I generally wear clothes that I buy from mainstream stores without looking into the labor conditions at the factory in which they were made. I understand that there exist truly horrible sweatshops with coercive conditions, but I suspect the scale of the problem and the likelihood of my actions making an impact are such that my finite attention/time/money are better spent elsewhere. However, I am totally open to the possibility that actually, sweatshops with horrible/coercive conditions are more common than I think, that t-shirts I buy on Amazon are causing more suffering than I imagine, and that it’s easier than I think to look up which brands are responsible in sourcing labor.
I think if I had a conversation with an acquaintance who discussed these things with me in a non-judgmental way, I might change my behavior. But if such a person demanded that I change clothes before I sat next to them, I would not be remotely interested in engaging with them. I would also not really be that interested in continuing a conversation with them online, given that they were morally opposed to sitting next to me in person so long as I had on my questionably-sourced t-shirt. It would just feel too controlling, alienating, and hypocritical (what is the likelihood that they have carefully researched every item they have ever used to filter out coerced labor anyway?). No amount of the other person being right regarding the large moral significance of my purchases would change this.
Eating is a little different than wearing clothes in that you are not eating all the time, but it is very limiting to a new relationship if you refuse to eat with the other person unless you have veto power over their food, particularly if (as seems necessitated by this pledge) you make clear you are refusing to do so on moral grounds. So for this reason, I am pretty strongly against this approach.
i think it’s an interesting comparison, but do think there are notable differences between what we eat and wear. regarding what we eat, the issue is pretty cut and dry. are they eating an animal, or not? (and as i argue in the article, i don’t think it makes sense to get into the nitty gritty of whether something is vegan or not. if it’s clearly not vegan, i’m clearly against it, but don’t require them dig into the supply chain, etc.). regarding what we wear, the issue is less obvious. and i think that nuance makes a Pledge related to ethical clothing less practicable. of course, that analysis is surely influenced by the fact that i’m already vegan, but still consume clothing made in what i’m sure are problematic conditions...
regardless, as Singer [persuasively] argues in “Famine, Affluence and Morality” (and as i cite in the article), ethics demand a lot of us. while challenging, i see the Pledge as a feasible and pragmatic way to address the devastating harms of Big Meat, and as such, think its incumbent upon myself to practice it.
Thanks for your response, Nico. I’m not sure those differences are so significant. One reasonably clear-cut standard you could have for clothing is coercion of labor with violence. This standard would accept conditions of arbitrarily low wages, poor safety conditions, and abuse but would not accept conditions in which workers who tried to walk out the door were in any way physically hurt or restrained. There is an obvious problem of figuring out which clothing was produced in such a condition, but let’s imagine for the sake of argument that there exists a list of brands that have been verified as not coercive and that this list is large enough to make it practical for most people to shop exclusively from it. I would not be remotely surprised to learn that such a list does in fact exist and that I am making a pretty substantial moral mistake by not consulting it before buying stuff.
Now let’s imagine that I did not know about this list. I know that there forced labor exists, I am sympathetic to the idea that it is a bigger deal than I might immediately appreciate, and I am aware I might be contributing to it through shopping. But let’s also say I imagine that searching is time consuming, that verified brands are too expensive to justify , that I have moral uncertainty about using my time and efforts in this dimension where they could be used elsewhere, and am I really so sure that forced labor is a widespread problem anyway? In walks my hypothetical acquaintance Bob. Bob knows about this list, has answers and evidence to my questions about the prevalence of forced labor, and can give me tips about how to make shopping on my budget easy while steering clear of forced labor. On top of that, he can quietly demonstrate to me how well-dressed one can be while avoiding forced labor. It would be a real shame if Bob started the conversation with me by saying “Hey! I would love to chat with you, but I see that you are wearing a brand-X t-shirt, which is totally immoral, as brand X uses forced labor, so would you mind going and changing your shirt so that we can chat? It would be immoral for me to sit next to you dressed like that. Or maybe we can catch up online later?”
