Depends quite a bit on exactly how you want to define or understand "responsibility," or how far down you want to dig into it. Or how much slack you're going to allow not-normal people. Or what you're going to allow in the way of actions that normal people can take.

I think culpability comes to ground with persons (individual or corporate) as to matters of law. The question of moral responsibility cannot even be asked intelligibly without preliminary groundwork.

What's interesting is how these topics are bounded not by hard guidelines, but rather informed by a kind of fine focus that yields clarity, with increasing fuzziness on either side of the focus. Kant's deontology, while perhaps neither perfect nor the last word, is an excellent set of tools for finding that clarity.

"Normal" people -- whatever the money manager meant by that moniker -- play a significant if unwitting role in the economy. Millions and millions of people make billions of economic decisions; this has an effect, intended or not.

For instance, in 2007, whether bad mortgages were being palmed off as grade A instruments by default swap operators or not, millions of home buyers were willing to pay ever-increasing prices for real estate which wasn't in critically short supply, which hadn't been improved, and which (in some cases) wasn't even in very good shape. Thus a bubble developed and eventually broke, to many people's harm.

The fluctuations of prices in cotton, pork chops, iron ore, and oil depend on supply and demand which is determined by the actions of many producers and consumers. When 300 million Chinese all (individually) decide to go home for the New Year holidays, it has a massive economic effect.

The difficult part of your question is that individually, most consumer decisions are too insignificant to matter. So, "normal" people are not at fault. On the other hand, if the manager of Calpers (California state employees retirement funds) decides to dump all their coal stock, he or she will have had a direct and significant effect on those stocks, and maybe the whole energy field.

Thanks for the thoughtful replies and sorry I took so long to respond.

Depends quite a bit on exactly how you want to define or understand "responsibility," or how far down you want to dig into it. — tim wood

I'm thinking of responsibility in terms of basic decency really. I don't think we have to dig down very far to see that many of the companies we invest our money in are engaging in extremely unethical business practices, activities that most of know to be wrong and would condemn outright if we didn't have a stake in them. Many of the top fortune 500 companies exploit labor, pollute the environment, corrupt political processes and governments, destabalize economies with reckless speculation, and then lie about all of it through their controlled media outlets.

Theres a running narrative on the left that has the bankers, financiers, and corporate executives as the bad guys taking advantage of the good and decent middle classes and the innocent poor, but that's not really accurate. The middle classes are heavily invested in these corporations and take healthy profits from their unscrupulous activities. The poor can't really be considered victims either because 1) they're mostly politically apathetic, they've demonstrated very little concern for or solidarity with their fellow paupers and 2) most of them aren't living in poverty due to any protest of conscience, they're poor by happenstance and they would gladly get in on the action if given the opportunity.

For instance, in 2007, whether bad mortgages were being palmed off as grade A instruments by default swap operators or not, millions of home buyers were willing to pay ever-increasing prices for real estate which wasn't in critically short supply, which hadn't been improved, and which (in some cases) wasn't even in very good shape. Thus a bubble developed and eventually broke, to many people's harm. — Bitter Crank

Even before the bubble popped the speculation itself caused quite a bit of harm in that it drove up prices to the point that many people couldn't afford decent housing. Doesn't that sort of speculative frenzy demonstrate a certain callous disregard on the part of "normal people" for the harmful consequences their activities had for the rest of society? Maybe most people were just blindly carried away by the madness but I don't think that's too abstract for most people to realize if they gave it a moments consideration.

The difficult part of your question is that individually, most consumer decisions are too insignificant to matter. So, "normal" people are not at fault. On the other hand, if the manager of Calpers (California state employees retirement funds) decides to dump all their coal stock, he or she will have had a direct and significant effect on those stocks, and maybe the whole energy field. — Bitter Crank

Maybe economically, but there is still an ethics issue, and again while I don't think the likely consequences of the aggregate behavior is obvious, it's certainly not too remote or byzantine to occur to most normal people. I don't think people can plausibly plead ignorance or incompetence on these issues.

They want what we have to give them but they also wanna, you know, play innocent and pretend they have no idea where it came from. Well, that's more hypocrisy than I'm willing to swallow, so fuck 'em. Fuck normal people.

Micro-economics and macro-economics operate on vastly different scales. When people buy strawberries at the market, it isn't possible (at that moment) to perceive how they might be part of a macroeconomic trend.

It isn't immediately (or even not immediately) obvious that when you buy strawberries grown in Mexico, you may be causing starvation there. But you might be. If multi-cropping subsistence farming has been driven out of an area by berry producers like Dole or Driscoll, maybe local families are unable to feed themselves. Or, maybe the subsistence farmers now work for Dole and are better off, or worse off. We don't know, and can't figure that out by logic. Research would be in order.

