TOMS, Product Red, and Selfish Altruism Decried

There seems to be a growing trend these days towards what I will call “socially beneficial consumerism” - that is, the idea that if we as consumers can only *somehow* consume in the right way, then we will solve problems of hunger, lack of clothing, disease, and poverty around the world. At heart the issue here is that we like buying things for ourselves and not giving our money away to others, even though we know we should, and there are some companies out there that are making it easy to appease our guilty consciences while still allowing us to buy fancy stuff for ourselves. This is different from supporting fair trade economics and the like; when you partake in this new movement and buy from a company that claims to donate some of their profits to the less fortunate, the company making the product is still turning a profit. Fair trade, simplified, is a system in which when you buy fair trade coffee (for instance), the farmer who grew the coffee - and not the international corporate middleman - is getting most of the money. Even though charities still will get money from socially beneficial consumerism, it is less money then they would have gotten if you had given them all of your money instead of buying something for yourself. Let’s examine a few of these new upstart efforts.

TOMS Shoes is a “conscientious consumer” enabler that sells shoes (well, slippers, really) to fund its drive to provide shoes to impoverished kids all around the globe. Every pair sold allows a poor child to have shoes. “One for One,” their website proclaims. This solution appears, at first, a shoe-in, and I am all for helping poor children, until you look at the cost of the shoes that TOMS sells - $44-$68 a pair. For slippers! Surely these don’t cost upwards of $30 to make and market. After all, half the shoes produced are not even for the consumer market. I thought the appeal of these simple, durable shoes is that they are cheap to produce and distribute to the poor. Right? TOMS is probably netting a nice profit on every pair.


This reduces the shoes to a status symbol for the first-world wearer. “Look at how generous my shoes say I am,” is the underlying message to all the folks walking by you on the paved streets. But this is not true altruism. After all, any cost-conscious altruistic citizen would satisfy their need for shoes for the lowest cost possible and then donate the remainder to charity. Sure, they don’t get the status symbol that they can flaunt in public, but more of their hard-earned money actually goes to, you know, worthy causes that aim to make a difference in the world.

If $70 for shoes isn’t enough money to make someone feel self-righteouss, then they can always move on to bigger and better status symbols, like the OLPC. The One Laptop Per Child Project, through their Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program, aims to put a laptop in the hands of third-world children - for educational purposes of course. Technology for everyone! Now of course I am skeptical about the very nature of this project, but that is not the focus of this article. My beef here is that you pay $400, $200 for each laptop, just to receive a laptop that you most likely don’t need. What use could you have for a plastic, green, kid-size, Linux-based laptop? Chances are you’ll end up giving it to your kid so that they can have some solidarity with those less fortunate, while you can still look good at dinner parties. Never mind how far $400 could have gone at your local homeless shelter to help out the poor in your community; your kid has a cool gadget that shows how much you care about others.

There seems to be two main camps of opposition to this trend. One one hand you have groups who directly speak out against it, like the Adbusters magazine and website. On the other hand you have organizations like (Product) Red who try to incorporate altruism into the mainstream consumer culture. I think that both paths are misguided.


Adbusters magazine, the outspoken source for all things anti-consumerist, offers hemp shoes made without sweatshop labor, branded only with a black circle. The circle, an anti-corporate scowl of sorts, aims to demote the brand logo as a source of self-worth. The price for a pair? A lofty $75-$99. Congratulations, Adbusters - you offer unbranded merchandise at brand-name prices. The anti-consumer will no doubt choose a cheaper option and shop elsewhere. And those people who usually buy $200+ shoes who you might try and entice with lower prices? They have never heard of your magazine.

The rich, though, may have heard of (Product) Red. This brand, an affiliation with a charity, is on everything from credit cards to clothes to iPods and promises that a percentage of the profits for each branded item sold will be given to various social causes. Apparently the hip thing to do these days is to take a regular iPod, paint it (Red), and sell it so that consumers can claim that they are actually donating money to charity. It is a bold initiative to change the world through the frivolous expenditure of cash on personal luxury items. Since (Red) works on streamlining the consumer’s desire with social justice and altruism, a large part of their campaign is focused on advertising. After all, if they can’t tout the benefits of paying for red paint, people will always buy what’s cheapest or most attractive. More money gone to waste on advertising that could have been put up to help those less fortunate.

