Ethical Dilemna - Slavery helping my students...

[Ashmoria]

go to whoever is coordinating the candy sale and give her a $10 or whatever amount you feel that you would have spent on candy if you were willing to deal with cadbury.

in any candy sale there are kids who lose the money, who cant collect, who eat the candy themselves...then their parents--the ones you are trying to help out for god's sake--have to make up the difference out of their pockets. or the sale has to absorb the loss. your money will offset those problems.

if your coordinator cant handle that she is an idiot. use the $10 to buy a kid some school supplies during the year.

As said before it isn't really the coordinator but the morons who work in offices for the government who can't handle it, or rather they can but insist that they have to be involved.

which is why she can go to the coordinator and hand her a tenner.

the coordinator will hide the contribution into the whole candy selling bookkeeping mess.

jade wont get official credit for it but the good deed will still have been done without specifically supporting cadbury.

[Blouman Empire]

I don't buy chocolate, so I won't answer that question.

It's like this. I feel guilty buying chocolate which isn't fair-trade, and the price of fair-trade chocolate isn't worth the satisfaction it would bring me. I don't like working, and with such a lousy attitude I rarely get more than $15 an hour. Twenty minutes of work isn't worth a bar of chocolate to me.

My preferred indulgence is wine, which is produced in great quantity and cheaply in my own country, so "fair-trade" isn't much of an issue. It's a matter of price vs. hangover, so I drink a lot of De Bortoli cask red.

Fair enough, and yes the wine is a good thing, though I can get mine for lesst than $2 a bottle, every now and then the Hardy's processing plant nearby has a sale for employees, knowing one she buys them for us and we reimburse her. Most of it is shit butin every carton will be one or two good bottles (like stuff that goes for $17 in the shops) if she packs it usually get a third one.

[Robarya]

Okay, so I have this ethical dilemna. I don't eat chocolate or drink tea or coffee unless it's fairtrade, because I see it as important that I can help vulnerable people in this small way.

The school I work at is selling Cadbury's chocolate to raise money for our 4-10 camp. 99% of our students are rural and remote station kids who would probably not have the opportunity to go on camps like this without significant fundraising (the students are subsidised for their travel from their homes into school and back, and then we pay for the bus to get them to the campsite in Brisbane and back home again).

So my dilemna is, do I buy the chocolate and help my students go to camp, or do I hold to my ethical principles and not buy it? Who do I have more of a "duty" to, students in a foreign country who I will never meet, or the students I am supposed to be directly helping grow into fully-rounded, responsible adults?

Keep in mind that these third world kids work for "slave wages," because it is better than their alternative, which is no employment at all. While these wages are low for us in the West, it is apparently good enough for them for the work to be worth the effort. So if anything, you are doing them a favor by buying the chocolate, since that helps to keep the industries that pay them alive.

However, in the role of an individual consumer, you naturally have close to zero influence. But you probably knew that already.

[Greed and Death]

*snip OP*

So my dilemna is, do I buy the chocolate and help my students go to camp, or do I hold to my ethical principles and not buy it? Who do I have more of a "duty" to, students in a foreign country who I will never meet, or the students I am supposed to be directly helping grow into fully-rounded, responsible adults?

where does slavery come into this ?

In the poor countries which grow labour-intensive cash crops like cocoa, there either aren't laws against children working in those industries (for very low pay obviously, or none at all) or those laws aren't enforced. That's the slavery.

One way to address that slavery would be stronger international law and trade sanctions. But another way is to offer higher prices to growers and processors in those countries for their commodities, providing it is not produced with child labour (and on other conditions which aren't really relevant here.)

Because the governments of the poorest countries are not protecting those children from exploitation, the company buying the commodities to make high-priced luxury goods for rich markets does it instead, or an NGO does. That's an overhead (in addition to the higher commodity price paid) which is borne by the consumer of the finished product, and borne voluntarily by their choice to buy fair-trade.

I thought you would approve of "fair-trade" since the alternative is more government regulation.