Many of the top fortune 500 companies exploit labor, pollute the environment, corrupt political processes and governments, destabalize economies with reckless speculation, and then lie about all of it through their controlled media outlets. — Sivad

The middle classes are heavily invested in these corporations and take healthy profits from their unscrupulous activities. The poor can't really be considered victims either because 1) they're mostly politically apathetic, they've demonstrated very little concern for or solidarity with their fellow paupers and 2) most of them aren't living in poverty due to any protest of conscience, they're poor by happenstance — Sivad

There's a disconnect between the first quote and the second quote. First you properly accuse the big corporations of being corrupt and callous, then in the second paragraph you blame the workers for the consequences of corporate America bastard policies.

I'm not quite sure who you are counting as "middle class" but as it is usually used, you can rest assured they are not taking healthy profits from corporate activities. Only a small percentage of the population own enough stock to worry about corporate misbehavior.

People become politically apathetic when experience shows them that their votes do not matter. It is true that many workers are illogically opposed to unions and it is true that many workers have no sense of solidarity with fellow workers -- much to their own suffering. But, bear in mind, please: organized labor didn't get sick and die of indifference. Organized labor was murdered by those fortune 500 corporations you mentioned. The USA now has an extremely negative legal and political structure which hinders workers from successfully organizing unions. Employers have way too many legislated advantages over workers attempting to unionize.

A small fraction of people are poor because they were too lazy to go to work. Most people have been shoved down the economic ladder into poverty through no fault of their own.

It isn't immediately (or even not immediately) obvious that when you buy blueberries grown in Mexico, you may be causing starvation there. — Bitter Crank

I'll grant that there are certain instances where ignorance is a valid excuse, but it's pretty obvious that most of us wouldn't care even if we were made aware of the harm our purchases were causing given that we do buy many products with full knowledge of the abuses that went into the production. So we can't really take those cases in isolation, we have to consider the broader context.

given that we do buy many products with full knowledge of the abuses that went into the production — Sivad

Really? You may be exaggerating how much people know about the conditions under which the food they eat was produced, or the products they buy were made.

I'm not quite sure who you are counting as "middle class" but as it is usually used, you can rest assured they are not taking healthy profits from corporate activities. Only a small percentage of the population own enough stock to worry about corporate misbehavior. — Bitter Crank

Really? Just think of all the working class people who pay into pension funds which are heavily invested in blue-chip companies like Dow or Apple. Their retirements are funded by human and environmental exploitation.

You may be exaggerating how much people know about the conditions under which the food they eat was produced, or the products they buy were made. — Bitter Crank

They would still be culpable for their ignorance, but really who doesn't know that their iPhone was made in a sweatshop?

There's a disconnect between the first quote and the second quote. First you properly accuse the big corporations of being corrupt and callous, then in the second paragraph you blame the workers for the consequences of corporate America bastard policies. — Bitter Crank

The workers make their livings from these companies and live on their products, so they do share some of the responsibility. They also live in a democracy which makes them even more accountable for the bastard policies, it is well within their power to change those policies and the only reason those policies remain in effect is a lack of widespread, committed opposition to them. I don't think the working class can be so easily absolved.

it is well within their power to change those policies and the only reason those policies remain in effect is a lack of widespread, committed opposition to them. I don't think the working class can be so easily absolved. — Sivad

I wish what you say was true and practical, for then we could change the world. Alas... No.

Well, what you say is in a sense 100% true--in the sense that society operates by the cooperation of the people in the society. Workers cooperate with corporations, so therefore the workers share some of the blame.

In another sense what you say is 100% untrue. The dense network that enables a modern society to operate can not be disrupted very much, and still allow the society to go on functioning. Too much disruption and society falls apart. This is more true now than it was two centuries ago. More true now than one century ago. Anyone stopping the economy would be shooting themselves in the head.

Workers actually have very little leverage in some industries. Apple doesn't make it's products in this country, and no other electronics company does either. A majority of our autos are made elsewhere. A lot of many products are made elsewhere. Until recently, the US was not energy self-sufficient. Many industries employ a very small fraction of the population. Automation, robotics, digital control, etc. make workers less important in many companies than they used to be. (This is a crisis in itself, but let's talk about that in another thread.) I'm not suggesting that workers have become unnecessary -- just that they don't have the amount of leverage they once had.

Consumers have a considerable amount of leverage. If consumers stopped buying products, that would also bring the economy to a screeching halt -- but again, a modern society can not survive without all parts pretty much functioning normally.