“Desire and virtue. Together at last,” their website claims. I wasn’t aware that these were irreconcilable qualities up until now, but since (Red) has pointed it out, let’s think about it. Why is it that we brand desire as ‘evil’ and those who lust after things as lacking virtue? I associate rampant desire with lacking self-discipline, and come to the conclusion that a large part of what we call ‘being virtuous’ is really just being disciplined. (Red) thinks that they have solved a paradox, allowing desire and virtue, in this case more akin to altruism, to go hand in hand. You can now spend frivolously, confident that as long as you are buying (Red), your dollars are working overtime to propel you into sainthood.

I don’t think I can summon the language to appropriately describe how misguided and false this idea is.

When you are rewarded for being altruistic, you cannot truly be being altruistic. Selfless giving, the kind that is motivated by morals or ethics, does not ask for anything in return. Flaunting TOMS shoes or an OLPC so that others will marvel at your generous spirit nullifies the altruistic ideal. Altruism is giving while expecting nothing in return. Altruism decries selfishness, and this is what the companies want you to forget. I’m all for supporting the poor, but I’m completely against the idea that you can put your self-interest on par with your concern for the poor and say that you are being altruistic, which is what these companies seem to be promoting.

Should you support the poor and less fortunate? Absolutely. Should you provide for yourself? Certainly. Should you take advantage of opportunities that allow you to integrate those interests? Yes, but do so with caution and with no premonition that what you are doing is pure altruism. If you are going to provide for yourself, do so. If you are going do help the less fortunate, do so. But do not spend money on “conscientious consumer” status symbols that excuse frivolous spending. Jesus Christ probably said it best in Matthew 6 when he said, “But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.” Consuming correctly won’t make the world better; giving, giving generously, and remembering to put others’ interests above you own will.

_DZ

#20

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_DZ

On Putting Childish Things Behind Us And Growing Up

Lately I’ve been meditating (and I don’t mean meditating in the “cross-legged in the dark” way, but rather the “meditate on my words day and night” kind of Biblical way) on the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 13:11 where he says,

“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. But when I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” (NIV)

What kind of childish ways is Paul talking about here? And what is the benefit of putting them behind us?

I think it is fair to say that Paul is not talking about childish things out of which we naturally mature. He’s not talking about riding bikes with training wheels or playing marbles or collecting Pokémon cards. He’s addressing talking, thinking, and reasoning. He’s talking about thought processes and behaviors that stem from personal growth and development over time - things that we have to nurture and cultivate.

I don’t think that “thinking” here refers to superficial things like what Johnny thinks of you, or whether you should start thinking about what to eat for dinner, or what you think about the Dodgers this year. I think Paul is talking about deep things that kids don’t think about. Things like “Why am I here?” “What does my life mean?” “Is there eternity?”, and “If God exists, of what consequence is that to me?” These are questions worth thinking about and worth finding answers for. If we don’t think about them or choose to ignore them, it means we have not matured.

Talking, I think, refers to what James says about taming the tongue in chapter 3 of his book. It means thinking before you say things. How do kids talk? Kids gossip on the playground. Kids lash out when insulted. They wail and complain when they don’t get their way. Kids are vocal about the fairness of life. Kids swear because it provokes a reaction. Kids boast about their possessions or parents, things over which they have relatively little or no control. These are the things that we should put behind us. Growing up means gaining wisdom, discretion, and holding your tongue until after you analyze the many colors that taint a situation.

A child’s world is fairly black-and-white, and it is easy to reason in such a world. If you fall off your bike, you get scrapes. If Billy hits you, you hit him back. If you eat a slushie too fast, your head hurts. If little Susie down the street likes you, that’s gross. It’s all too easy to extend this logic to the grown-up world as well. If they are poor, they deserved it. If he drives a nicer car, he is more successful then you. If they have more money, God likes them better. This kind of logic leads to envy, contempt, malice, and depression. It shows a shallow understanding of the people around us and the world in which we live. Adults should rather eschew judgment for insight and anger for patience.

Giving up childish ways is a step towards perfection in Jesus Christ. As He is perfect, so we must strive to be like Him. Through striving to be like Him, we mirror, though poorly, His character to the world. By growing up in speech, though, and reason we let Christ’s light shine through us. As the Bible is the Word of God, through reading it can we know God’s character and hence the goals and essential qualities that we should aim to attain. These are grown-up qualities, and require investing some real time and effort to acheive.


_DZ

I was on NPR!