My relationship with Bob would be over, I would never learn about the easy ways to avoid forced labor in my shopping, I would never see how well Bob dresses on a day to day basis, and I would never get my questions about the prevalence of forced labor answered. It would continue to be some out-of-sight and out-of-mind problem that I contribute to with my shopping. Doing anything about it would feel impractical. All this while in the hypothetical Bob is totally right! Avoiding forced labor while accepting other bad labor conditions is a reasonable binary standard, there are ways to avoid doing it, it is easier than I thought, and continuing to purchase items created by forced labor is wildly immoral. Too bad for me, for Bob, and most of all for the victims of forced labor though, because Bob sent me packing from the start.
yes, if such a standard existed, i do think the similarities between these issues would be closer to outweighing their differences, and could see myself supportive a version of the Pledge in this context besides two remaining differences:
1. regarding food, both parties are already planning on making a new purchase, whereas regarding clothes, they aren’t. so while the liberation pledge is simply asking our acquaintances to make a new purchase they already plan to make in a different way, a pledge related to clothing is asking others to either retroactively make different purchases or make new purchases they didn’t plan to make.
2. the harms from clothing are further removed than with food. with food, the purchase and consumption happens in real time (which is why i think it’s so important to oppose/boycott in those moments). with clothes, the purchase occurred in the distant past, and the cost of its use is spread out over time (with every instance one wears it).
these differences, imo, make enforcement of a pledge related to clothing more costly, its messaging less direct, and thus its impact less positive.
[though to be fair, if such a list existed and following it was fairly practicable (as practicable as, say, finding vegan food), i’m sure you could convince of implementing it in some other way directed towards stigmatizing the brands that were on it]
I definitely agree that both of those differences are relevant and and I do understand why you might support one type of pledge but not the other due to these differences. But it’s still the closest analogy I can think of for how non-vegans might feel in this situation, so I’m still curious about how you personally would react if someone you barely knew told you that wearing a particular set of brands was a precondition for meeting them. I personally would feel really put off by it and in all likelihood just wouldn’t meet them because it would feel weird and controlling.
Do you think that your first reaction to someone insisting you wear something would be to look through your closet to try and accommodate or to think “ehh, do I really want to see this person after all”?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you can in good faith say that you would first look through your closet. But even then, consider that you are clearly an outlier among the general population in terms of how much you are willing to change your personal behavior to reduce suffering and also in terms of how comfortable you are with norms around pointing out how others are contributing to suffering. If you can honestly say that you would look through your closet before reconsidering the meeting, I would even push you to imagine being asked to do something even more extreme (I don’t know what “more extreme” would mean for you, but something more inconvenient for what seems to you to have a less obvious connection to morality).
I frequently have meals with colleagues and acquaintances that I don’t know well. Some of my co-diners have eventually gone on to become vegan or even directly worked on animal welfare issues in some small part because of my influence. But if I had made this pledge I would just never have gotten to know them at all. More than that I think I personally would fail to accommodate closely analogous (e.g. the clothing) version of this pledge and would never learn more about the issue. Do you share that concern?
to answer your last question first, yes, i do share that concern! i think it is a very real and important consideration all Pledgers should center in the way we communicate it to others. (and while i note that a few times in the article, i could definitely have emphasized that stronger. thanks for flagging it). that said, i do think it is possible to communicate it in a way that is open, vulnerable, and engaging.
to answer your first question—how i would react—perhaps its easiest to note my initial reaction to the Pledge. when i first heard about it, i was openly against it. i thought it was problematic and counterproductive. however, the more i sat with the arguments for and against, the more i found myself changing my mind. that’s a common feature in my psychology (initial skepticism, leading to gradual warming). i think this reaction is fairly common (and has been my experience with practicing the pledge). so while i don’t expect the Pledge to always be welcomed with open arms (though have found the vast majority of people i’ve asked to accommodate me have been more than happy to do so), in the instances where that isn’t the case i believe the Pledge enables us to plant a firm seed that, while perhaps initially uncomfortable, ultimately creates the environment for positive growth moving forward.