So, workers and consumers can apply pressure. The trick is targeting precise pressure in the right place. Very difficult. Remember, corporate America is not defenseless. They can also apply pressure to workers and consumers, and chances are the government will help them.

The dense network that enables a modern society to operate can not be disrupted very much, and still allow the society to go on functioning. Too much disruption and society falls apart. This is more true now than it was two centuries ago. More true now than one century ago. Anyone stopping the economy would be shooting themselves in the head. — Bitter Crank

Giving people a vested interest in maintaining and perpetuating the system was rather ingenious. Now the normal people are highly averse to any meaningful reform because any change in the status quo could potentially cost them their jobs, their healthcare, their children's college fund, their retirement, etc.
I think they all know that this system is a bit depraved and isn't at all sustainable in the long term, but they're all just hoping that the music won't stop till after their puff is done. In fact I've had people come right out and say that and it was quite shocking because of the petty selfishness it conveyed.

The system is a dense, complex network of interdependence but it's not necessary to bring the whole thing crashing down on our heads, we could strategically dismantle it piece by piece while replacing each piece with something more sane and decent. But what if it did require us as a generation to make that kind of sacrifice? If we couldn't find it in ourselves to do the right thing then I'm not sure we deserve any sympathy as victims of a cruel and unjust system, we should be viewed by history as corrupt collaborators.

Workers actually have very little leverage in some industries. Apple doesn't make it's products in this country, and no other electronics company does either. A majority of our autos are made elsewhere. A lot of many products are made elsewhere. Until recently, the US was not energy self-sufficient. Many industries employ a very small fraction of the population. Automation, robotics, digital control, etc. make workers less important in many companies than they used to be. (This is a crisis in itself, but let's talk about that in another thread.) I'm not suggesting that workers have become unnecessary -- just that they don't have the amount of leverage they once had.

Consumers have a considerable amount of leverage. If consumers stopped buying products, that would also bring the economy to a screeching halt -- but again, a modern society can not survive without all parts pretty much functioning normally. — Bitter Crank

We have the political power to enact trade policy which prohibits trading with countries that don't have strong labor, environmental, and human rights protections. We also have the power to prohibit corporations that don't operate at those standards from doing business in our country, but we don't do any of that. In fact we do the opposite, we ratify trade deals which encourage that kind of malfeasance and give huge subsidies to vicious corporations who in turn offshore most of their profits.

And you're right, as individuals we have the power to divest and boycott socially irresponsible businesses, but we don't do much of that either. Instead we have human herds trampling themselves on Black Friday to get sweatshop swag at insanely low prices.

And you're right, as individuals we have the power to divest and boycott socially irresponsible businesses, but we don't do much of that either. Instead we have human herds trampling themselves on Black Friday to get sweatshop swag at insanely low prices. — Sivad

People can easily deal with the here and now and with concrete events. 3 dollar pants? Yay! The abstractions behind it, all the different steps of causality, the minor and remote impact of a single set of trousers; we're not programmed to integrate all those details in our thinking because they are nearly irrelevant for the here and now. All those irrelevancies add up. And that's not just "normal" people but everybody.

Just as an example, yesterday I threw plastic in the regular garbage can knowingly because I didn't want the smell of raw fish to spread through the house. My house doesn't stink but it's another piece of plastic that could've been recycled (actually, it still will because of how Dutch garbage separation works but that's not the point).

I think it's obvious when you buy a t-shirt for £2.50 that you are complicit in an exploitative low wage economy if not actual slavery. How could it be otherwise?

Benkei, why not just wash the plastic tray as you would a plate or bowl and then it will not smell? How does Dutch garbage separation work - does somebody go through your bin to pull out the fishy bits of plastic? In the UK we pay a Chinese contractor to take rubbish to the other side of the world on a ship and pile it up next to some village where the people's votes and opinions don't count. That's the cost of our democracy and beautiful countryside.

People can easily deal with the here and now and with concrete events. 3 dollar pants? Yay! The abstractions behind it, all the different steps of causality, the minor and remote impact of a single set of trousers; we're not programmed to integrate all those details in our thinking because they are nearly irrelevant for the here and now. All those irrelevancies add up. And that's not just "normal" people but everybody. — Benkei

There's nothing preventing people from viewing the world in a wider perspective. The average person is perfectly capable of thinking globally and acting locally. People are aware of these issues, they know that they're all contributing for the good or ill to an outcome. These issues don't escape normal people, their part in the larger process is something that occurs to them. And some part of them knows that when they minimize or dismiss their acts of complicity as 'just a pair of pants' that they're really just bullshitting themselves for the sake of ease and convenience in order to just get on with it. You give people far too little credit, people know better but they just don't want the inconvenience of struggle and sacrifice. They'd rather just go along to get along and not jeopardize their stake in the system by rocking the boat.

