1. Developing countries’ citizens do not have as high-paying options that developed countries’ citizens have.

2. Products are created (eg. clothing) in the outsourced environment of developing countries because of cheaper labor than in the developed countries.

3. This allows a cheaper product to be produced, and on a large scale.

4. This allows consumers in developed countries to purchase items at a low price, which sustains their expected standard of living (eg types of food, clothing).

5. This situation for laborers at the very base of the production part of the supply chain means they often work in unjust situations because they do not have other higher-wage or safer options for work, and so do not have a choice.

6. If the workers were to be paid or treated in the same way a person in a developed country was and if corporations had to consider sustainability in their business model, then:

The product could be at a higher price

If consumption went down, lower profit

If consumption stayed the same, lower profit

The product could be at the same price

If consumption stayed the same, lower profit

If consumption went down, lower profit

7. So in the current model the low-wage laborer is the only part of the supply chain where costs can be reduced for a product to be mass marketed at a price cheap enough for developed standards of consumption (eg. meat).

8. If the laborer “rebels” then their own government or employer may oppress them to keep the corporation there or the factory running, or the corporation may leave.  Neither option is desirable.

9. Instead, developed consumers justify this basic violation of human rights and sustainability by claiming nobody is owed a job (and so assuming these laborers have a just set of choice options) and that there are many worse options for them, so they are actually helping the laborers.

10. As is obvious, the premise of the current model is the acceptance of inequality in extreme levels in ways that developed countries would not accept within their own populace.  The attitude then described above is one of entitlement, greed, short-term profits, and consumerism. There is a clear absence of awareness or acknowledgement of the discrepancy between the luxurious standards of living within the developed and the exploited slave laborer. To sustain this model or accept it as it is, one must have a complete lack of empathy, and form a belief system to justify this.

11. So the system as a whole, as far as sustainability and social justice goes, needs to be transformed on a global scale into a sustainable, ethical one that is preferably not forced on us by necessity/nature or excess conflict.  


How to deal with the problem:


Ideology is a big part of the problem. Many individuals feel entitled to what they have based on the neoliberal modern western free actor model. This ideology served its use in bringing us to a modern version of the democratic model as it reacted to the previous traditions of religion and political models, but it is now outdated. We are now more rights-based in reaction to the way society used to operate before, but we have taken it to an extreme and become too reactionary. We are post-colonial now, and realize in some spheres that we do not want to punish somebody for becoming what their environment at times strongly influences them into becoming, but neither should we horizontally stratify everything because physical life will never be completely “fair” or outwardly equal, so that is not an ideal to which we should strive. To find the balance in our context is to not tolerate what seems to be exploitation tied to the consequences of modern free market capitalism - extreme inequality possible as the consequence of denying basic rights which should be granted to all living humans on this planet (ideally - we obviously are not there yet, and must first see whether it is possible practically at all). The scales have tended towards injustice at this point, as should be relatively obvious.  The single cause of this situation is the nature of industrialization, globalization, conglomeration, and consumerism, within all sectors of the political and economic spheres. With the rise of modern empiricism and materialistic value systems as the underpinning of these trends, we have a new status quo philosophically for our interpretation of reality. But all history requires cyclical renovations, and so I will propose a very basic thought process which can help us orient ourselves towards survival and justice on Earth.


This is not the consumer or the corporation’s “fault.” It is a systemic problem that organically arose out of the evolution of history, nature and culture. The system is merely now showing itself to be inapplicable to our modern sociological factors.  It is simply outdated. We need to apply structure to the economy without trying to change somebody’s thought and emotional processes, being susceptible to corruption, without being overly socialistic, and without destroying markets. The problem is global, so we need global solutions in policy.


The way to do this is by changing the way people think, and making their elected officials responsible only to them, and not corporate or moneyed interests. Education of the populace allows the citizenship to not use the government against themselves. This has to come from outside of government and other sources of propaganda - the way democracy was originally set up. We have deviated from that because of one reason: ideology. Ideology is based on assumptions, assumptions that people fear to let go of and which arouse anger and conflict when argued about. These ideologies are merely interpretations of the reality we live in, and in the modern world are about increasingly data-filled and complex issues, where contradictory claims are easily reified to no benefit for the public. We need to find sensible compromises that bridge ideologies’ gaps, to create pragmatic plans of action that actually deal with environmental and social problems. There is no need to list these elaborately here, as anybody who is even slightly familiar with these topics will know this.


Because agriculture is the root of many global problems I choose it as my example to explain these points. Agriculture is increasingly becoming globalized, industrialized, and conglomerated. Many people know the long list of problems caused by big agriculture, so I wont bother to list them in detail here. I will merely point out that the current global food system is creating farmers who grow food for exports and cannot make enough money to buy food for themselves, per the above model. This is nonsensical. Being a young farmer myself, it is obvious to me that sustainable agriculture is not an industrialized, commodified, largely globalized system. Focusing on the consumer to enact change perhaps by purchasing organic foods or using less water on a daily basis are not targeting the cause of the environmental and social problems created by agriculture. Those are still very much industrialized. Meat is the key example within the sector of agriculture. Development standards are allowing people around the world to expect to eat more meat, even though it is a very inefficient agricultural process. If less meat was eaten by the growing population that used sustainable and not industrial production techniques, it would be much, much easier to feed the earth’s population. Instead, in America, we see big agriculture market their machinery, seeds, and chemicals on the premise that *this* is the way to feed the world. This is propaganda at its finest, as it has conned so many farmers under the romantic ideal of the stewards of nature to actually believe that they are doing society a service by farming this way. Universities and education systems do not argue against this, but merely use details to support this extremely simple and completely false argument. The people think that the media tells them that some agri-tech company is out to help the world and help them farm better, when in reality it is their worst enemy packaged in emotionalism to keep them ignorant. Consumers need to change, agricultural production needs to change, but most of all policy needs to change. We need to begin supporting local markets, very detailed analyses of resources and come up with global-local solutions about how to use them, etc.


In any sector, in any example, I argue here that if we take the principles of sustainability and apply them within the economic sphere, social justice and survival will be sustained because of the nature of the relationship between our *shared* resources and the nature of markets. Again, let us refer to meat consumption. If we find alternative meats, if we eat less meat, if we eat organic or local meat, if the government stops supporting agro-tech methodologies and takes into account their cost on the environment, if we educate people correctly, etc then the current economic model will not be sustained, re-organizing the global markets into more local networks, eliminating the exploitative heirarchy, and sustainability will be facilitated. If we apply this strategy, whether by technological innovation, consumer change, or policy change, then naturally the markets (as the outcome of those factors) will become more ethical and sustainable.