But knowing what a mischievous poster you are, I wouldn't be shocked to hear you defend slavery instead.

If they are free to leave it is not slavery.
After all if really bad pay is all it takes to be slavery. Then the north would be just as guilty as the South.
But the article the other poster linked shows me yes it is actually slavery where the children are bought and sold and can not leave.

[Treznor]

Keep in mind that these third world kids work for "slave wages," because it is better than their alternative, which is no employment at all. While these wages are low for us in the West, it is apparently good enough for them for the work to be worth the effort. So if anything, you are doing them a favor by buying the chocolate, since that helps to keep the industries that pay them alive.

However, in the role of an individual consumer, you naturally have close to zero influence. But you probably knew that already.

Wow, that's an argument I haven't heard in a while. "Slave wages are ethical because they're better than no wages at all." You should try it sometime, see how indentured servitude agrees with you when your costs outpace your wages.

[Conserative Morality]

Keep in mind that if you don't buy it, those kids working on the plantations will no longer be working there: They'll be starving to death.

[Treznor]

Keep in mind that if you don't buy it, those kids working on the plantations will no longer be working there: They'll be starving to death.

So we should continue to support the people who keep them in poverty and brutal working conditions. Well, I suppose in the end it could be a good thing. We could see Marx's "inevitable" worker uprising happen after all.

[Robarya]

Wow, that's an argument I haven't heard in a while. "Slave wages are ethical because they're better than no wages at all." You should try it sometime, see how indentured servitude agrees with you when your costs outpace your wages.

Whether they are ethical or not depends on who you ask, but I personally don't have any responsibility to help anyone out except my family, friends and people that share the same beliefs as me. Still, like I said, the fact remains that without these "slave wages," many of the workers would starve.

[Sdaeriji]

Okay, so I have this ethical dilemna. I don't eat chocolate or drink tea or coffee unless it's fairtrade, because I see it as important that I can help vulnerable people in this small way.

The school I work at is selling Cadbury's chocolate to raise money for our 4-10 camp. 99% of our students are rural and remote station kids who would probably not have the opportunity to go on camps like this without significant fundraising (the students are subsidised for their travel from their homes into school and back, and then we pay for the bus to get them to the campsite in Brisbane and back home again).

So my dilemna is, do I buy the chocolate and help my students go to camp, or do I hold to my ethical principles and not buy it? Who do I have more of a "duty" to, students in a foreign country who I will never meet, or the students I am supposed to be directly helping grow into fully-rounded, responsible adults?

The dilemma is active assistance versus passive assistance. That is to say, by buying the chocolates, you are active assisting those students improve their situation, whereas not buying the chocolates, you are passively assisting the wage slaves improve their situation. Understand that, by not buying the chocolate, you aren't actually doing anything to help the children working on those farms; you are merely not worsening their situation. You have to evaluate which course of action will result in the most benefit for the respective groups, taking into account the scale of your action and the relative conditions of their situations.

Personally, in my mind, it's easy to feel good about yourself for "doing something" when "doing something" doesn't require you to actually do something. If the situation of those South American wage slaves is of such concern for you, there are far better ways to assist them than not buying chocolate. If it is merely a moral stand, then consider that just not buying the chocolates is only really not furthering their situation, and that your moral stand prevents you from actively advancing the situation of your students. I could just as easily say that I am helping child slaves in South America because I think Cadbury is shit, but I'm not really.

[Sdaeriji]

Well that is my line of thinking. Unfortunately, there are major funding issues with even small donations (stupid government departments) so the school isn't accepting them. My only recourse to support my students is to buy the chocolate. Or stand by my beliefs in regards to this and not support them.

Now this is just stupid, why is that at my school (a private school) can get money from benefactors yet a public school is not allowed to receive them without a headache?

Once again bureaucrats are causing problems.

Then again are schools are in different states.

The same reason why you cannot just donate money to a politician like you can to a private citizen.

Impropriety. All donations to public figures and entities have to be documented to monitor and avoid any improper influence.