There's nothing preventing people from viewing the world in a wider perspective. The average person is perfectly capable of thinking globally and acting locally. People are aware of these issues, they know that they're all contributing for the good or ill to an outcome. These issues don't escape normal people, their part in the larger process is something that occurs to them. And some part of them knows that when they minimize or dismiss their acts of complicity as 'just a pair of pants' that they're really just bullshitting themselves for the sake of ease and convenience in order to just get on with it. You give people far too little credit, people know better but they just don't want the inconvenience of struggle and sacrifice. They'd rather just go along to get along and not jeopardize their stake in the system by rocking the boat. — Sivad

How is this different from what I said? Struggle and sacrifice now weighed against the abstractions of global warming, pollution and honest wages? Yes we can see the world in a wider perspective and often do and despite that fact when it comes to decision making, we regularly discard that wider perspective.

We have the political power to enact trade policy which prohibits trading with countries that don't have strong labor, environmental, and human rights protections. We also have the power to prohibit corporations that don't operate at those standards from doing business in our country, but we don't do any of that. In fact we do the opposite, we ratify trade deals which encourage that kind of malfeasance and give huge subsidies to vicious corporations who in turn offshore most of their profits. — Sivad

I agree with you -- entirely, actually, not just 97%. The People should be aware. The People could become an overwhelmingly powerful political force. Individuals should make ethical decisions about what they eat, how they move from location A to location B (ride a bus vs. driving a car), what they wear, what gadgets they buy, how large a house they live in, what they do with their fish wrappings, and so forth.

The People could become politically active and assert their power to shape foreign policy, trade policy, and every other kind of policy. I've exhorted people to do all these things (with dismal returns for my efforts). So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?

Instead we have human herds trampling themselves on Black Friday to get sweatshop swag at insanely low prices. — Sivad

I don't like referring to The People as "human herds" or "sheeple". It's bad practice, however tempting it is.

The People are targeted with a lot of heavy duty manipulation. Just consider the 30 year mortgage. In exchange for a house, you get a 30 year debt. If you fail to keep up payments, you are subject to the due process of repossession and you lose your house and whatever you've put into it. That tends to keep people's noses to the grindstone.

Wages and savings have fallen over the the last 50 years, resulting in a gradual impoverishment of workers. Most workers have no assets outside of their house and car, which is usually not paid off. Many workers have insecure employment--and not just unskilled workers whose jobs get replaced by automation. (Maybe 25% of the working class have really good, solid jobs. I'm not including professionals here.)

Many workers from across the spectrum of employment experience "social disorganization" -- the effects of inadequate education, drugs and alcohol abuse (directly and indirectly), mental illness, maldistribution of wealth (a major factor), the effects of the military industrial complex, and so on.

The answer to the question, "So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?" is fairly straightforward: most people are working hard to stay afloat, and they do not have the time and energy to become politically active agents of change.

I don't like that conclusion, but it seems to be the case. Yes, people could throw off the chains of illusion and other yokes of oppression. The workers of the world could unite. I have some hope that they might. If you've figured out a way of making this happen, please let me know as soon as possible.

The issue is that we just have too many amoral people or rather too many people who just don't care enough, or motivated by the wrong ethical code. People just don't care about other people, enough to do anything about such a situation.



It's something to worth consider, are these people just trying to keep up with the Johnses or are they also living beyond their means? I don't really know many people that are satisfied with what they have.

It's something to worth consider, are these people just trying to keep up with the Johnses or are they also living beyond their means? I don't really know many people that are satisfied with what they have. — Question

All of the above.

Keeping up with the Joneses leads to living beyond one's means. Trying to BE the Jones that other people keep up with is living beyond one's means.

Blesséd are they who know they will not, need not, and should not keep up with the Jones crowd.

Now, should people be satisfied with what they have?

Where would that have led to if, 300, 200, or 100 years ago people had said, "Let us be satisfied with feral hogs eating the garbage and small children in the street; let us be happy about millions of tons of steaming horse shit piling ever higher in the the cities; let us be happy with this Model T Ford. Let there never be a nicer, safer, more convenient, more comfortable car. This is as good as we need."