I generally wear clothes that I buy from mainstream stores without looking into the labor conditions at the factory in which they were made. I understand that there exist truly horrible sweatshops with coercive conditions, but I suspect the scale of the problem and the likelihood of my actions making an impact are such that my finite attention/time/money are better spent elsewhere. However, I am totally open to the possibility that actually, sweatshops with horrible/coercive conditions are more common than I think, that t-shirts I buy on Amazon are causing more suffering than I imagine, and that it’s easier than I think to look up which brands are responsible in sourcing labor.
I think if I had a conversation with an acquaintance who discussed these things with me in a non-judgmental way, I might change my behavior. But if such a person demanded that I change clothes before I sat next to them, I would not be remotely interested in engaging with them. I would also not really be that interested in continuing a conversation with them online, given that they were morally opposed to sitting next to me in person so long as I had on my questionably-sourced t-shirt. It would just feel too controlling, alienating, and hypocritical (what is the likelihood that they have carefully researched every item they have ever used to filter out coerced labor anyway?). No amount of the other person being right regarding the large moral significance of my purchases would change this.
Eating is a little different than wearing clothes in that you are not eating all the time, but it is very limiting to a new relationship if you refuse to eat with the other person unless you have veto power over their food, particularly if (as seems necessitated by this pledge) you make clear you are refusing to do so on moral grounds. So for this reason, I am pretty strongly against this approach.
thanks for this response Monica
i think it’s an interesting comparison, but do think there are notable differences between what we eat and wear.
regarding what we eat, the issue is pretty cut and dry. are they eating an animal, or not? (and as i argue in the article, i don’t think it makes sense to get into the nitty gritty of whether something is vegan or not. if it’s clearly not vegan, i’m clearly against it, but don’t require them dig into the supply chain, etc.).
regarding what we wear, the issue is less obvious. and i think that nuance makes a Pledge related to ethical clothing less practicable.
of course, that analysis is surely influenced by the fact that i’m already vegan, but still consume clothing made in what i’m sure are problematic conditions...
regardless, as Singer [persuasively] argues in “Famine, Affluence and Morality” (and as i cite in the article), ethics demand a lot of us. while challenging, i see the Pledge as a feasible and pragmatic way to address the devastating harms of Big Meat, and as such, think its incumbent upon myself to practice it.
Thanks for your response, Nico. I’m not sure those differences are so significant. One reasonably clear-cut standard you could have for clothing is coercion of labor with violence. This standard would accept conditions of arbitrarily low wages, poor safety conditions, and abuse but would not accept conditions in which workers who tried to walk out the door were in any way physically hurt or restrained. There is an obvious problem of figuring out which clothing was produced in such a condition, but let’s imagine for the sake of argument that there exists a list of brands that have been verified as not coercive and that this list is large enough to make it practical for most people to shop exclusively from it. I would not be remotely surprised to learn that such a list does in fact exist and that I am making a pretty substantial moral mistake by not consulting it before buying stuff.
Now let’s imagine that I did not know about this list. I know that there forced labor exists, I am sympathetic to the idea that it is a bigger deal than I might immediately appreciate, and I am aware I might be contributing to it through shopping. But let’s also say I imagine that searching is time consuming, that verified brands are too expensive to justify , that I have moral uncertainty about using my time and efforts in this dimension where they could be used elsewhere, and am I really so sure that forced labor is a widespread problem anyway? In walks my hypothetical acquaintance Bob. Bob knows about this list, has answers and evidence to my questions about the prevalence of forced labor, and can give me tips about how to make shopping on my budget easy while steering clear of forced labor. On top of that, he can quietly demonstrate to me how well-dressed one can be while avoiding forced labor. It would be a real shame if Bob started the conversation with me by saying “Hey! I would love to chat with you, but I see that you are wearing a brand-X t-shirt, which is totally immoral, as brand X uses forced labor, so would you mind going and changing your shirt so that we can chat? It would be immoral for me to sit next to you dressed like that. Or maybe we can catch up online later?”