As I was making lunch today I was listening to a discussion about consumer-driven healthcare, and why that is a better alternative to what we have now or even a single-payer system. I had a question, so I called in and got to talk to the guest, Ms. Regina Herzlinger. You can visit the website here. My question comes a bit after minute 45 in the program. (You might have to wait for a bit for the embedded player to pop up.) I was super nervous and now that I listen to it I see that I totally could have phrased my question better, but whatever. It was my first time calling into a radio show.

_DZ

Trading, and The Capitalist Lie

On Sunday I listed my too-small road bike for sale on Craigslist, looking to sell it or trade for a bigger, better-fitting one. Within hours I had an email from a guy who wanted to trade his too-big-for-him bike for my smaller one. It looked like a perfect swap!


There was only one problem: I valued my bike at $500 and wasn’t sure that his was of equal (or, I guess, greater) value. After all, I didn’t want to get ripped off!

We decided on a spot to meet and decide if we wanted to swap bikes, and soon I was looking at his bike. It wasn’t a bad bike actually. It was quite nice. He was a nice guy too, and we chatted it up a bit.

What detracted from my being able to fully focus my attention on my new friend whom I had met (and who shared my interest in bikes!) was, of all things, my capitalist conditioning to try and figure out whether or not I was making a trade of equal monetary value. It was quite distracting.

Throughout the whole interaction I was our bikes and pricing them out in my head.

“Okay, aluminum frame. Mine is steel. I lose. He values his frame at $100, though. Mine is totally worth $100. I have a carbon front fork to his aluminum. Win. That fork is worth at least $70, maybe. I have twenty-seven speeds thanks to a Shimano Tiagra system. He has twelve, tops. Hah. Ooh, that’s a nice chainring though. He has better brakes, too. Full RX-100. Ummmmm. Ok but I totally have a better wheelset - that’s at least $70 per wheel. Plus I have good tires. Do I have a carbon seat post? I might. He sure doesn’t. Oh, do I see scuffs on those bars? Oh wait, mine are a bit scuffed too. Crap. Wow, does his seat ever look uncomfortable. Hmmm. I wonder if he’s doing the same thing in his head?”

This went on for close to an hour as we decided to ride our bikes on a nice, leisurely ride along a lake to get a better feel for them. I eventually had to tell myself to cut it out. It was getting too distracting, and besides, I really liked riding this bigger bike. It was really a nice bike.

We eventually completed the swap an hour and a half after we met, and I rode my new, bigger bike home. Had I gotten the better deal? I asked myself. I came to the conclusion that it didn’t matter. Pricing the bikes out in my head, trying to adhere to the capitalist lie of maintaining monetary equilibrium in order to be happy, had only led to confusion and distrust. At the end of the day, I was riding home on a bike that I was happy with and had made a new friend, and that was that. That’s all there ever should have been.




_DZ

Dubai - Capitalism Run Rampant

What was once a promising oasis of paradise is slowly becoming a corpse of bohemian capitalism. All money and promise, and no goods.


Keep up with the happenings with the Times Online!

Dubai's Dream is Built on Sand

The Sordid Reality Behind Dubai's Gilded Facade


_DZ

Thoughts on Christianity, Nationalism, War, and Loving Your Neighbor

I’m in the middle of reading two books - Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and The Myth Of A Christian Religion by Greg Boyd. Both books are well-written and thought-provoking, and differ on a point on which I want to fully flesh out my ideas. Boyd is adamantly against nationalism and, particularly, the militant religious nationalism behind such movements as the manifest destiny and other displacing movements waged behind the mantra of “God gave us this nation” or “We are a holy, chosen people group.” Boyd feels that in this sense religion is a tool used to bolster man’s pride; an illegitimate way of validating one’s (most of the time) not-so-holy desires. I think that Boyd is correct here. In this way I think, also, that Boyd is very supportive of the separation of church and state, because the church should not use the state as a crutch to perpetuate its causes.

Boyd is also clear that he believes that allegiance should be pledged to God and God alone, not to some man-made nation or nation-state governed by men. It seems here that Boyd would not be supportive of Christian men and women in the military. Protecting our freedoms is all well and good, but protecting them at the cost of killing our enemies when Christ calls us to love our enemies seems to him to be disobeying God. Here Lewis disagrees. To quote from his book in chapter 17 on forgiveness (p.106-107)

“Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment - even to death. If you had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and I still think so now that we are at peace. It is no good quoting 'Thou shaft not kill.' There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major- what they called a centurion. The idea of the knight - the Christian in arms for the defense of a good cause is one of the great Christian ideas. War is a dreadful thing, and I can respect an honest pacifist, though I think he is entirely mistaken. (Bolding is mine, italics are his.)