Where would be had people said 100 years ago, "These new fangled sanitation ideas are crazy. Let the sewage flow directly into the river; why should we be dissatisfied with ice delivered twice a week to our homes to melt in ice boxes? Why should we ever expect less miserable experiences at the dentist?" Where would we be if, in 1945, the people had said: "It is meet, right, and salutary that we should die of massive infections from getting a sliver in our finger. By the throbbing in my thumb, antibiotics are really dumb. Take Penicillin away. Nobody gets out of here alive."

We should be cautiously dissatisfied. Not having enough to eat is unsatisfactory. Eating to much is equally unsatisfactory. Freezing to death is unpleasant, but so is dying of heat prostration. Having nothing to do is bad, but being Mr. and Mrs. Too-Busy-To-Be-A-Homecoming-Queen is not good either.

Moderation in our dissatisfaction is the goal.

The answer to the question, "So: WHY THE HELL DON'T THEY DO WHAT IS BOTH ETHICAL AND SENSIBLE?" is fairly straightforward: most people are working hard to stay afloat, and they do not have the time and energy to become politically active agents of change. — Bitter Crank

I've heard this excuse more times than I can count. This isn't czarist Russia, we're not serfs here toiling from sunup to sunset, the vast majority of us have plenty of leisure time and enough disposable income to afford internet access. People have the time and the energy, it's just not important to them. What's important to them is sports, pop culture, and other trivial diversions. They can rattle off sports stats from 60 years back but they don't know basic geography, they can tell you exactly who's dating who in celebrity land but they can't give you the three basic functions of money or even how money is created. There's no excuse for their ignorance or their apathy.

Many workers from across the spectrum of employment experience "social disorganization" -- the effects of inadequate education, drugs and alcohol abuse (directly and indirectly), mental illness, maldistribution of wealth (a major factor), the effects of the military industrial complex, and so on. — Bitter Crank

The question is whether that's the cause or the effect. To be fair I'd say it's a bit of both, the system we have is in no small part due to the vulgar myopic pettiness of normal people, but it also exacerbates and compounds the problems created by those character defects. Really nothing has been done to the normal people that they weren't already doing to themselves and to each other.

Ok, but still it's hard to stand completely aside from slavery and exploitation. When Naomi Klein spoke to US audiences about her 'No Logo' book and the exploitation involved in creating Nike trainers people asked - "Then what kind of trainers can we buy that don't carry this taint?" - and she found it hard to answer. Not all 'fair trade' is fair. So perhaps we should do our best in the situation we find ourselves. Perhaps like Peter Singer we should give large proportions of our income to charity.

So perhaps we should do our best in the situation we find ourselves. Perhaps like Peter Singer we should give large proportions of our income to charity. — Cuthbert

I think it's important to give wisely, out of an enlightened interest for the future and not from a misguided compassion. I think it's naive to think we can save people from themselves, but we may be able to save the future from people and that's where we should be focusing our efforts.

True. The motive for charitable giving in this instance would be simply redistribution of income from the better off to the worse off in order to increase over-all welfare. An extra pound to me is neither here nor there but to someone else it means a meal rather than hunger. So every time I buy a t-shirt for £2.50 I should give £7.50 to someone in poverty. It will be a pretty rough justice but some kind of justice.

Singer argues that because it is matter of justice (however rough), then it's a duty to give not just a matter of charity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/ethics/charity/duty_1.shtml

You can't fix the world through charity, the system has to be massively reformed. The problem is people aren't interested enough in fixing the world to take the trouble to reform the system, which means that people have to be massively reformed. So really what we have is the world we deserve, and that is the definition of justice. I don't want justice, I want a better world.

The world is a tragedy, but it's not an injustice.

"And History will smile to think that this is the species for which Socrates and Jesus Christ died."

Yes, Singer's view is not very widely held although much admired. People give to charity because they want a better world. They don't reckon they owe it. Singer thinks he owes his excess wealth to others just as much as you owe rent to the landlord.

Singer's view is pretty close to Jesus. The Last Judgement is based on the degree to which "I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, and ye took me in; 36 naked, and ye clothed me; I was sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came unto me" Matthew 25:35-36.

Jesus prescribed no testing: How hungry? how thirsty? do you smoke and drink? did you cause these problems yourself? Give because you can give, and if you can't give, at least acknowledge the beggar as a person like unto one's own esteemed self.

Another way of "giving" is to "get information". Information helps you give better. There's lots of information about why people are hungry, thirsty, naked, stranger, sick, in prison. The cracks that people fall into have histories; they didn't just appear as acts of God. People are homeless because housing policy has mandated crudely unfair discrimination since the 1920s. Prisons are a scandal. When a handful of people (like, less than 25) possess more wealth than half the world's population, you know there are reasons why people are in misery.