My relationship with Bob would be over, I would never learn about the easy ways to avoid forced labor in my shopping, I would never see how well Bob dresses on a day to day basis, and I would never get my questions about the prevalence of forced labor answered. It would continue to be some out-of-sight and out-of-mind problem that I contribute to with my shopping. Doing anything about it would feel impractical. All this while in the hypothetical Bob is totally right! Avoiding forced labor while accepting other bad labor conditions is a reasonable binary standard, there are ways to avoid doing it, it is easier than I thought, and continuing to purchase items created by forced labor is wildly immoral. Too bad for me, for Bob, and most of all for the victims of forced labor though, because Bob sent me packing from the start.
yes, if such a standard existed, i do think the similarities between these issues would be closer to outweighing their differences, and could see myself supportive a version of the Pledge in this context besides two remaining differences:
1. regarding food, both parties are already planning on making a new purchase, whereas regarding clothes, they aren’t. so while the liberation pledge is simply asking our acquaintances to make a new purchase they already plan to make in a different way, a pledge related to clothing is asking others to either retroactively make different purchases or make new purchases they didn’t plan to make.
2. the harms from clothing are further removed than with food. with food, the purchase and consumption happens in real time (which is why i think it’s so important to oppose/boycott in those moments). with clothes, the purchase occurred in the distant past, and the cost of its use is spread out over time (with every instance one wears it).
these differences, imo, make enforcement of a pledge related to clothing more costly, its messaging less direct, and thus its impact less positive.
[though to be fair, if such a list existed and following it was fairly practicable (as practicable as, say, finding vegan food), i’m sure you could convince of implementing it in some other way directed towards stigmatizing the brands that were on it]
I definitely agree that both of those differences are relevant and and I do understand why you might support one type of pledge but not the other due to these differences. But it’s still the closest analogy I can think of for how non-vegans might feel in this situation, so I’m still curious about how you personally would react if someone you barely knew told you that wearing a particular set of brands was a precondition for meeting them. I personally would feel really put off by it and in all likelihood just wouldn’t meet them because it would feel weird and controlling.
Do you think that your first reaction to someone insisting you wear something would be to look through your closet to try and accommodate or to think “ehh, do I really want to see this person after all”?
I wouldn’t be surprised if you can in good faith say that you would first look through your closet. But even then, consider that you are clearly an outlier among the general population in terms of how much you are willing to change your personal behavior to reduce suffering and also in terms of how comfortable you are with norms around pointing out how others are contributing to suffering. If you can honestly say that you would look through your closet before reconsidering the meeting, I would even push you to imagine being asked to do something even more extreme (I don’t know what “more extreme” would mean for you, but something more inconvenient for what seems to you to have a less obvious connection to morality).
I frequently have meals with colleagues and acquaintances that I don’t know well. Some of my co-diners have eventually gone on to become vegan or even directly worked on animal welfare issues in some small part because of my influence. But if I had made this pledge I would just never have gotten to know them at all. More than that I think I personally would fail to accommodate closely analogous (e.g. the clothing) version of this pledge and would never learn more about the issue. Do you share that concern?
to answer your last question first, yes, i do share that concern! i think it is a very real and important consideration all Pledgers should center in the way we communicate it to others. (and while i note that a few times in the article, i could definitely have emphasized that stronger. thanks for flagging it). that said, i do think it is possible to communicate it in a way that is open, vulnerable, and engaging.
to answer your first question—how i would react—perhaps its easiest to note my initial reaction to the Pledge. when i first heard about it, i was openly against it. i thought it was problematic and counterproductive. however, the more i sat with the arguments for and against, the more i found myself changing my mind. that’s a common feature in my psychology (initial skepticism, leading to gradual warming). i think this reaction is fairly common (and has been my experience with practicing the pledge). so while i don’t expect the Pledge to always be welcomed with open arms (though have found the vast majority of people i’ve asked to accommodate me have been more than happy to do so), in the instances where that isn’t the case i believe the Pledge enables us to plant a firm seed that, while perhaps initially uncomfortable, ultimately creates the environment for positive growth moving forward.