I have no issue with Christian judges, though I think life in prison a better alternative to a death penalty. But should they feel the need for a death sentence, I think, and this might be a stretch, that they are simply obeying the law and, in a way, “giving to Caesar what is Caesar’s .” You might disagree with me on this. I understand. As far as Christians being in the military, I think that there is a place for army chaplains and every other Christian should refrain (in America, at least) as a conscientious objector. All killing may not be murder, but I believe that all killing is probably not in your enemies’ best interest and in saying so I disagree with Lewis quite strongly.

But going back now to the separation of church and state, I believe that allegiance to a nation especially if it is a Christian nation, is misguided. Christ didn’t come to earth to make a super awesome political nation state - he came to love people and save them by dying for them. Making a Christian nation just creates an “us and them” mentality that can only get in the way of loving our neighbor. Therefore I am not supportive of Christians in the military, nor am I supportive (at all) of flagpoles on church properties. I don’t see how a church aligning itself with a symbol that, at best, will only foster warm fuzzy feelings of patriotism and, at worst, will turn away people who have had bad experiences with Americans can further the spreading of Christ’s love. Because, really, spreading Christ’s love and proclaiming God’s glory and worth is what Christianity is all about.


_DZ

A Basic Mission Statement for Core::Minimalist

We’re living in an age of unprecedented growth of personal expression and mass communication. I sound all academic and annoying when making a blanketing and obvious statement like that, but it’s true - more ordinary people can talk to a teeming mass of others than ever before. The era of mass communication as a one-way toll road, from the media/advertiser to the consumer, is over.

Upon the completion of a telegraph line from Maine to Florida Thoreau wrote (and I’m paraphrasing), “There is now technology that lets Maine talk to Florida. But what if Maine has nothing to say to Florida?”

Nothing of importance to say, that is.

In his book Silicon Snake Oil, Cliff Stoll tells a story of an American elementary school in the 1980s pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars into a computer infrastructure that let their kids e-mail kids in a Puerto Rican school. It was advanced, it was technological, it was expensive, and it was nice. What did the kids use it to write?

“What is Puerto Rico like?” “Do you listen to Michael Jackson?”

They could have sent that on a postcard for 32¢, Stoll quips.

The point here is that just because we have the technology to mass communicate doesn’t mean that we have anything substantial to say, despite what bloggers and YouTubers on the Internet want you to believe. Just because people can read what you write, listen to what you record, and watch what you film doesn’t mean that it is any good. Part of being educated means knowing what to think and, consequently, what not to think, a fact that people often forget. Having an audience does not translate into providing a service or even making a positive change in the world.

Now, as a blogger, I say this with caution. People can, and have, asked me similar questions in the vein of “What makes you think that people 'out there' will care about what you have to say?” and to this I have several answers.

Foremost, I am not in the blogosphere to be popular. I maintain a blog because I like to write and because being able to post publicly makes me work harder to try and write well. Blogging motivates me to get out my personal thoughts and feelings, as well as comment on current events, articles and books. If people happen to like reading what I write, awesome. But I have friends who have asked me, “So you have a blog? Cool. You think I should start one?”

My answer is almost always "no".

Starting a blog as a novelty or out of guilt or whatever reason will just result in an abandoned blog if there is no real motivation behind the decision. If writing is not how you express yourself, find another way to do so! I have entertained the idea of starting a YouTube channel numerous times, only to realize each time that A) I would only want to be on YouTube to have a shot at being an Internet celebrity (celebrity YouTubing is so often a lose/lose situation) and B) I would be a chronically boring video blogger. Really. I don’t think visually like that. I think in sentences.

So, then, what is the point of this blog? It is a two-pronged effort. The first goal is to further the idea of, as I call it, Reductional Minimalism. This is that idea that you can live with less, and can in fact be happier having less. It is the idea that becoming attached to material things can be detrimental to personal development, and funneling money that would be spent on accumulating possessions into enriching relationships and building social bonds instead results in a better world.

The second goal of the site is to reclaim to Internet as personal space. In a cyberspace where e-commerce and flashy entertainment sources abound, I aim to bring it back to a personal level. I am just a guy who writes stuff and puts it on a website. I want to you know who I am, what I do, my history, and how I think, so that you can get to know me better. Hopefully, then, I can get to know you better as well and can work together to decrease worldsuck.


_DZ