"Many people express objections against child labor, exploitation of the workforce or meat production involving cruelty against animals. At the same time, however, people ignore their own moral standards when acting as market participants, searching for the cheapest electronics, fashion or food. Thus, markets reduce moral concerns."
"In comparison to non-market decisions, moral standards are significantly lower if people participate in markets."
So far, I can agree. An example for this is the recent tragedy in the factory in Bangladesh, where the exploited workers were killed as a result of the greed of the owners not caring for the safety of the building,
But while the consumers are contributing by their willful ignorance of the reasons for the goods being cheap, the main culprits are those with the economic power to decide the prices by making the contracts and by paying low wages.
But I strongly disagree, that the attitude towards the life of a mouse is a measurement for morals.
"In a number of different experiments, several hundred subjects were confronted with the moral decision between receiving a monetary amount and killing a mouse versus saving the life of a mouse and foregoing the monetary amount."
Killing or saving a mouse is not at all a moral decision. It is a decision between the naivety to consider mice as pets or the realism to evaluate mice as vermin..
The naivety is a mistake of those people, who know mice only as being kept in cages, where they cannot cause any detriment. Mice are damaging vermin, whenever they get a chance to bite holes into garments for making nests and to make a mess by feeding on bags of flower in the larder.
I have killed mice and rats by traps and by poison, whenever this was necessary. Morals to me means to discriminate between sparing vermin and being considerate to humans by paying a higher price for fair trade products, when available. I want the vermin dead, but a decent standard of living for every human on this globe.
Saving mice as in the study is also for other reasons an illusion. Carnivorous animals in the zoo are fed by small animals, like for example chickens, mice and rats. There are companies specialized in breeding these for feeding purposes, when the surplus from other sources does not suffice.
For any of the saved mice in the study, another mouse was bred as a replacement to be fed to a hungry zoo animal. No lives of mice were saved.
I would like to see a study, which tests the same question but on issues of genuine morals.
I would like to see a study, which tests the same question but on issues of genuine morals.
