Personal vs. Corporate Responsibility
I’ve had a few sociopolitical discussions with a few people lately who have complained about all the “people out there” in the world today who are addicted to fast food, video games, electronic gadgets, Facebook, etc. instead of working hard and contributing to society. Some have even suggested that the poor deserve their fates because these are the things they choose to do all day instead of achieving in their careers, and these people are basically leeches on society who get food stamps and welfare, etc.
I agree that there is a measure of personal responsibility that needs to happen on an individual level when it comes to choosing media and hobbies, but I have found that generally the people who complain about the choices of the “average Joe” never seem to hold the creators of fast food, video games, Facebook, etc. to the same standard. It is as if partaking of a product designed to be relatively cheap, addictive, and that contributes nothing to society is a failure of personal responsibility, but to design the same product (knowing that it is addictive and contributes little to society) is the result of keen business acumen and cleverness. This is just putting personal responsibility behind a corporate wall to protect it from all criticism.
It seems to me that holding up one group to an unusually high standard of individual responsibility, but not the other, is hypocritical. This is why I consider myself center-right rather than fully conservative.
Corporates act as they do because of the consumers who buy their products. The responsibility always will and remains with the consumer to choose their products and services wisely.
Isn’t the issue here multiple indulgences, and not a single example of partaking? I don’t know anyone who would fault someone from eating McDonalds and playing video-games all day every once in a while, but I know many people who would fault someone who does that all day, every day. That’s why I don’t fault the creators of unhealthy luxury items; they are producing something designed to be utilized irregularly, for recreation and novelty. It’s not their fault that some people over-indulge. However, I do fault the manufacturers when they market their unhealthy products in a way that makes them appear to be less unhealthy then they are.
Well, but fast food and Facebook are subtly addictive, psychologically. The more you eat fats and sweets the more you crave them – the same goes with Facebook and video games. That’s really my issue. The product itself is designed in such a way that it breaks down psychological barriers to the next indulgence. The more that happens, the more your neural pathways default to those indulgences. Marketing people and software designers know this and design these products with these things in mind. And I guess the issue with personal responsibility is that those designers could really design anything that they want, and they choose unhealthy things. That choice is still a choice, in my mind.
Did you consider that perhaps many of the people you have heard complain about the choices of the “average Joe,” who don’t also hold the creators of fast food, video games, Facebook, etc. to “the same standard” place the responsibility with the individual because all of these vices and distractions are equally available to them, and it is only them, that CHOOSE not to partake (to excess) of these unhealthy choices?
If two people are both presented with the same temptation, and one partakes and the other person uses their own will to not partake, why would you expect the one who abstained to blame the OFFEROR of the temptation for the use?
You go on to suggest that “it is as if partaking of a product designed to be relatively cheap, addictive, and that contributes nothing to society is a failure of personal responsibility, but to design the same product (knowing that it is addictive and contributes little to society) is the result of keen business acumen and cleverness. This is just putting personal responsibility behind a corporate wall to protect it from all criticism.”
Not at all.
Plenty of healthy people will occasionally eat fast food or otherwise less-than-ideal fare. Many, many completely responsible and otherwise productive people play video games, in moderation, as a form of entertainment. A wealthy upper-middle-class person who does not abuse substances has drugs and alcohol available to them. In fact, those things are MORE readily available to people with means. So you see, you present the issue as if It is a situation where the makers/purveyors of these “bad” products do NOTHING but contribute to the wholesale downfall of society – but that is a false premise. Like anything else, pretty much all of these things, when taken in moderation, are essentially harmless. To paraphrase the NRA: “Big macs don’t make people fat. People make themselves fat.”
Cliche as it may sound, it’s true. No one forces anyone to overeat, over-indulge in video games or mindless TV, or drugs or alcohol. Not the corporations that make and market these products, not family members. No one other than the individual is in control of the individual.
It is not at all a situation of a perfectly balanced equation of responsibilities, where we are holding up one group to an unusually high standard of individual responsibility, but not the other. On one side, you have an individual, who is completely and solely and entirely responsible for their own actions moving towards a product in an unhealthy manner/frequency. On the other side, you have a business or corporation, who has NO control over any particular individual, offering the very same product or service to everyone, the vast majority of whom use the product in (relative) moderation.
It is totally inappropriate to suggest that it is OK to shift the responsibility for completely individual decisions to an entity that has no control over the individual. It is also folly to suggest that we should control the environment for everyone, based on the demonstrated excesses of a few.