You wouldn't ask why a judge is not allowed to receive a donation from a private citizen without a headache, why would a school administrator be any different?

[Blouman Empire]

The same reason why you cannot just donate money to a politician like you can to a private citizen.

Impropriety. All donations to public figures and entities have to be documented to monitor and avoid any improper influence.

You wouldn't ask why a judge is not allowed to receive a donation from a private citizen without a headache, why would a school administrator be any different?

Because judges have to remain neutral and pass judgements free from bias and in accordance to the law.

A school has no such obligation, so I don't see why my school was allowed to have benefactors without much hassle while the public school does.

Then again my school and Jade's school are in different states.

[Sdaeriji]

If they are free to leave it is not slavery.
After all if really bad pay is all it takes to be slavery. Then the north would be just as guilty as the South.
But the article the other poster linked shows me yes it is actually slavery where the children are bought and sold and can not leave.

It's called a truck system or debt bondage, and it has been outlawed in many nations as a form of slavery.

[Sdaeriji]

The same reason why you cannot just donate money to a politician like you can to a private citizen.

Impropriety. All donations to public figures and entities have to be documented to monitor and avoid any improper influence.

You wouldn't ask why a judge is not allowed to receive a donation from a private citizen without a headache, why would a school administrator be any different?

Because judges have to remain neutral and pass judgements free from bias and in accordance to the law.

A school has no such obligation, so I don't see why my school was allowed to have benefactors without much hassle while the public school does.

Then again my school and Jade's school are in different states.

A public school absolutely has an obligation to remain neutral and present education in an unbiased fashion.

Otherwise we'd have gym class sponsored by Nike and health class extoling the virtues of Egg McMuffins as part of a balanced breakfast.

A private school, being financed privately and not with public funds, can present education with as much slant as it wants as long as it can pass accreditation and, as such, it is irrelevant who is funding the curriculum.

[Der Teutoniker]

Okay, so I have this ethical dilemna. I don't eat chocolate or drink tea or coffee unless it's fairtrade, because I see it as important that I can help vulnerable people in this small way.

The school I work at is selling Cadbury's chocolate to raise money for our 4-10 camp. 99% of our students are rural and remote station kids who would probably not have the opportunity to go on camps like this without significant fundraising (the students are subsidised for their travel from their homes into school and back, and then we pay for the bus to get them to the campsite in Brisbane and back home again).

So my dilemna is, do I buy the chocolate and help my students go to camp, or do I hold to my ethical principles and not buy it? Who do I have more of a "duty" to, students in a foreign country who I will never meet, or the students I am supposed to be directly helping grow into fully-rounded, responsible adults?

Donate money straight to the children. The idea of the chocolate is a give-a-little-get-a-little idea, but if you just donate some money, the children get more money to fund their trip, and you aren't buying the chocolate.

[Blouman Empire]

A public school absolutely has an obligation to remain neutral and present education in an unbiased fashion.

Otherwise we'd have gym class sponsored by Nike and health class extoling the virtues of Egg McMuffins as part of a balanced breakfast.

Shame we don't have teachers like that.

And we are not talking about donations controlling the curriculum, we are talking about private donations given to the school to do as they see fit and in this case simply to send the kids on an excursion.

A private school, being financed privately and not with public funds, can present education with as much slant as it wants as long as it can pass accreditation and, as such, it is irrelevant who is funding the curriculum.

I say private in the sense that while it was private it got public funds as well. And private donations never funded the curriculum but rather allowed the school to provide more facilities such as a student car park, new auditorium, upgrade of the I system, etc.

[Soheran]

Keep in mind that if you don't buy it, those kids working on the plantations will no longer be working there: They'll be starving to death.

This argument only makes sense if we assume that the people in question are not slaves: that they have the freedom to choose alternatives, and they have chosen to work on the plantation as their best option.

However, in actual fact, many of the children who work at such plantations are slaves... quite literally. By boycotting the companies in question you may not improve their particular circumstances. But you will weaken the incentives for enslaving people in the future.