Community Building feels more important
18:35
than ever this is why next month's video is all about how we can
18:38
create Collective action and build power in our communities
18:41
if we are constantly being numbed and tranquilized
18:44
to the hores of capitalism
18:45
so that we never do anything
18:47
how do we actually do it how do we build a movement to end
18:51
capitalism and if you're among the many wonderful
18:53
people who signed up for nebula using my link you can watch that video
18:57
right now but if you need a break from the existential
19:00
doom and catastrophe painting the headlines
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right now I also just made a whole separate video ranking the best climate
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change memes I could find
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these are so beautifully American it's like the cars own the houses and people
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get to live and their little servants
19:15
quarters that video would probably do horribly on YouTube
19:18
but nebula's flexibility encourages
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me to create whatever
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videos I want as I'm sure you've already heard by now nebula is a
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premium streaming service for creators
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Our Changing Climate
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