I do think companies have power over individuals in the form of subconscious priming, association, classical conditioning, etc. Marketing is really just social and cognitive psychology. Then there is the sales aspect (Cialdini-style influence, meaning knowing how to socially manipulate people). The Solomon Asch conformity experiments and the Milgram experiments showed long ago that given the right variables, you can psychologically manipulate people into believing things they know are wrong, and even administering lethal shocks to other human beings. If it is all about “free will” then there should have been no statistically significant change in the subjects’ behavior under the experimental circumstances. Since there was a statistically significant change (under the Milgram experiments, sometimes up to 80 or 90%), that shows that people’s behavior can be shaped by other people. People who knowingly apply such techniques should bear some of the personal responsibility for the consequences of that pressure.
With all due respect, that argument is a completely unjustifiable reach to the exception, to try and prove an alleged rule.
I agree that companies have SOME power over individuals in the form of subconscious priming, association, classical conditioning, etc., but basic commercial marketing techniques are quite a far stretch from controlled experiments on captive subjects, along the lines of Solomon Asch and Milgram. You just casually mention the very specific conditions that were crucial to these experiments. “…. GIVEN THE RIGHT VARIABLES, you can psychologically manipulate people into believing things they know are wrong, and even administering lethal shocks to other human beings.”
I’m happy to hear you tell me I’m being manipulated far more than I realize, but I’ve seen many, many commercials for the Burger King Whopper, yet I have never felt any kind of social pressure (nor did I perceive being given any kind of direction) to go out and eat 12 of them or whatever. As far as I can tell, I was merely being advised of the product’s availability (and OK, also it’s delicious ingredients and preparation…). Ads don’t suggest that I should endanger myself, my community or society at large – or even suggest that I dispense with responsible decision-making – with my use of any particular product (well, I do acknowledge that some alcohol ads tend to romanticize the idea of imbibing what would likely be a good deal of alcohol, in certain social settings…). I think we can point to all kinds of controlled experiments – hell, I’ll even see your Milgram and raise you, say, an Auschwitz defense – but pointing out that in very extreme circumstances people can be psychologically manipulated and pressured to do things they wouldn’t otherwise do under normal circumstances really doesn’t do anything to support the contention that a business entity, that merely engages in public marketing, should bear responsibility for any individual misuse of the company’s products. One in no way follows the other.
It is not “all” about free will – especially when you are talking about selected test subjects, being monitored within a controlled environment or people under extreme circumstances. But it IS about free will, when you decide, on any given day, to walk into a fast food joint or sit on your couch playing COD for 36 hours straight.
If you can demonstrate that video game manufacturers, fast food vendors and any other purveyor of a “bad influence on society” knowingly apply these extreme techniques to the public at large, then I might agree that those folks should bear some of the personal responsibility for the consequences of exerting that pressure. Until you can convince me that they are using these techniques however, you can probably understand why I am slow to assign Milgram-level control and liability to a company that merely interrupts my TV programming with 30 seconds of what I consider an entirely annoying and not-at-all compelling schpiel on why I should buy their crappy product.
I maintain that, outside of clearly extreme circumstances that are totally unrelated to daily living, a purveyor of a product should bear virtually no responsibility for the misuse of their products by the public. And again, establishing rules (or making arguments in favor of rules) by pointing out the existence a of a few extreme exceptions is just not the intelligent way to consider these issues.
I’m not talking about a legal responsibility here, I’m talking about a personal decision made by individual “purveyors of products.” Given that there are systemic problems with our culture (just like every culture), I would feel morally deficient if I made a free decision to create or purvey a product that is misused in a way that significantly contributed to those systemic problems, and especially if I used priming and other methods (even if they were just a LITTLE effective) to encourage people to use them irresponsibly. There’s a difference between the legal sense of responsibility and a personal sense of responsibility, and all I’m asking people to do is to personally rethink whether what they do contributes or takes away from the systemic problems we have.
As far as the free choices go, people differ in their ability to resist impulsive behavior, and this is simply a cognitive variation that people were born with. As such, if such a significant number of them were partaking of a product I create that there were major systemic problems with the health care system (in the case of fast food, for instance), I would feel that the moral choice would be to choose to create something else.
And if I were a brilliant biologist who had a choice to either research a product that helps men regrow their hair, or research a vaccine for malaria, I think that personal responsibility would dictate that, all other things equal (and they rarely are, I realize that, but even if a lot of things are equal), I feel that the moral decision would be to create the vaccine. That’s really what I’m trying to say here.