6 Disputations in Tainted Goods

Dissent: A few More Musings

This has been touched upon, in many ancillary ways, by the many thoughtful responses already up on this topic of the moral dilemma of Mr. Benavides’s wood, but I would like to reiterate the bewildering thicket of assumptions underlying the original question. (I’ll mention as a side note that the assumptions get to the heart of what seems to me to be the inherent misanthropy of a large portion of the modern environmental movement.)

As I said, many of these questions have been raised in various ways, but I’ll jump into the fray for fun. First, how are we to know that said offensive teak was the result of irresponsible Indonesian deforesting rather than a more legitimate process of sustainable resource stewardship? (I assume here, of course—with Locke—that most of nature is essentially worthless without human cultivation; I also assert that, as a matter of natural right, we have very little to say about the right of local Indonesians to exploit the land upon which they were born and improve their lot.)

And I suppose I would like to reiterate the chain (or lack thereof) of moral cause and effect here—the ordering that would lead to true (i.e., legitimate) guilt on the part of the purchaser of teak seems to assume all sorts of things. To list a few: that the eventual suffering and species destruction caused by possible future exacerbated global warming outweighs the benefits to the local Indonesians gained by their logging of teak—and in this same vein, that maximizing humanity’s comfort and minimizing its physical or bodily harm outweighs all other considerations; that teak, in a rainforest halfway across the world, somehow has an inherent worth (or is it that the rainforest as a whole has an inherent worth? or that the preservation of said rainforest will prevent the ultimate destruction of the planetary ecosystem and thus result in less human misery and death in the distant future?).

In other words, I’m trying to get at the question of morality, as such, in the original post. Why is there anything inherently immoral about forest destruction? Does this earth of ours really have any moral worth, by itself, were the only moral (i.e., rational) species on it to disappear? In other words, what does it mean to speak of morality absent humanity? The blood diamond example might be easier, insofar as we can identify the killing of other rational creatures for DeBeers’ monetary gain as a bad thing (or is the real problem the fact that diamond mining takes place disproportionately in societies that have, as of yet, been unable to order themselves non-barbarically in a political sense? Would we have a problem of blood diamonds if most of the world’s stock was located in Utah?)

Finally, I’ll circle back around to the first paragraph of Mr. Benavides’s post.  Is unintentional evil truly evil? Isn’t the very notion of evil caught up in intention and purposeful action? This recalls some of our questions from the panhandling bum discussion. It also recalls all of our need to revisit Plato, as he and Aristotle raised (and debated) this question of  whether  virtue is knowledge or wisdom in very sophisticated and smart ways a very long time ago.

Oh, and for a discussion of the transferability of the “taint of corruption,” we should all re-read Fletcher v. Peck, no? Ronald Coase might clarify some of the legal-economic problems present in many of the above posts as well.


Dissent: The morality of a consumer butterfly

Quite frankly, Mr. Benavides’ presupposition that his ligneous acquisitions are inexorably redolent of an evil character stinks. This binary view would suggest that all objects of consumer desire are inherently good or bad, black or white. As tempting as this philosophy might be, even an armchair Aristotle could weave a million mother goose tales that


Dissent: Consumerism does not Implicate Morality

Let’s say that in place of any harrowing revelation from the world of Indonesian forestry, Mr. Benavides’ acquaintance had let him in on a still darker secret: the owner of the antique store has an idiosyncratic policy of celebrating the sale of each Bodhidarma bust by going home and beating his wife. Would Mr. Benavides


CONCURRENCE: WHY PENCILS HAVE ERASERS AND HUMANS HAVE TORT LAW

Mr. Goodwin is right that the accidental infliction of harm is not, on its own, immoral. Mistakenly taking someone else’s umbrella is not theft; accidentally bumping into a passer-by is not a shove; rear-ending another driver is not battery. But that’s only half the story. Blameless as one may be, the umbrella must be returned,


Dissent: He That Hath Not Sinned

Mr. Benavides whimsical trip into an antique curiosity shop raises a raft of compelling issues. Are unintentional “evils” really no less reprehensible? When does a person become complicit in an immoral transaction? Can material possessions acquire a permanent moral taint? I will defer these questions for the time being, though I hope to return to


Essay: Tainted Goods

I s  anyone intentionally immoral?  At the very least, we justify ourselves before taking that next step into moral decay.  But much of the time evil is accidental.  Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less evil. I entered the Asian antique store on a whim.  No sooner had the bell hanging over the door signalled